(
"The subject of 'Kokoro,' which can be translated as 't...)
"The subject of 'Kokoro,' which can be translated as 'the heart of things' or as 'feeling,' is the delicate matter of the contrast between the meanings the various parties of a relationship attach to it. In the course of this exploration, Soseki brilliantly describes different levels of friendship, family relationships, and the devices by which men attempt to escape from their fundamental loneliness. The novel sustains throughout its length something approaching poetry, and it is rich in understanding and insight. The translation, by Edwin McClellan, is extremely good."
Anthony West, The New Yorker
(Natsume Soseki's only coming-of-age novel, Sanshiro depic...)
Natsume Soseki's only coming-of-age novel, Sanshiro depicts the eponymous twenty-three-year-old protagonist as he leaves the sleepy countryside to attend a university in the constantly moving "real world" of Tokyo. Baffled and excited by the traffic, the academics, and-most of all-the women, Sanshiro must find his way among the sophisticates that fill his new life. An incisive social and cultural commentary, Sanshiro is also a subtle portrait of first love, tradition, and modernization, and the idealism of youth against the cynicism of middle age.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Ten Nights Dreaming: and The Cat's Grave (Dover Books on Literature and Drama)
(A murderer discovers his true nature from a talking infan...)
A murderer discovers his true nature from a talking infant, a samurai is frustrated in his attempts to meditate, and a dying man bestows his hat on a friend in these surrealistic short stories. The dream-like, open-ended tales by the father of Japanese modernist literature offer thought-provoking reflections on fear, death, and loneliness. Their settings range from the Meiji period of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the era in which the tales were written, to the prehistoric Age of the Gods; the twelfth-century Kamakura period, in which the samurai class emerged; and the remote future.
A scholar of British literature, author Natsume S?seki (18671916) was also a composer of haiku, kanshi, and fairy tales. The stories of Ten Nights Dreaming, which were originally published as a newspaper serial, constitute milestones of Japanese fantasy. Like S?seki's other writings, they have had a profound effect on readers, writers, and filmmakers. This edition features an expert new English translation by Matt Treyvaud, who has translated the story "The Cat's Grave" for this work as well.
(An NYRB Classics Original
A humble clerk and his loving ...)
An NYRB Classics Original
A humble clerk and his loving wife scrape out a quiet existence on the margins of Tokyo. Resigned, following years of exile and misfortune, to the bitter consequences of having married without their families consent, and unable to have children of their own, S?suke and Oyone find the delicate equilibrium of their household upset by a new obligation to meet the educational expenses of S?sukes brash younger brother. While an unlikely new friendship appears to offer a way out of this bind, it also soon threatens to dredge up a past that could once again force them to flee the capital. Desperate and torn, S?suke finally resolves to travel to a remote Zen mountain monastery to see if perhaps there, through meditation, he can find a way out of his predicament.
This moving and deceptively simple story, a melancholy tale shot through with glimmers of joy, beauty, and gentle wit, is an understated masterpiece by one of Japans greatest writers. At the end of his life, Natsume S?seki declared The Gate, originally published in 1910, to be his favorite among all his novels. This new translation captures the oblique grace of the original while correcting numerous errors and omissions that marred the first English version.
("A nonchalant string of anecdotes and wisecracks, told by...)
"A nonchalant string of anecdotes and wisecracks, told by a fellow who doesn't have a name, and has never caught a mouse, and isn't much good for anything except watching human beings in action " The New Yorker
Written from 1904 through 1906, Soseki Natsume's comic masterpiece, I Am a Cat, satirizes the foolishness of upper-middle-class Japanese society during the Meiji era. With acerbic wit and sardonic perspective, it follows the whimsical adventures of a world-weary stray kitten who comments on the follies and foibles of the people around him.
A classic of Japanese literature, I Am a Cat is one of Soseki's best-known novels. Considered by many as the most significant writer in modern Japanese history, Soseki's I Am a Cat is a classic novel sure to be enjoyed for years to come.
(One of Japan's most treasured novelsnew to Penguin Class...)
One of Japan's most treasured novelsnew to Penguin Classics
A hilarious tale about a young man's rebellion against "the system" in a country school, Natsume Soseki's Botchan has enjoyed a timeless popularity in Japan. The setting is Japan's deep south, where the author himself spent some time teaching English in a boys' school. Into this conservative world, with its social proprieties and established pecking order, breezes Botchan, down from the big city and with scant respect for either his elders or his noisy young charges. The result is a light, funny, fast-paced novel.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
("A Japanese writer of genius."Japan Quarterly
Soseki Na...)
"A Japanese writer of genius."Japan Quarterly
Soseki Natsume is considered to be one of Japan's most beloved and respected authors. And Then is ranked as one of his most insightful and stirring novels.
Daisuke, the protagonist, is a man in his twenties who is struggling with his personal purpose and identity as well as the changing social landscape of Meiji-era Japan. As Japan enters the Twentieth Century, ancient customs give way to western ideals, and Daisuke works to resolve his feelings of disconnection and abandonment during this time of change. Thanks to his father's wealth, Daisuke has the luxury of having time to develop his philosophies and ruminate on their meaning while remaining intellectually aloof from traditional Japanese culture and the demands of growing industrialization.
Then Daisuke's life takes an unexpected turn when he is reunited with his college friend and his sickly wife. At first, Daisuke's stoicism allows him to act according to his intellect, but his intellectual fortress begins to show its vulnerabilities as his emotions start to hold greater sway over his inner life. Daisuke must now weigh his choices in a culture that has always operated on the razor's edge of societal obligation and personal freedom.
(The great Japanese authors most famous novel, in its fir...)
The great Japanese authors most famous novel, in its first new English translation in half a century
No collection of Japanese literature is complete without Natsume Soseki's Kokoro, his most famous novel and the last he completed before his death. Published here in the first new translation in more than fifty years, Kokoromeaning "heart"is the story of a subtle and poignant friendship between two unnamed characters, a young man and an enigmatic elder whom he calls "Sensei." Haunted by tragic secrets that have cast a long shadow over his life, Sensei slowly opens up to his young disciple, confessing indiscretions from his own student days that have left him reeling with guilt, and revealing, in the seemingly unbridgeable chasm between his moral anguish and his student's struggle to understand it, the profound cultural shift from one generation to the next that characterized Japan in the early twentieth century.
(A stunning new English translationthe first in more than...)
A stunning new English translationthe first in more than forty yearsof a major novel by the father of modern Japanese fiction
Natsume Soseki's Kusamakurameaning grass pillowfollows its nameless young artist-narrator on a meandering walking tour of the mountains. At the inn at a hot spring resort, he has a series of mysterious encounters with Nami, the lovely young daughter of the establishment. Nami, or "beauty," is the center of this elegant novel, the still point around which the artist moves and the enigmatic subject of Soseki's word painting. In the author's words, Kusamakura is "a haiku-style novel, that lives through beauty." Written at a time when Japan was opening its doors to the rest of the world, Kusamakura turns inward, to the pristine mountain idyll and the taciturn lyricism of its courtship scenes, enshrining the essence of old Japan in a work of enchanting literary nostalgia.
Light and Dark: A Novel (Weatherhead Books on Asia)
(Light and Dark, Natsume Soseki's longest novel and master...)
Light and Dark, Natsume Soseki's longest novel and masterpiece, although unfinished, is a minutely observed study of haute-bourgeois manners on the eve of World War I. It is also a psychological portrait of a new marriage that achieves a depth and exactitude of character revelation that had no precedent in Japan at the time of its publication and has not been equaled since. With Light and Dark, Soseki invented the modern Japanese novel.
Recovering in a clinic following surgery, thirty-year-old Tsuda Yoshio receives visits from a procession of intimates: his coquettish young wife, O-Nobu; his unsparing younger sister, O-Hide, who blames O-Nobu's extravagance for her brother's financial difficulties; his self-deprecating friend, Kobayashi, a ne'er-do-well and troublemaker who might have stepped from the pages of a Dostoevsky novel; and his employer's wife, Madam Yoshikawa, a conniving meddler with a connection to Tsuda that is unknown to the others. Divergent interests create friction among this closely interrelated cast of characters that explodes into scenes of jealousy, rancor, and recrimination that will astonish Western readers conditioned to expect Japanese reticence.
Released from the clinic, Tsuda leaves Tokyo to continue his convalescence at a hot-springs resort. For reasons of her own, Madam Yoshikawa informs him that a woman who inhabits his dreams, Kiyoko, is staying alone at the same inn, recovering from a miscarriage. Dissuading O-Nobu from accompanying him, Tsuda travels to the spa, a lengthy journey fraught with real and symbolic obstacles that feels like a passage from one world to another. He encounters Kiyoko, who attempts to avoid him, but finally manages a meeting alone with her in her room. Soseki's final scene is a sublime exercise in indirection that leaves Tsuda to "explain the meaning of her smile."
Soseki Natsume was a Japanese novelist and essayist.
Background
Soseki Natsume was born Kinnosuke Natsume in Tokyo; he is known in Japanese literature by his pen name of Soseki. His parents were rather well-to-do townspeople, whose fortunes, however, declined after the Meiji restoration of 1868. An unhappy childhood, including a period spent with foster parents, and the realization that he was an unwanted child, left an indelible mark on Soseki's imagination which he was to carry to the grave.
Education
Of a studious disposition, Soseki early learned classical Chinese, with much enthusiasm, and English. Entering the university in 1884, he specialized in English literature. During his formative years Soseki was exposed to the growing conflict between excessive Westernization and Japanese nationalism, which no doubt resulted in his being at once very modern and very Japanese. Soseki mastered English to the extent of being able to read and write it with great fluency. At the time of his death his library included hundreds of English-language books on all subjects, many of them containing his marginal annotations in English. Graduating from the university in 1893, Soseki took a post at Tokyo Normal College and in 1895 went to Matsuyama, where he found a position in the high school. In 1896 he moved to Kumamoto to the Fifth National College. In 1900 a government scholarship made it possible for Soseki to go to England for 2 years of study. Unfortunately, his stipend was not adequate for him to lead the life he would have liked.
It was in 1907 that he abandoned the securityand prestige of a university professorship to work for the Asahi Newspaper with the understanding that his novels would be published serially in that distinguished publication. From that time until the end of his life he devoted himself to writing, spurning official honors. Career as a Novelist Wagahai wa Neko de Aru ( I Am a Cat) appeared in 1905. An immediate success, it is a series of loosely connected episodes having as their narrator a cat, his master a shy, ineffectual schoolteacher with a delicate digestion. With delightful irony Soseki depicts an assortment of contemporary types caught in the struggle of daily life and torn between idealism and materialism. Botchan (1906; Young Master) tells of the adventures of a youth who leaves Tokyo to teach in a provincial high school in the south of Japan. It was perhaps partly inspired by Soseki's own experiences in Matsuyama. The young master learns a bit about life, leaves the school, and returns to Tokyo, where he finds a satisfactory job.
Kusamakura (Pillow of Grass), written in the same year in a poetic style, was described by Soseki as "a novel in the manner of a haiku. " It is an intensely impressionistic account of a painter from the city wandering in a mountain village. Nowaki (1907; Autumn Wind), written in rather a more serious vein, portrays modern people struggling with ideals and suffering intensely in the illusion of this world. Soseki's next three novels form a trilogy. Sanshiro (1908) tells of a youth's disillusionment in first love and disappointment in life. Sorekara (1909; And Then) describes the plight of an educated young Japanese in early-20th-century society suffering from hypochondria and boredom. In Mon (1910; The Gate) Soseki deals with the quest for happiness and understanding of a middle-aged, childless couple. The theme of loneliness is taken up in great depth in Kojin (1912; The Wayfarer) and Kokoro (1914; The Heart). The hero of The Wayfarer is driven to a state of near madness by the realization of his loneliness.
In The Heart, Soseki's most pessimistic novel, suicide is presented as the solution to man's inevitable solitude. The Sensei (teacher), having suffered great mental anguish in life, at last finds the courage to be the master of his own destiny by removing himself from this earthly existence. Michikusa (1915; Grass on the Wayside), frankly autobiographical, sums up much of Soseki's own resentment toward life. Its hero, his personality disintegrating, needs love but cruelly, rejects it and feels betrayed by those whose affection and loyalty he should have enjoyed. Soseki's health was deteriorating rapidly because of stomach ulcers by 1915. His last novel, Meian (1916; Light and Darkness), a most complex analysis of egocentric personalities of the modern age, was left unfinished at his death.
Career
Soseki resided in Tokyo, where he was given a lectureship at the Imperial University. During the 4 years that he remained there teaching, a chore for which he had little liking, Soseki began writing novels and acquiring a literary reputation.
("A Japanese writer of genius."Japan Quarterly
Soseki Na...)
Views
Quotations:
"I believe that words uttered in passion contain a greater living truth than do those words which express thoughts rationally conceived. It is blood that moves the body. Words are not meant to stir the air only: they are capable of moving greater things. "
"Some say that life has no form, that it is extremely diffuse. I think I can agree with them. . .. A life without conclusions is painful. "
"Loneliness is the price we have to pay for being born in this modern age, so full of freedom, independence, and our own egotistical selves. "
"The artist, even when he imitates nature, always feels himself to be not a slave but a demigod. "
"London is a city that offers all kinds of temptations, and whenever I go for a walk I discover things that I would like to bring back as souvenirs. But my resources are very limited. I cannot buy anything, and I make a point of taking my walks a good distance from these riches. "
"An artist is a person who lives in the triangle which remains after the angle which we may call common sense has been removed from this four-cornered world. "
"From this observed behavior a major psychological truth about this race of forked destroyers may be deduced: that, just as nature abhors a vacuum, "mankind abhors equality. ""
"On a charcoal kiln a vine keeps climbing, while being burned to death. "
Personality
His loneliness in a foreign city, his concern for money, and his arduous studies all contributed to nervous disorders which were to haunt him for the rest of his life. It was even rumored that he had a mental breakdown.
After his return to Japan in 1903, Soseki was confronted with the flood tide of nationalism which was leading to the Japanese attack on Russia. Although he firmly admired the literature of the West, he did not indulge in excessive admiration or slavish imitation of all things foreign but, rather, sought to create something of lasting value based on the traditions of his own country.