There is nothing that can be done about feelings of alienation. After all, what is life but a dating sim?
Love and friendship cannot soothe loneliness.Įven without context, you might get the impression that the writer of this book report is a pretentious brat in middle school. Someone may understand you, but you cannot achieve true intimacy. Triggering a flag does not lead to a happy ending. Natsume Sōseki’s Kokoro is clearly a novel about loners. To start with, here’s some of the book report in question: I think Sōseki is of more general interest, though, so I hope you’ll get something out of this short essay even if you’re not an Oregairu reader. Several aspects of it will need explaining for those who haven’t grown up with Kokoro or studied it. What prompted me to write this post, though, was translating volume 4 of Oregairu, which contains a book report about Kokoro. There’s even an anime adaptation, for those so inclined. Given the enormous influence and resonance of Kokoro, it’s not surprising to see it referenced in pop culture from time to time. Kokoro is a haunting story that will likely leave a deep impression on some readers. I could feel it in the sparse prose and I could hear it in the conversations. Those who have read him may understand how I felt the first time I read Kokoro. I could feel loneliness etched across every word and sentence. It was this quality of his writing that drew me to his work. Yet although Sōseki was a highly educated man who understood Western literature better than perhaps any other novelist in his day, his greatest accomplishment as a writer was something much more deeply personal: he understood loneliness. His keen interest and ambivalence about the tensions between Western and Japanese cultures would play a part in all of his major works. Through his travels and studies, he became very familiar with Western ideas and literature. From his earlier, lighter novels like I Am a Cat and Botchan to his later, more somber works like Kokoro and Sorekara, Sōseki’s writing displays extraordinary depth and insight into a rapidly modernising Japan. Sōseki was one of the early modern Japanese novelists who was part of the Civilization and Enlightenment movement ( bunmei kaika). I first encountered Sōseki as a university undergraduate student learning Japanese history. Sōseki’s work is key for understanding modern Japanese history his works capture the soul of the Meiji period (1868 – 1912) like no other.
Most Japanese citizens will have read a Sōseki novel at least once in their lifetime. Natsume Sōseki (1867 – 1916) is unarguably one of Japan’s most well-loved novelists. He is so well-loved, in fact, that Kokoro, his most famous novel, is taught across Japanese middle schools.
It’s time to learn a little something about the man who was on the 1000 yen bill for twenty years.
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