By Natsume Soseki, this novel was originally published (in serial form in a newspaper) in 1914, two years before the author's untimely death.

Soseki's lifetime (1867-1916) more or less coincides with the Meiji period (which began in 1868, 15 years after the arrival of Commodore Matthew Perry and his black ships provoked the end of Japanese isolationism, and ended in 1912, with the death of the Meiji Emperor). It was a period of unprecedented change in Japan, and this upheaval, and its psychological cost, very much form the backdrop to the novel.

My audio-version was translated by Meredith McKinney, and capably read by Kotaro Watanabe. McKinney also provides an introduction, which underlines the book's significance. Kokoro, she says, is regarded as "one of Japan's great modern novels", and is "unquestionably [Soseki's] greatest work".

She also explains the title: "Kokoro ... is a complex and important word that can perhaps best be explained as 'the thinking and feeling heart,' as distinguished from the workings of the pure intellect, devoid of human feeling. Because one's kokoro thinks as well as feels, 'heart' is at times an inadequate translation. Nevertheless, as the concept of kokoro is a pervasive motif throughout the novel, I have chosen to express it with the single word 'heart' and to preserve its presence in the translation wherever possible. For the title, it seemed best to retain the original word."

I'm not sure about that. It does seem a little obscure... And not all translations follow this practice. The Indonesian version that I downloaded later to skim through (translated by Hartojo Andangdjaja, and published in 1978) opts to call the book Rahasia Hati (Secrets of the Heart); and the classic French translation seems to be called Le pauvre coeur des hommes (The Poor Heart of Men).



The story, told over three sections, is this:

A young, unnamed narrator strikes up a friendship with an older man whom he dubs Sensei (teacher or master). This man is wreathed in mystery: He visits a particular grave every month; his relationship with his gentle and intelligent wife seems cold; he lives off a private income, without a job, even though some kind of gainful employment would be expected of him in that period; and some experience of treachery in his past has left him highly distrustful of his fellow humans. The narrator is drawn to Sensei, but constantly seems to be rebuffed by him. Sensei at one point tells him: "Don’t put too much trust in me. You will come to regret it if you do... I don't want you to admire me now, because I also don't want you to despise me later. I endure my loneliness now, in order to prevent greater loneliness in the years to come. Loneliness is the price we have to pay for being born in this modern age, so full of freedom, independence, and our own selfish nature."

In the second section, the "I" figure, now graduated, goes home to help his mother look after his ailing father. This is a gut-wrenching section. Father's health ebbs and flows; mother and son have to carry out the most intimate of nursing tasks; and eventually other family members are summoned, as it is thought Father is on his last legs. As we all know, these things are hard to predict, and the uncertainty is hard to live with. The narrator's family are fairly suspicious of Sensei, but feel he might be instrumental in helping his young friend find work. When, however, a lengthy letter arrives from Sensei, complete with the announcement that when it arrives he will be dead, the narrator takes off to Tokyo, leaving his dying father to the rest of the family.

The third section is the letter, verbatim. It is Sensei's testament. His distrust of humanity, he tells us, had arisen because he was cheated out of a large part of his inheritance by a conniving uncle. But what has made him suicidal is the inability to forget what he sees as treachery towards his friend, K. This young man has family problems of his own (he was adopted, but ends up at odds with both his adoptive family and his original one -- circumstances that in part reflect Soseki's own sad experience). Sensei invites K to share lodgings with him, in the house of a widow (Okusan) and her daughter (Ojosan). Both young men fall in love with the daughter. But K, who has spiritual ideals that make him hesitate to commit to a relationship, tells only the narrator about his feelings. Sensei, on the other hand, fearing that he will lose the woman he loves, says nothing to K, but asks Okosan for permission to marry her daughter. On learning of the engagement, K commits suicide.

Sensei marries Ojosan, but wordlessly carries his guilt with him throughout his life, gradually becoming more aloof and turned in on himself. It is General Nogi's ritual suicide after the Meiji Emperor's death -- this is "junshi", the act by which someone follows his lord to the grave -- that inspires him to finally end things too. For Sensei, not only does General Nogi's junshi mark the end of an era, but it mirrors his own situation in that the initial impetus came 35 years before (when Nogi's unit lost the imperial flag during the Satsuma Rebellion).

And that's where we finish. There's no resolution. No afterword follows Sensei's fateful revelations. What subsequently happened to Sensei's wife, or to the narrator, or to the narrator's father -- well, we just don't know.



I found it a very moving book. It builds nicely. We become aware, in the first section, that there is some tragedy lurking beneath Sensei's reserved demeanour; it looms in the background, and we learn to fear it. The middle section is a searing depiction of dealing with parental decline; this is the kind of scenario that remains ever contemporary. The final section takes us to the heart of Sensei's problem, and the tragic way he tries to solve it; we know what's going to happen, but still we wait with baited breath: What could he have done to merit this self-punishment?

Throughout, as a 21st-century reader, you long for people to just TALK to each other... Why wasn't Sensei honest with K? The news of the engagement still wouldn't have been good, from K's point of view, but it would have been less of a shock. If the feelings of both had been out in the open, maybe Ojosan could actually have chosen...? Lots of pain, but also the possibility of resolution. And why couldn't Sensei talk to his wife? Even at the point of death, at the end of the letter, he insists that Ojosan is not made aware of this explanatory letter. All through the marriage, then, he has given Ojosan great pain, first through his growing reserve, which she cannot penetrate, and eventually through his death, which she will have no way of understanding.



But of course this is all part of the dilemma -- all part of the confrontation of different ways of being that the Meiji era released. In an article that I found very informative, Fukuchi quotes a diary entry from Soseki dated 16 March 1902: "People say that Japan was awakened thirty years ago, but it was awakened by a firebell and jumped out of bed. It was not a genuine awakening but a totally confused one. Japan has tried to absorb Western culture in a hurry and as a result has not had time to digest it. Japan must be truly awakened as regards literature, politics, business, and all other areas." According to Fukuchi, few intellectuals shared as much awareness as Soseki of the superficiality of the ongoing modernization.

Fukuchi continues: "A number of critics have expressed perplexity over Sensei's suicide, and indeed there may well be no straightforward explanation for it." (I was glad to read that, as I had been thinking: "Really? Suicide? So long after the event? Why?") But the answer, for Fukuchi, lies precisely in this clash of cultures: "[Sensei] never lost his traditional, stoic, selfless morality. It was this morality that later caused him intense suffering, for it conflicted with the individualistic and independently inclined morality that he probably learned in and after college... After Sensei realized that his egotism had led K to suicide, he adopted an attitude that was quite traditional: he chose to keep his secret and suffer alone... It was the combination of the old morality and modern ideals that caused Sensei's tragedy. The modern ideals of freedom and independence alone may not have had to cause Sensei's egotism, loneliness, and isolation. But when they were placed in the particular context of Meiji Japan, the mixture produced egotism, loneliness, and isolation. They were caused by the confusion and the conflict involved in modern ideals and traditional morality. Thus, in this sense, we may say that 'the spirit of Meiji' embodied two contradictory aspects. Sensei lived and died from the transitional stresses and conflicting restraints and limitations peculiar to Meiji Japan."



All the male characters are conflicted, it seems. Luu argues that "K embodies a sense of pre-Meiji innocence... [and] the Buddhist and Confucian ideas that define the Japanese sense of tradition". And that's true. But he's conflicted, too. He flouts his family's wishes with regard to his studies, and fails to maintain a serene exterior in face of his sufferings (it is to help "socialize" him that Sensei brings him into the household). And the narrator, by abandoning his father at such a crucial time -- and by comparing his father quite unfavorably with Sensei -- is moving away from traditional family values too. In fact, for Luu, the narrator is the "prototypical Meiji man who benefits from his college education and becomes detached from his family" -- and, into the bargain, is quite open about it.

For Soseki, such experiences are not merely academic. As Luu explains: "Like Sensei, Soseki’s life is marked by a sense of alienation". Born just before the start of the Meiji period, he was not only well versed in the Chinese classics and Confucian ideals, but also spent time in London, researching English literature (and experiencing profound isolation). He himself, then, was "a victim of change who felt the force of the mental tug between Eastern and Western values".

Kokoro is one of those books that remind me how small I am. I enjoyed it (if that's the word for such a sad story); I appreciated its art; I felt for the characters. But I felt that even after I'd listened to it, skimmed through the Indonesian translation, and read a number of academic analyses, I was only beginning to scratch the surface...