(1867–1916), novelist and scholar. Natsume Soseki was born in Tokyo under the name of Natsume Kinosuke but adopted the pseudonym Natsume Soseki as a writer. Soseki and Mori Rintaro (1862–1922), who wrote under the pen name of Mori Ogai, are widely regarded as the twin titans of modern Japanese literature. Soseki was sent to England as a government student in 1900 and returned to Japan in 1903 to replace Lafcadio Hearn (1850–1904) as lecturer in English Literature at Tokyo Imperial University (now University of Tokyo). With his first novel, Wagahai wa neko de aru (I Am a Cat, 1905–1906), a satire on par with Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy, Soseki made his mark and quickly established himself as a novelist. This work was closely followed by his 1906 works, Botchan (Little Master) and Kusamakura (Grass Pillow), which was translated and published as The Three-Cornered World. He quit teaching in 1907 and joined the newspaper Asahi shimbun, in which his next ten novels were serialized, approximately one each year. His later novels, in contrast to his humorous early works, reveal profound psychological insight.
Plagued by deteriorating health and poor marital relations, in his later works Soseki probed the alienation and isolation of the modern intellectual. His final and unfinished novel, Meian (Light and Darkness, 1916), the literary critic Eto Jun called one of the few Japanese modern novels that deserves the name of a true modern novel. It shows the possibilities of the Meiji period novel for sharp social commentary.
Further Reading
Doi Takeo. (1976) The Psychological World of Natsume Soseki. Trans. by William Jefferson Tyler. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Iijima Takehisa, and James M. Vardaman, eds. (1987) TheWorld of Natsume Soseki. Tokyo: Kinseido.
McClellan, Edwin. (1969) Two Japanese Novelists: Soseki andToson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Yiu, Angela. (1998) Chaos and Order in the Works of NatsumeSoseki. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Yu, Beongcheon. (1969) Natsume Soseki. New York: Twayne.
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