By the time he was sixteen, however, Sōseki decided that a training in the Chinese classics would hardly prepare him for the world of the future. He thereupon embarked upon a course designed to lead to the Imperial University. This entailed the serious study of English, which, then, as now, was a prerequisite for a successful career. Sōseki even found himself conducting a geometry class in English at a private school where he taught to support himself. After a brief flirtation with the possibility of becoming an architect, he decided to commit himself to English studies, a decision that was to govern his career until his fortieth year, when he became a professional writer.
Two observations should be made about the final stage of Sōseki’s formal education. The first is that he was surrounded by young men who were to constitute the next generation of Japanese leaders. Of his many important friendships, the one with Masaoka Shiki should be singled out for its influence on his literary development. It was the consumptive Shiki who was to single-handedly revitalize interest in haiku poetry in an age that had eyes only for the new and Western. Sōseki himself became a gifted practitioner of this verse form, which was to have an important influence on his prose style.
The second observation is that Sōseki was an excellent English student. His studies were far-ranging, and his command of written English, at least, would be the envy of students in English literature departments today, nearly one hundred years later. Nevertheless, when he left the university armed with one of the first bachelor’s degrees in English granted in the country, he had serious misgivings about his vocation.
Upon graduation, Sōseki began teaching at the Tokyo Higher Normal School in 1893, the year before the Sino-Japanese War. Unlike his friend Shiki—and almost all his compatriots, for that matter—he was never caught up by the wave of nationalism that swept through the country. He was by temperament disinclined to such emotions and, in any case, was much too preoccupied with his own inner turmoil. This took expression in his resignation from the Tokyo position to become a middle school English teacher in a provincial town far, far from Tokyo, on the island of Shikoku. It was a curious move for a promising young man to make, and it continues to puzzle scholars. He soon left this school for one even further west, the Fifth Higher School in Kumamoto.
His stay at these hinterland schools was, like any other period in Sōseki’s life, characterized by multiple activities. First, he became so accomplished a haiku poet that he made a name for himself and began to have his own pupils, some of whom were to become disciples for life. In Kumamoto he began the serious composition of Chinese verse; his poems are considered the finest in modern Japan. He also continued to write and publish such scholarly pieces as a major study of Tristram Shandy. From time to time he contributed essays to the school paper on various topics of personal concern, on the duties of a teacher, for example, or the painfulness of decision-making in life. These are formally intimate pieces, serious without being priggish.
During the Kumamoto years Sōseki married Nakane Kyōko, the daughter of a high government official. Although domestic life had its consolations, it added new strains, material as well as emotional, to an already sensitive and tense spirit. Kyōko has not received good press in Japan, perhaps because her husband’s disciples found her insensitive to his needs; but one can readily imagine that the serious, brooding Sōseki, uncertain of his vocation and every other facet of his existence, who still persisted in working himself to the breaking point, was a difficult person to live with. Kyōko was high-strung in her own way and subject to breakdowns, particularly during her many pregnancies (the couple eventually had seven children). After her first pregnancy miscarried, she attempted to commit suicide by plunging into a river near their house in Kumamoto. The incident was hushed up, but an anxious period followed for Sōseki, who never slept without tying his body to Kyōko’s with a long cord. The ordeals to which this pair subjected each other and their endurance are something of a marvel to contemplate today.
While Sōseki was still considering giving up teaching altogether, the government ordered him to England for two years to further his English studies. The year was 1900. Sōseki was thirty-three years old, the father of one child with another on the way. Kyōko and her daughter were sent to stay with her family in Tokyo, and Sōseki set sail across the Indian Ocean. The government scholarship, which was a second chance for a man who had deliberately veered from a successful career course, became the occasion of a severe and protracted crisis, one of the milestones of Sōseki’s life. When Sōseki left, he did not know where he was to study, or, for that matter, whether he could study literature rather than language. Shortly after his arrival he settled upon the University of London but soon gave up attending classes and began private lessons with W. J. Craig, editor of the Arden Shakespeare. These lessons, too, proved unsatisfying and came to an end. Sōseki’s life was more solitary than ever.
It is heartrending to picture Sōseki’s life in London. He was acutely conscious of being short and pockmarked in a land of tall, handsome men. (His novels consistently contain references to height.) Poor and friendless, though as much by choice as by necessity, he lived in shabby rooms among dreary people. His stipend was such that he frequently skipped meals in order to buy books. Letters from his wife became infrequent and he was left long in suspense about the birth of their second child. (Kyōko was also having a difficult time. The government allowance for dependents was laughably meager, and with her own family on the brink of economic collapse, she could barely keep herself and the children clothed.) Sōseki despaired of achieving anything “for the country”—he was, after all, on a government scholarship—by pursuing English literature. His old doubts that he, a Japanese, could ever truly understand English literature, let alone contribute to its study, came to a head. After a rare visit from a Japanese friend, a chemist, Sōseki decided that only the scientific method, with universally verifiable results, had any validity. He thereupon tried to develop a scientific approach to literature. Deciding that literature books were useless in this endeavor, he packed them in his trunk and began instead to devour works on philosophy, psychology, and the various natural sciences, accumulating notebooks filled with microscopic writing. Not surprisingly, rumors of his madness circulated.
Sōseki returned to Japan in 1903, driven by the need to complete his monumental work on literature and fearful of not having the necessary time and money. He did manage to produce three works to show for his efforts, of which the middle one, the Theory of Literature (Bungakuron, 1907), is the most significant. These studies are of historical interest, but they will probably be remembered for the confessional quality of the preface to the Theory, in which Sōseki reveals the painfulness of his encounter with English literature.
The years following his return were extremely trying. He had two positions, one as a teacher at the First Higher School, one as a lecturer at the Imperial University. He found his teaching duties oppressive and the lectureship particularly troublesome, for he was replacing the popular Lafcadio Hearn. It was a significant appointment, of course: Japan was coming of age when it felt that its own students could teach a foreign literature. Sōseki acquitted himself with distinction and won his own enthusiastic following, especially after a series of Shakespeare lectures. He was still an unhappy, driven man, however, continually harassed by lack of time and money. Perhaps the experiences of this period are sufficient to account for the persistent money concerns in his novels.
During this difficult period Sōseki began to write what was to be his first novel, I Am a Cat (Wagahai wa neko de aru, 1905), together with smaller pieces drawing upon his London experiences. Cat was immensely popular and initiated a flurry of literary activity that culminated in his leaving the university in 1907 to join the staff of the Asahi Shimbun, the nation’s largest daily. In those days newspapermen occupied a low rung on the social ladder and could hardly be compared with professors at the Imperial University (Sōseki at this tim
e was being considered for a chair). It was, in short, a sensational step.
Sōseki was forty years old at the time, with nine years left to his life. They were a crowded nine years. He completed eight novels and was in the middle of writing his ninth and longest work at the time of his death. He wrote a considerable number of essays, which contain some of the most beautiful prose in Japanese literature. He lectured extensively, offering acute critiques of Japanese civilization as it entered the twentieth century. Some of these lectures, particularly “My Individualism” (“Watakushi no kojin shugi,” 1914), continue to be widely anthologized. Although he had retired from formal teaching, he had an ever-growing number of “disciples” about him. He was an active figure on the literary scene and extended generous support to young writers from whom, in turn, he received important stimulation. On Thursdays, which were set aside for his young followers, his house became a major artistic salon.
All these activities—and one must keep in mind the particular pressures of serial writing—took place against a background of deteriorating mental and physical health. Fortunately, his money worries were largely over despite the size of his household, for Sōseki was an immensely popular writer by the time he joined the newspaper. In fact, when Wild Poppy (Gubijinsō, 1907), was announced as his first serial novel, stores began to sell “Gubijinsō yukata” (cotton summer kimonos) and “Gubijinsō rings.” Still, his life continued to be troubled. His constant depressions occasionally brought on severe breakdowns, in one instance forcing him to interrupt his serial writing for months. He also suffered from chronic gastric ulcers. He nearly died of an acute attack in 1910, but miraculously recovered to write his most critically acclaimed novels. He continued to suffer a series of attacks until the final one caused his death in 1916. He was forty-nine years old.
Because Sōseki was such an important public figure—the Meiji intellectual par excellence—whose private torments have become symbols of an entire age, discussions of his works have all too often been reduced to the facts of his life. There is, however, very little raw autobiography in Sōseki’s novels; in fact, this is one of the most important distinctions between him and almost all his contemporaries as well as many of his successors. Still, his life undeniably furnished some of the major themes of his art, and a brief glance at this connection may add perspective to a discussion of the novels.
The first, most obvious theme taken from his life is that of abandonment. Many Sōseki characters are literally or figuratively abandoned children, who must therefore grapple with basic questions of identity.
Another important theme is ambivalence, if not outright skepticism, toward modernity and Westernization. Sōseki witnessed the melancholy effect the disruptions of the Restoration had on his family. He was also pulled backward in time by his love for Chinese art and literature. His anguish when it came to choosing a career was really an anguish over whether to cast his lot with the future or to desist from taking part in the “struggle for survival” (a phrase which recurs throughout his writings) altogether. This ambivalence about modernity is also a dimension of the abandonment theme. As Etō suggests in his study, Sōseki and His Age (Sōseki to sono jidai, Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 1970), his decision to embrace English no doubt reflected Sōseki’s fears of being left behind by the future.
Finally, and most importantly, all these concerns are part of the theme of alienation. If there is one characteristic that all Sōseki heroes share, it is a sense of discomfort in the world. They are all anxious outsiders.
In reviewing Natsume Sōseki’s career as a novelist, one is impressed by the rapidity with which he made the shift from academic to novelist and by his subsequent progress as a novelist. The first novels and stories, from I Am a Cat through The Miner (Kōfu, 1908), quite naturally show Sōseki experimenting with various styles, structures, and subject matter. There are samples of near-burlesque satire and comedy, Gothic romance, Kafkaesque documentar y, haiku, Chinese verse, and prose-paintings. It is in the first trilogy, consisting of Sanshirō (1908), And Then (Sorekara, 1909), and The Gate (Mon, 1910), that we see the emergence of the mature novelist. In these works his style solidifies; he identifies the questions he wishes to investigate; he chooses the characters he will employ for that investigation.
Before discussing these three works, it may be wise to consider the basis for calling them a trilogy. After Sanshirō had appeared in the newspaper, Sōseki explained in an advance notice that he was titling the next work And Then, first, because Sanshirō was about a university student, and the new work would be about what “then” happened; second, because Sanshirō was a simple man, but the new main character would be in a more advanced stage; and finally, because a strange fate was to befall this character, but what “then” followed would not be described. The Gate, the last novel in the trilogy, is about what “then” might have followed. Obviously, these are only the most schematic links between the novels. The progression of age and situation of the central characters provides a framework for the complex interaction of Sōseki’s lifelong themes. The three novels anticipate and harken back to each other in such a way that a consideration of them as a group becomes valuable.
Sanshirō is the story of a youth, Ogawa Sanshirō, who comes to Tokyo from the provinces to enter the Imperial University. He is a timid, unsophisticated though not insensitive young man, and the new world he encounters is at once exhilarating and frightening. This world becomes populated by characters unknown in his Kumamoto village. There is Hirota, a higher school English teacher who pronounces on everything from art to ethics to the perilous state of Japanese society. Yojirō, a student who lives with Hirota and takes Sanshirō under his wing, is a well-meaning, wheeling-dealing maneuverer. His campaign to win a university appointment for Hirota, whom he has nicknamed the “Great Darkness,” constitutes the novel’s subplot. Nonomiya is a scientist whose research on the pressure of light has won him a name abroad; in order to continue his successes, he must spend much of his life in his underground “cave.” Nonomiya’s sister Yoshiko and her beautiful, elusive friend Mineko complete Sanshirō’s circle. Sanshirō is bewitched the first time he sees Mineko, and his shadowy, inarticulate pursuit of her provides the principal narrative interest.
Sanshirō is Sōseki’s sweetest novel, the culmination of one level of his art before he attempts to climb to another. Here, the bald comedy of his earlier works has been refined into a more subtle humor that adds just the necessary touch of irony to his compassionate treatment of Sanshirō. Because Sanshirō is young and lacking in both internal and external experience, the novel does not have the dark staying power of the later works. Perhaps it will finally be remembered for its series of beautifully wrought scenes which are as eloquent a testimony to Sōseki’s artistry as anything else in his work. How can any reader forget Sanshirō’s night with a strange woman on his way to Tokyo, when he rolls up the sheet from his half of the bed to make a boundary in the center? Or his hopeless ventures into the library, where he checks out book after book, hoping to find one that no one else has read? The encounters with Mineko ache with suppressed longing, fulfilled only by a brush of the sleeves here, a glance there. Is it not a quintessentially Japanese passion—wordless and almost gestureless—that Sōseki has described in the scene in which a beautifully dressed Mineko appears to Sanshirō in a mirror while his back is turned to her? Or when the two of them, seeking refuge from the rain under a cedar tree, inch closer and closer as the rain falls harder and harder, until they are almost standing shoulder to shoulder?
These are among the scenes that make Sanshirō memorable, but there are other dimensions that help lead us to the subsequent works. I have characterized Sanshirō as a “sweet” novel, but its sweetness does not preclude shadows. Despite its being a story about youth, the novel begins in late summer and ends with the onset of winter; the recurrent death images are delicate and beautiful, but nonetheless ominous. As his later works will show, for Sōseki, lo
ve and death are never far apart.
We must look to the characters of Mineko and Hirota to anticipate the concerns of the next two works and, in addition, to clarify Sanshirō’s plight. Mineko is important first of all for the elegiac note she lends to the narrative. If Sanshirō is a tale about youth, Mineko represents the dying of youth. The portrait for which she chooses to pose in the attire in which Sanshirō first sees her is the death mask of her youth.
There is a second, more significant function for Mineko. It is she who articulates a central Sōseki theme when she describes herself and Sanshirō as “stray sheep.” Mineko is clearly a new type of woman, and this is reason enough to make her stray. In her reaching out to Sanshirō, she is seeking something—something that she had apparently sought in the scientist Nonomiya and failed to find. Her portrayal is incomplete and ambiguous, thus we cannot specify what she is seeking—perhaps simply some form of meaningful communion, some sympathetic understanding of what it means to be an intelligent young woman in a society that tantalizes her with new horizons but will not permit her to explore them. In any case, we cannot miss the punitive quality of her fate, for she is quickly married off to a man whom her less independent, less attractive friend Yoshiko had refused. In Mineko’s last words to Sanshirō, she quotes from Psalm 51: “For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me.” Mineko’s fate dimly prefigures the sanctions society will impose on the aberrant lovers of And Then and The Gate.
Hirota, perhaps a more important “stray sheep” in the Sōskei genealogy, will find his way into almost all the subsequent Sōseki novels. Here, in keeping with the overall tone of the novel, he is a bemused, benign spectator-critic, not yet driven by the vanity and hypocrisy surrounding him to the obsessive bitterness of his heirs.