One day a critic named Kohei Akagi attacked some novels which he judged to be immoral. Since then a vehement controversy had started over literary decency. While it contributed to the reinforcement of the moral code of the day, the controversy resulted in the "fashioning" of a rigid standard by which most popular novels were stigmatized as "inferior." In short, it was a historical moment when the genre called "popular fiction" was invented. And it was also the moment when the "standard" literature was born as it was defined in relation to the former.