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A hauntingly beautiful melodrama exploring the friendship between a young man and his mentor __________ 'Soseki is the representative modern Japanese novelist, a figure of truly national stature' Haruki Murukami ' Kokoro is exactly what you would ask a novel to be... Sōseki manipulates every detail with the same thrilling mastery' Spectator 'Sparsely populated, simple but perfect... it is a melancholy but stoical study in loneliness' Sunday Telegraph __________ In this melancholy and delicately written Japanese classic, a student befriends a reclusive elder at a beach resort, who he calls Sensei. As the two grow closer, Sensei remains unwilling to share the inner pain that has consumed his ...
A stirring and insightful novel from an author Japan Quarterly calls "a Japanese writer of genius."From beloved author Soseki Natsume, And Then tells the story of Daisuke, 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 20th 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 d...
Kokoro (1914) is a novel by Natsume Sōseki. Set during a period of modernization in Japan, Kokoro is a story of family, faith, and tragedy that explores timeless themes of isolation and identity. Spanning generations, Kokoro is a classic novel from one of Japan's most successful twentieth century writers. Tradition and change, life and death--such are the subjects of Sōseki's masterful, understated tale of unassuaged guilt. On vacation with a friend, the narrator meets an older man who becomes a patient mentor for the young student. Soon, he begins visiting Sensei and his wife at their home in Tokyo, where they live an affluent, simple life. As the years go by, the narrator becomes aware o...
A timeless psychological study of a young man's deep alienation from society. Set in the early 20th century, Kokoro opens with a chance encounter on a beach near Tokyo that irrevocably links a young student to a man he simply calls Sensei (Teacher). Intrigued by Sensei's aloofness, the student calls upon him with increasing frequency. Eventually, Sensei and his beautiful wife open their home and their lives to him. Only later does the student learn the devastating secret that has haunted Sensei since his youth. Kokoro has sold millions of copies in Japan where it is taught in schools and is a perennial favorite. Its lucid prose and universal themes of friendship, betrayal and the struggle for meaning in a changing world have made it popular internationally as well. This English-language manga version will make the book accessible to a new generation of foreign readers. The manga includes depictions of suicide and may not be suitable for some readers.
Natsume Soseki's importance to Japanese literature can be compared to that of Dickens to Britain or Henry James to America. Like these writers, his work now holds a hugely popular and important place in the literary imagination of his country. Unlike them, his work is only recently coming to the attention of readers from overseas. "Kokoro" joins the recent publications of "The Gate", "The Tower of London" and "the Three Cornered World" from Peter Owen as part of an international programme to bring one of Japan's best known authors to a new English speaking audience. As Damian Flanagan says in his new critical introduction "Kokoro" is the Soseki novel that has been given most attention by cri...
This classic Japanese story by Soseki Netsume—the foremost novelist of the Meiji Period--is a masterpiece of Japanese literature. This book demonstrates Soseki Natsume's ability to dissect and elucidate the human personality in all its complexity. Here, his facile blending of narrative, extended monologue and sharp dialog leaves the reader with an almost personal knowledge of the characters. We are introduced to Keitaro, a recent college graduate hunting for his first job; he is the hero through whose eyes the other characters are seen. There is also Morimoto, the young adventurer with his tall tales; Sunaga, a troubled young man whose moving story forms the center of the novel; Taguchi, S...
A Comic Japanese Novel “One may be branded foolishly honest if he takes seriously the apologies others might offer. We should regard all apologies a sham and forgiving also as a sham; then everything would be all right. If one wants to make another apologize from his heart, he has to pound him good and strong until he begs for mercy from his heart” ― Natsume Sōseki, Botchan Botchan by Natsume Sōseki is a classic Japanese coming of age novel about a young man who is sent from Tokyo to the countryside to teach mathematics at a middle school. This Xist Classics edition has been professionally formatted for e-readers with a linked table of contents. This eBook also contains a bonus book club leadership guide and discussion questions. We hope you’ll share this book with your friends, neighbors and colleagues and can’t wait to hear what you have to say about it.
Originally published: Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, c1978. (UNESCO collection of representative works. Japanese series)
Modernity arrived in Japan, as elsewhere, through new forms of ownership. In A Fictional Commons, Michael K. Bourdaghs explores how the literary and theoretical works of Natsume Sōseki (1867–1916), widely celebrated as Japan's greatest modern novelist, exploited the contradictions and ambiguities that haunted this new system. Many of his works feature narratives about inheritance, thievery, and the struggle to obtain or preserve material wealth while also imagining alternative ways of owning and sharing. For Sōseki, literature was a means for thinking through—and beyond—private property. Bourdaghs puts Sōseki into dialogue with thinkers from his own era (including William James and Mizuno Rentarō, author of Japan’s first copyright law) and discusses how his work anticipates such theorists as Karatani Kōjin and Franco Moretti. As Bourdaghs shows, Sōseki both appropriated and rejected concepts of ownership and subjectivity in ways that theorized literature as a critical response to the emergence of global capitalism.
How did nerves and neuroses take the place of ghosts and spirits in Meiji Japan? How does Natsume Soseki’s canonical novel Kokoro pervert the Freudian teleology of sexual development? What do we make of Jacques Lacan’s infamous claim that because of the nature of their language the Japanese people were unanalyzable? And how are we to understand the re-awakening of collective memory occasioned by the sudden appearance of a Japanese Imperial soldier stumbling out of the jungle in Guam in 1972? In addressing these and other questions, the essays collected here theorize the relation of unconscious fantasy and perversion to discourses of nation, identity, and history in Japan. Against a tradi...