Kokoro in particular has been acclaimed as the great Japanese novel. Reflecting back upon the recently ended Meiji period and the problematic modernity that it produced, the author captures the complex interplay of self-obsession and our need for others through his two protagonists. Referred to only as Sensei—an honorific term connoting both age and wisdom—the older friend proves strangely and enticingly aloof, refusing to answer his many probing questions.
Guarding his privacy, Sensei admonishes the friend in a passage laden with ominous overtones:. You will learn to regret it if you do. I bear with my loneliness now, in order to avoid greater loneliness in the years ahead. You see, 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.
This cautionary pronouncement only serves to reinforce the bond with the enigmatic Sensei, who has come to assume the status of surrogate father. At long last, Sensei does indeed relate his life story.
But it is presented in the form of an extended suicide note, delivered to the friend at the moment when his own father was facing imminent death. He abandons the dying father and his family in the provinces and rushes back to Tokyo. The document, which comprises half the novel, amounts to a confessional autobiography that tells a tragic tale of self-deception, emotional paralysis, betrayal, and unremitting guilt. The younger friend thus serves as the catalyst for him to emerge from his cell and tell his story, whereupon he is able to take his own life by way of atonement.
The novel ends at the point where the letter ends. He is beset by haunting memories of childhood in an adoptive family and has recently been badgered by the adoptive father for a cash settlement in exchange for an annulment of the adoption. Worse yet, he is saddled with a wife who simply cannot understand him.
For her part, Osumi is driven to distraction by her blowhard of a husband, wishing that he would let down his guard for once and treat her with some kindness. Grass on the Wayside concludes with one final sparring match, which concerns the agreed-upon payoff intended to settle things with the adoptive father.
Things that happen once will go on happening. The author achieved a mastery of the modern psychological novel, through which he succeeded in capturing the ebb and flow of moods, conflicted emotions, and confusion that marked his own life and that of his literary alter egos.
Insulated from others by circumstance and personal inclination, his characters ponder the meaning of their lives, wondering who they are and how they got to be that way. They mull over the past and sift through the traces and fragments of memory for something that might yield an answer.
With this in mind, some believe that Soseki would have immersed himself more deeply in the world of haiku had he not been oppressed by his time in England. To me, however, this appears to be an inversion of reality. Indeed, it could be argued that English literature and the two years he spent in London actually liberated Soseki from the oppressive influence of his beloved friend, Shiki. However, it was too painful for Soseki — too injurious to the love he felt for Shiki — to admit that it was his very best friend who had artistically oppressed him.
So instead his venom was turned on Britain and the West. The perceived barrier between Japan and the outside world is very often a handy means for people in the postwar era to transfer the frustrations and contradictions they feel about completely different matters. Indeed, Yukio Mishima is an obvious example of such at work. Therefore, it is important not to take the comments of artists about such matters at face value. If someone wishes to keep a secret, Soseki would argue, you can never discern it unless that person tells you.
The human heart or psyche in other words can be impenetrable. In other words, the most significant barrier is not, as Hearn once believed, any form of cultural wall between Japan and the rest of the world, but the wall that existed between the psyche of one individual and the people around them.
Instead, he was arguably happy to play along with the convenient narrative that he was oppressed by the wall that existed between Japan and the West.
In other words, he uses an external fiction to conceal a powerful, unspeakable homoerotic impulse. He began a new work, Meian trans. Light and Darkness in , but died on December 9 of the same year, leaving his final work unfinished.
In the humorous novel I Am a Cat , the titular feline observes the habits of the curious group of intellectuals who gather in the home of its owner. Another early novel, the Kusamakura , tells the story of an artist who cannot stand the overly civilized atmosphere of Tokyo. He heads for a hot spring resort, where he seeks to remove himself from the involvements of a rapidly modernizing world and immerse himself in emotionally detached art.
The protagonist of The Gate is a public official living quietly with his wife—who was formerly married to his close friend—and grappling with feelings of guilt. His second trilogy further probes into the themes of egoism and isolation. Extracts from the novel are a staple of high school textbooks. The core of the story is told in a letter to the unnamed narrator, written by Sensei—a character known only by this term of respect.
While a student, Sensei betrayed his friend K to win his present wife. Driven to despair, K killed himself. Sensei has lived with the anguish of this act for many years, and the death of Emperor Meiji leads him to the decision to commit suicide in his turn.
In what became his unfinished final novel, Light and Darkness , he is believed to have planned to first examine egoism through a discontented married couple before depicting the abandonment of the self. His Zen experiences are thought to have been the basis for the sokuten kyoshi concept. Under normal conditions, everybody is more or less good, or, at least, ordinary.
But tempt them, and they may suddenly change. That is what is so frightening about men. I bear with my loneliness now, in order to avoid greater loneliness in the years ahead. You see, 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.
What would you like to read in April? The Eighth Day by Mitsuyo Kakuta. The Goddess Chronicle by Natsuo Kirino. Tales of Moonlight and Rain by Ueda Akinari. Sign in to vote ». Topics Mentioning This Author. Welcome back.
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