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Natsume Soseki (1867-1916) |
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Japanese novelist and essayist, a master of psychological fiction. Soseki's best-known works include Kokoro (1914), a story about loneliness and friendship of a young student and his mentor, referred to as the honorific title of "Sensei". Also Botchan (1906) has been one of the most read novels in Japan. Several of Soseki's books examined problems of the modernization of his country. Along with Ogai Mori (1862-1922), Soseki is considered to be the father of Modernism in Japanese literature. His portrait appeared on the 1000 yen note from 1984 to 2004. "I always called him "Sensei." I shall therefore refer to him simply as "Sensei," and not by his real name. It is not because I consider it more discreet, but it is because I find it more natural that I do so. Whenever the memory of him comes back to me now, I find that I think of him as "Sensei" still. And with my pen in hand, I cannot bring myself to write of him in any other way." (from Kokoro, transl. by Edwin McClellan) Natsume Soseki, usually referred to as Soseki, was born Natsume Kinosuke in Edo (nowadays Tokyo) into a minor samurai family. He was the last of six childred, born when his father, Natsume Kohe Naokatsu, was relatively old, fifty-three, and his mother, forty. Soseki's father, a well-to-do townsman, held the administrative position of nanushi (war chief). His parents did not want to raise an unwanted child, and at the age of two, Soseki was placed with a childless couple named Shiobara. Seven years later Soseki was returned to his real parents. "They did not pet me as parents do their youngest children," Soseki recalled. "I remember particularly that my father treated me rather harshly". His mother died when he was fourteen. Later in his books Soseki often dealt with the relationship between parents and their children. Soseki grew up in period of great changes in Japan's culture and
society. Commodore Matthew Perry's arrival in Edo Bay in 1854 had
marked the "opening" of Japan by the West. Soseki's family lost its
former position as a result of the Meiji Restration, which aimed to
create a more centralized and westernized state. Declining interest in
traditional culture was accompanied by the rise of modern Japanese
language. Soseki attended schools in Tokyo. His early career was marked by relative ambivalence toward English. "When I was at high school," Soseki once wrote, "my specialty was idling; I did very little work." At the age of nineteen, he met the writer Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902), who encouraged him to write. He also adopted the pen name Soseki, which replaced his given name. Ill from tuberculosis, Masaoka convalesced in 1895 at Natsume Soseki's two-storied cottage in the city Matsuyama, adjoined by a celebrated hot spring resort. Soseki spent there a year as a middle-school teacher of English language. Soseki studied English at Tokyo Imperial University. As a student he was extremely scrupulous and dutiful, and suffered during this period his first nervous breakdown. In 1892 he became a staff member of Tetsugaku Zasshi. After graduating in 1893, he worked as a teacher at Tokyo Normal College (1894-1895) and in a middle school in Matsuyama. In 1896 he married Kyoko Nakane, the daugter of a high civil servant, and settled in Kumamoto. Leaving a pregnant wife and daughter, Soseki went to England in 1900 on a government scholarship. He stayed in London two unhappy, lonely years, in run-down boarding houses. Nevertheless, his time Soseki spent usefully, writing, reading, and starting to develop a literary theory in which he tried to combine Japanese tradition with western psychological approach. Soseki’s reflections of his stay in England were published in the Asahi newspaper in 1909. On returning to Japan, he become professor at the Imperial University, succeeding the American writer Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904). Soseki lectured on literary theory and English literature. Soseki's first major work was the anecdotal Wagahai wa neko de aru (1905, I Am a Cat), written from the viewpoint of a former alley cat. Noteworthy, Soseki himself had also a cat. Mr. Kushami (Mr. Sneeze) the owner of the pet, is a self-ironic portrait of the writer. The story, which first appeared in the literary magazine Hotoguisu between 1905-06 and was then expanded into a novel, gained a huge success. In Botchan , which takes place in Matsuyama although the city is not named explicitly, Soseki returned to his experiences as a teacher. "Ever since I was a child, my inherent recklessness had brought me nothing but trouble," reveals the bumbling young protagonist in the beginning. His mother favors his elder brother and his father never shows him any affection, saying "he'll never amount to anything." The novel takes its title from the nickname of the narrator, who has a rebellious spirit and who is as determinant in his rejection of petty pretensions as Huckleberry Finn or Holden Caulfield. All the other major characters have a nickname, too, exept Kiyo, who is the devoted maidservant of the family; her name in itself means "pure, clean". As a type - a misfit - Botchan appeared in different roles in several following novels. In Nowaki (1907) he is a poor young man dying of tuberculosis, in the partly humorous Sanshiro (1908) a shy provincial youth, and in Kofu (1908) a young man who runs away from home. Yume juya (1908, Ten Nights of Dream) consisted of ten poetic stories purpoting to be dreams. It has been said, that modern Japanese fantasy began with these tales. In 1907 Soseki retired from his university post - a decision which shocked his contemporaries. He then worked as the literary of editor of the newspaper Asahi Shimbun. His early works had been satirical and humorous, but from Kofu (1908, The Miner) his tales began to have dark tones, and his attachment to the pre-modern (Edo) period became more evident. Between 1905 and 1916, Soseki wrote 14 novels. One of his central themes was the conflict between individual needs and the demands of society. Often his characters suffer from feelings guilt and of alienation after acting against the wishes of their family and traditional values. His later stand towards these dilemmas Soseki expressed in the slogan sokuten kyoshi (following heaven and abandoning self). When the Ministry of Education offered him a doctoral degree, he refused to accept the honour. In 'My Individualism', a speech delivered to the students of the Gakushuin, an elite academy, he said: "... a nationalist morality comes out a very poor second when compared with an individualistic morality. Nations have always been most punctilious over the niceties of diplomatic language, but not so with the morality of their actions." Natsume Soseki died of stomach ulcer on December 9, 1916 in Tokyo. His last work, Meian, was left unfinished. Michikusa (1915, Grass on the Wayside) was an autobiographical work dealing with marriage problems. Soseki is still widely read and his major works of fiction have been translated into English, some of them several times. Kokoro was first published in serialized form in Asahi. Four of his earlier novels had appeared in the literary journal Hototogisu between 1905 and 1907. The important characters in Kokoro, in which Soseki used multiple narrators, do not have full names. They are abstractly referred as K, who is Sensei's friend, or Ojosan, Young Lady, the daughter of a widow who runs a boarding-house. Sensei, a term of respect, can be translated as a "teacher" or "master". The characters are representatives of a certain period but at the same time they are individuals, with distinct personalities. "Kokoro" may be translated in many ways, from "heart" or "mind", to "soul," "spirit," and "intention". Lafcadio Hearn rendered it "the heart of things." The first two sections are narrated by a young man referred to as "I". At the beginning of the story he sees the Sensei with a foreigner on a beach. "I was a bored young man then, and for lack of anything better to do, I went to the tea house the following day at exactly the same hour, hoping to see Sensei again." Although the narrator gets to know Sensei and his wife better, Sensei's cryptic remarks remain an enigma to him. "But remember, there is guilt in loving," Sensei says once to him. "And remember too that, in loving, there is something sacred." (Note: In the Finnish translation, Sensei says, "love is a crime", not that "... there is quilt in loving".) The second part focuses on the narrator and his father, who is dying. The narrator has graduated and his father confesses, "I am glad, not so much for your sake, as for my own." In the third part Sensei, an embittered intellectual, tells in a letter about his past and uncovers events that culminate in K's suicide. To his young friend he writes: "You and I belong to different eras, and so we think differently. There is nothing we can do to bridge the gap between us." Sensei has been betrayed by his relatives, and he betrays K. For decades he has lived as if he were dead. Eventually Sensei decides to follow the example of General Nogi Maresuke - General Nogi killed himself in the old samurai fashion after the death of his master, the Emperor Meiji, who reigned from 1868 to 1912. For further reading: Natsume Soseki and English Men of Letters by Kenshiro Homma (2010); Reflections in a Glass Door: Memory and Melancholy in the Personal Writings of Natsume Sōseki by Marvin Marcus (2009) ; Parallelisms in the Literary Vision of Sin by Tsutomu Takahashi (2003); A Readers Guide to Japanese Literature by J. Thomas Rimer (1999); Rereading Soseki by R.E. Auestad (1999); 'Natsume Soseki' by Kohl W. Steogeb, in Encyclopedia of World Literature in the 20th Century, Vol. 2, ed. by Steven R. Serafin (1999); Chaos and Order in the Works of Natsume Soseki by Angela P. Yiu (1998); 'Natsume Soseki 1867-1916' by Dennis C. Washburn, in Encyclopedia of the Novel, vol. 2, ed. by Paul Schellinger (1998); Dilemma of the Modern in Japanese Fiction by Dennis Washburn (1995); Complicit Fiction: The Subject in the Modern Japanese Prose Fiction by James Fujii (1993); The World of Natsume Soseki, ed. by Takehisa Iijima and James M. Vardaman Jr. (1987); The Psychological World of Natsume Soseki by by T. Doi (1976); Die Beziehungen Natsume Soseki's zuem Kreis der Shaseibun-Schrifteller by K. Walzock (1975); Accomplices in Silence: The Modern Japanese Novel by M. Miyoshi (1974); Natasume Soseki by B. Yu (1969); Two Japanese Novelists: Soseki and Toson by E. McClellan (1969); Japanese Thought in Meiji Era by M. Kosaka (1958); Japanese Literature in the Meiji Era by Y. Okazaki (1955) - Note: In some souces Natsume's birthdate is January 5, 1867; in this Authors' Calendar February 9, 1867) Selected works:
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