Soseki eventually goes on to write Kokoro (心), once known as Kokoro: Sensei’s Statement (心:先生の遺書), and again simplified to its native hiragana form, (こころ). A prominent writer who emerges from this transitional era is Natsumi Soseki (夏目礎石). By the time the Taisho ( 大正) era rolled around, Japan had become the most advanced country in the East, on par with the West’s technology and ideology. Many years prior, Japan had undergone one of the fastest transitions to modernisation the world has ever seen, and what took the Western Powers centuries took Japan a mere four decades to achieve. As Damian Flanagan says in his new critical introduction 'Kokoro' is the Soseki novel that has been given most attention by critics and the public in Japan.The year is 1914. Unlike them, his work is only recently coming to the attention of readers from overseas. Like these writers, his work now holds a hugely popular and important place in the literary imagination of his country.

Natsume Soseki's importance to Japanese literature can be compared to that of Dickens to Britain or Henry James to America. Kokoro joins the UNESCO Collection of Representative Works, which include 'The Gate', 'The Tower of London' and the 'The Three-Cornered World' from Peter Owen Publishers as part of an international programme to bring one of Japan's best known authors to a new English speaking audience. Beautifully written by Japan's preeminent author Natsume Soseki, and profoundly absorbing, it is also a sly subversion of all of these things. Kokoro, meaning heart in Japanese, is a meditation on the part played by honour, friendship, love and death in Japanese culture. Not even Sensei's wife knows the source of his inconsolable heart.Īs their friendship grows, the young student becomes more intrigued by the secrets that haunt Sensei, the mysteries of his past that have compromised his relationship with the world. The young student is at once attracted by these qualities and also deeply puzzled. Bitter, cynical and indolent, Sensei has withdrawn from society. A young student makes himself the acolyte of an old man he calls 'Sensei'. The friendship between the narrator and a man haunted by mysterious events in his past, whom he calls 'Sensei', is the basis of Soseki's meditation on the part played by honour, friendship, love and death in Japanese culture.

One of the most popular and significant novels to come out of Japan from Japan's preeminent author, Natsume Soseki.

Kokoro de natsume soseki