Natsume Soseki

Natsume Soseki

By Seina Suzuki

Soseki was the sixth child and unwanted child by his family, because he was born to his mother late in her life. His mother was 40 years old and father was 53 years old. In 1868, he was sent to childless couple named Shiobara Masanosuke and his wife. However they divorced, therefore Soseki returned to his real family when he was 9 years old. His family welcomed him, except for his father. He didn’t have good relationship with his father. His mother died when he was 14 years old.

He attended the First Tokyo Middle school (now Hibiya High School) and while studying there, he became enamored with Chinese literature and he dreamed of becoming a writer. When he told his old brother about his dream, his family strongly disagreed. In 1884, he entered Tokyo Imperial University to become an architect. While at university, he study Chinese classics and also started to learn English.

In 1887, he met Masaoka Shiki and Soseki was affected by him. Soseki started singing his poems. He entered English Literature department in 1890. In 1895, he began teaching at Matsuyama Middle School and he also published haiku and Chinese poetry in that time.

In 1900, he was sent to study in Great Britain as “Japan’s first Japanese English literary scholar” by the Japanese government. However he didn’t get his scholarship by government. He studied instead at University College London. Before he arrived in London, it took 2 months to get there. He visited many museums in London. He studied a lot of English and he came to have a fundamental question, “What is Literature?” He wrote “Theory of Literature.” He had to go back to Japan before he could accomplish his ambitions. He didn’t enjoy his life in London however he learned some things and wrote “Theory of Literature”.

Soseki’s literary career started in 1903. He published his haiku in some magazines. He won public admiration when he published “I Am a Cat”. His first major work was that novel. “I am a Cat” was written from the viewpoint of a cat and Soseki also a cat. The owner of the pet Mr. Kushami is a self-ironic portrait of the writer. He succeeded and published many novels like Botchan, Tower of London in 1905, and Kusamakura in 1906. His post when he wrote at the university got a position with Asahi Shimbun and he began writing full time. In that time, Naturalist literature was popular; however he was part of Yoyu-function.

In 1907, he decided to resign from his teaching job and entered a newspaper company The Asahi Shimbun as a novelist. He wrote a lot of stories in newspaper. His novels were full of humor at the first, but later changed to focus on depth of human psychology, isolation and egoism, and analyzed the contradictions in Japanese society.

He died of stomach ulcer on December 9th 1916. He was writing “Light and Darkness”, however he didn’t finish writing about it. His novels are still widely read and his major works of fiction have been translated into English.


Reference list

-Natsume Soseki, the greatest Novelist in Modern Japan
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/library/exhibitions/soseki-pamphlet.pdf#search='natsume+soseki'

-Wikipedia Natsume Soseki

-Natsume Soseki
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/natsume.htm

Natsume Soseki

By Satoshi Ui

Natsume Soseki

Soseki (known as Soseki Natsume) was born on 9th of February 1867 and passed away on the 9th of December 1916 at the age of 49. His real name was Kinnosuke (金之助). He had several jobs. He worked as a novelist, critic, and an English literature. But he is mainly famous for writing many novels. For example, his debut work “I am a Cat” (吾輩は猫である) in 1905, then “Botchan” (坊ちゃん) and “Londontou” (倫敦塔), became popular in magazines. He is also famous for being printed on the old 1000 yen bill. During his life, he did not just have a happy life but also was affected by mental problems and many diseases that gave hard time on his jobs.

Firstly, since he was an infant he had tough times in his childhood. His father had a very strong political power, but his family had many problems. For example, his grandpa was addicted to alcoholic and their wealth was slipping into danger but, later on his father strived to fix the problem. Also, his mother bore many children, and Soseki was born as an unwanted child and sent as an adopted child to many houses. However eventually he settled back to his parents’ home. This is when he began to be sick through his life, which had a big effect on his novels that he is going to write in the future.

Secondly, in his university life, he met a man name Masaoka Shiki (14th of October 1867 - 19th of September 1902, at the age of 34) who was famous for writing Chinese poems and haiku. This is when he started to study the haiku and changed his name to “Soseki”. Actually, this name was one of Shiki's pen names but he yield it to Soseki. This is when Shiki guided Soseki into the literature world. After graduating from Teikoku University, as a career he went to some schools and taught as a professor. Later on he decided to go study abroad in the U.K. After 2 years of studying abroad, he wrote his famous maiden work “I am a Cat” in the magazine named “Hototogisu”. After this good literature fame, he announced the new novels one after another.

Thirdly, in the year of 1907, he resigned teaching at school and found a job at the Asahi Newspaper (朝日新聞). From this moment, Soseki began to step toward to a professional author. In the same year of June he started to serialize the work “Gubizinsou” (虞美人草) on part of the newspaper. But, while writing the story he started suffering from “stomach ulcer”. This is when his nightmare began. After he finished the series of “Gubizinsou”, he worked on several novels until the last one “Meian” (明暗), that he could not complete. But, during his job he suffered from the stomach ulcer and nervous breakdown several times. He also broke some promises with the doctor about his health, for example, eating the jam that he loved or a lot of oily food.

Finally, I will explain about his great legacy and conclusion. Because of his complicated childhood, his thoughts and ideas were different from others. This happened to change his life. In the literature congress, he is famous for creating original Japanese words. For example, the word for “various” in Japanese came out “iroiro” (色々) which means “many colors” if you translate it directly. Also, this is very famous as a romantic sentences that he translated “I love you” into “Tsukiga-kireidesune” (月が綺麗ですね), which means that you are beautiful as a moon. By these examples, you can see that he is a talented person for creating new words. He is also famous for writing himself in his novels. He sometimes described the diseases and the situation that he was in to the readers too. These kinds of techniques are used a lot in the novels that are read in the present day. It makes us have attention and interest in a lot of books.


Reference

Wikipedia-Natume Soseki

https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%A4%8F%E7%9B%AE%E6%BC%B1%E7%9F%B3

Retrieved on 23/07/2013