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This presentation is about the change of the concept of Denki Syōsetsu in the Meiji Period. Dictionaries, newspaper articles, and writings on the literary theory and history are used for this study. Originally, Japanese word Denki meant “play”. In the end of the 19th century, scholars of English literature started to use Denki to translate the word “Romance”, which was shared between many western languages. The scholars focused on the nuance of the word Denki, referring to strange stories that provoked reader’s imagination. As a result, the expression, Denki Syōsetsu, was first used in 1903 and was widespread to refer to “strange and imagination-provoking novels” ever since.