Kokoro translates to "the heart of things". I only know this because the translator's forward said it was so. I need a translator, from my heart's mind to yours (anyone?)... I am afraid that I will wander around in the dark mental spaces again. Gray shades of life experiences and emotional (not necessarily reality) experiences. Who could pick up on the undertones and relevances? I'm truly afraid that worse than making no sense, I'll be sitting at the feet (Muppet babies feet? Peanuts gang feet? More...

This novel, centered around the friendship of a young student and an elder "Sensei", deals with the transition from Japan's Meiji society to the modern era. The young student develops a strange fascination with the misanthrope Sensei and through vague conversations, and ultimately a tell-all epistle, discovers the truth behind the Sensei's ennui and malaise. The book moves slowly, and the reluctance of the characters to just say what they are thinking is a bit tedious, but it is well written and More...

I found reading Soseki's "Kokoro" interestingly enjoyable and impressive because at first I didn't think I'd reat it at all due to its plain title. I knew it's Japanese but it meant nothing to me, however, I read somewhere this novel is one of his outstanding works. So I thought reading it should be worth spending my free time.

"Kokoro" meaning "the heart of things" (p. vi) superbly translated by Edwin McClellan whom I've never read before is definitely one of Soseki's masterpieces since we reade More...

This is a very quiet book, one that whispers its way through the details of a friendship between two men but which brings us to an understanding of how the understated detail can be more intense and painful than one which is expressed loudly and with force. The level of restraint and discipline displayed are admirable in many ways, but they coexist with an a great deal of hypocrisy and an expectation of self-imposed subservience .

However the book was marred ,for me, from the beginning by the fa More...

this book to me is intriguing. i'll admit that it took me a long time to finish it because although it is quite simply stated the book has a kind of density. for now i will cluster it with austerlitz by wg sebald, another author who i very much enjoy. the concept address are of memory and in more sense then most other books the narrative is linear. i do not mean linear in the sense that it is easy to follow, no loops on and out of time as it is lived or flourishes of word, but i mean that once i More...

kokoro is about the relationship between a young man and his mentor. The young man narrates the first half of the novel and begins by introducing his mentor, explaining that he always only called him Sensei, which means “teacher”.

Sensei narrates the second half of the novel through a letter written to the young man.

Natsume Soseki is concerned with themes of isolation, especially loneliness resulting from the rapid social changes during the Meiji Period of Japan. He writes in the tradition of t More...

Natsume Soseki, the man whose face used to be on the 1000 yen note, single-handedly brought the modern era of literature to Japan. Kokoro is the story of a young student who befriends an often distant and unpredictable man he names "Sensei" and his discovery of Sensei's hidden past. I'd recommend this book to anyone who is interested in a novel of grand proportions that unfolds beautifully amidst the sensibilities and poetics of Japanese tradition while breaking way for the modern Japanese novel More...

loved this book. picked it up, not knowing anything about soseki and after reading it, or even during, realized exactly why he's on the old 1000 yen note.

this book made me really want to visit kamakura.. and i did. but it totally romanticized kamakura for me. it's description about the ocean.. i think the first time the narrator meets sensei was really pleasing. i remember remembering it. there are a lot of quotes from here i really like.

also, it's really different from botchan, but something v More...

Having lived in the area as a student of the college those characters attended for 4 years, the description of all the neighborhoods around easily brought me vivid images of those beautiful places. Konnyakuenma, zoushigaya, uguisudani, ueno... Even in this popular residential area nowadays, many of historic buildings ate still preserved and I loved to walk around to find the trace of history.

This was my second time reading Kokoro. Those narrowed view young people who like to drive themselves cra More...

It was a really interesting read. I had some little qualms about the narration, and the simplicity of the prose (the beauty may have been lost in translation), but overall there was nothing that greatly affected my enjoying the book.
While I have stated that I had issues with narration, I think the issues lie solely with the first half. I understand it was a set-up for the second part which makes the beauty of the story as a whole apparent, and is still totally worth the read as you will not comp More...

A beautifully poetic 1914 novel. "Kokoro" can be translated as "the heart of things":

"Can one expect the complicated mechanism of the human mind to betray its purposes so obviously, as though it were some kind of clock?"

"The forlorn singing of the insects reaches me through the closed shutters, and one feels that their song is of the dews of coming autumn."

"Without hesitation, I am about to force you into the shadows of this dark world of ours. But you must not fear. Gaze steadily into the shad More...

The 18th century politician Edmund Burke commented -
"Guilt was never a rational thing; it distorts all the faculties of the human mind, it perverts them, it leaves a man no longer in the free use of his reason, it puts him into confusion".

The subject of "Kokoro" is guilt and how a man's life was changed due to his failure to reconcile the type of person that he ought to have been at a certain time in his life and the actions that he decided to take.

A young impressionable student is drawn to an o More...

After looking for some Japanese literature penned by someone other than Murakami, I came across Natsume Soseki's "Kokoro." This piece's simplicity and tone of narration reminds me deeply of Hesse's "Demian" and "Siddhartha," and though, on the surface, there may be thematic similarities between the novels -- those of isolation, guilt, and egoism -- "Kokoro" approaches these motifs from a Japanese post-Meiji period perspective of transition. The story is recounted by two narrators: the first, a u More...

descargué este libro de epub gratis y es una muy buena edición porque trae una introducción enorme que te explica el contexto del libro, que es el periodo Meiji, o la apertura de Japón al occidente después de más de 200 años de estar encerrado, te explica como el autor fue de los primeros en realizar novelas japonesas (antes se hacían cuentos y poesías, los japoneses son más bien concisos y contemplativos) y como este libro es al mismo tiempo muy japonés (en su ritmo, su tema, sus silencios, sus More...

I've always liked most of Japanese culture (and admittedly I still don't know that much about it) such as manga and films. So when I found out I had to read this for my English class, I got pretty excited. I tried to not get my hopes up too high, though, because I knew this was written a hundred years ago and I figured that all I knew of Japanese culture was simply too modern to relate to something from so long ago.

However, when I started reading this, I had a hard time putting it down. The plot More...

This novel is "required reading" by most Japanese students. My wife gave it to me as an anniversary present, otherwise I never would have known about it or have had the pleasure of reading it. I say "pleasure" because it really is an enjoyable read. The story is quite condensed and the number of characters are limited to just a few very easily recognizable personalities and the story is told in the first person, so all three sections of the book read quickly and easily as a narrative.

The three More...

I am particularly fond of Japanese literatures. The language use in Kokoro is direct and rigid for me, but I have to put in perspective that this was written almost a hundred years ago in 1914. So people spoke differently, it seem to align with japanese policies of being courteous, to me this book captured that whole vibe. What drew me to this book was the underlying sense of loneliness in all of the characters. It seems relatable to me.

It's written in first person narration, and I feel the nar More...

This is the story of a young man meeting a mysterious stranger, he calls "Sensei" while vacationing and the friendship/acquaintance that develops between the two. I was expecting the book to be completely foreign to me given that it takes place in a different country and a different time period, but I was shocked to see how much I could related to the problems of the characters. The narrator (he is never called by his name) is a young man who is completing his education in Tokyo. He is pretty la More...

Kokoro is a beautifully written story with a deep underlying sadness of a young man who befriends a mysterious mentor with a troubled past, which isn't revealed until after the narrator travel home to care for his dying father. This is a story of relationships and the decisions we make that can forever alter those bonds. This is novel about longing for a past we can't have, even if it causes us so much pain.

It's easy to tell that Natsume Soseki was concerned with themes of isolation, especially More...

Even with one of the most unsatisfactory endings, (I have limits to my acculturation, and I readily admit that unresolved, unsettling conclusions are inherently un-fulfilling for my 白人 [hakujin] self) I adore this book.
The intricacy between two life experiences not only act as a way for Sōseki to explore the rapid changes which were occurring in Japanese society, but also for the continuities between the times. The book has three story lines- the first where we 'the' protagonist in the story, More...

Interesting book regarding the transition of Japan from the end of the Meji era to the beginning of the industrial revolution. Has hints of Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye" but give the reader a break from the self-conscious narrator in the last chapter. We follow the narrator as he remembers when he first meets the sensei, the relationship taking on a romantic under-tone, but we quickly realize that it is simply a master-student relationship. The narrator is so eager to find a connection with so More...

Natsume Soseki was the father of modern Japanese literature and 'Kokoro' was the last novel he completed before his death in 1916. Who knew that 94 years later his books would still be being read by people all over the world.

This is a story about a friendship between to unnamed characters, a young man and an enigmatic elder whom he calls "Sensei".

Sensei is haunted by tragic secrets that have cast a black cloud over his life and stunted his ability to live, to truly live. Sensei eventually begins More...

This was a pleasant change of pace for me. After tearing through some Dennis Cooper where characters commit the most heinous acts without a pang of conscience, I enjoyed luxuriating in the soul-poisoning lifelong qualms of a man consumed by quilt and regret for something he wasn't even directly responsible for.

Kokoro would definitely resonate on more levels for someone deeply familiar with Japan's social history, its transitions from one era to another - in this case the ending of the Meiji era More...

It's a fine exploration of character. The degree to which it delves into the character's thinking is a bit dizzying at times. At points there's nothing concrete, just pages of hesitation and thoughts. But I stuck with it, and I think it's worth it in the end. It helps that Kokoro is only about 200 pages; more and I would not recommend it.

Kokoro means "heart of things," and that's what Soseki tries to get at. It's a depressing story in the end, but it's clearly written (in the translation by McC More...

The novel could be divided in two parts:
- The first part explores a friendship between to men. The narrator, a young student, meets a man some years older than him and comes to admire him and, as his Sensei is rather unwilling to talk about himself or his past, he dilligently (and earnestly) tries to uncover what he can through his reason.
- The second part is Sensei's letter to his friend, which talks about his past.
You see everything in the book through the student's eyes. Even if I wasn't aw More...

An unlikely parallel, but the torments of Sensei reminded me of the torments of Turgenev's Russian intelligentsia protagonists. Same weak characters, same loneliness, same lack of purpose.

I actually enjoyed the first two parts of the novel, but during the third one I was too busy wanting to hit the main character (Sensei, that is) with something heavy. His friend K, too. This probably would be wrong considering cultural relativity. But seriously?!! Is this about two adult people, or about 13-yea More...