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Kokoro

Natsume Sōseki,

Edwin McClellan (Translator)

Start date: August 1, 2019

Finish date: August 31, 2019

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Feb 13, 2020 Sara rated it really liked it

Shelves: classics, kindle-purchase, asia, literary-fiction

Some books I close the cover on and I could tell you that minute exactly what I think of them, what they were trying to convey, and whether they have done it well. This isn’t one of those books. I finished it. I sat a while. I pondered. I wondered even then if there was something about our narrator and Sensei’s relationship that I had missed, something about Sensei and his friend, K’s? Sensei means “teacher”, but what exactly did he wish to teach our young narrator and did he succeed?

I wondered Some books I close the cover on and I could tell you that minute exactly what I think of them, what they were trying to convey, and whether they have done it well. This isn’t one of those books. I finished it. I sat a while. I pondered. I wondered even then if there was something about our narrator and Sensei’s relationship that I had missed, something about Sensei and his friend, K’s? Sensei means “teacher”, but what exactly did he wish to teach our young narrator and did he succeed?

I wondered if the main thrust of this novel might not be carpe diem. Our narrator is a procrastinator and seems to operate in a fog of not knowing what he wants or what he should do. He is very attracted to Sensei, who is a man who by his own definition does nothing. But Sensei is a man who has lost a great deal, perhaps his one chance at happiness, primarily because he, himself, failed to act or rather acted too late. I could not see that he had set our narrator on a better path than the one he had followed, in fact, I think he might be primarily responsible for a despicable action the narrator takes toward the end of the novel, a purely unforgivable one in my eyes.

Soseki’s writing is lyrical and poetic, with an unmistakable Asian quality to it. I admired the way he wove the story around the lives of these two men about whom we knew actually so little in the end. There were a million things I would have liked to ask, but ultimately none of the answers would have mattered, Soseki has told us all we need to know.

The beautiful sky began slowly to lose its brightness. And before us, the delicate, green maple leaves, which looked like drops of water just about to fall from the branches, seemed to grow darker in color. From the road below, the sound of cart wheels reach our ears. I imagined that a man from the village had loaded his cart with plants or vegetables, and was on his way to some fair to sell them. Sensei stood up, as though the sound had roused him from his meditation.

Perhaps this is also a novel about betrayal and how the hatred that follows it rots the soul. Perhaps we are meant to see betrayal from both sides, to see in Sensei both the betrayer and the betrayed.

A full day later, I cannot seem to sort this book into any neat category. I did not love it, that is certain, but I did admire the writing and feel there was something very important Soseki wished to say that never fully penetrated my mind. It is not simple to get to “the heart of things”, which is what “kokoro” means, but I must applaud Soseki for trying. 3.5 rounded up for the sheer beauty of the language.
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Sep 18, 2020 Xan Shadowflutter rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2020_reads

What happens when someone reads a book written 100 years ago in a culture foreign to his own? He crashes. He is bewildered by the things that matter so much to the main characters that matter so little to himself. That's the cultural differences, I guess.

This is a story about living honestly and truthfully with yourself and others, but it is so filled with cultural traditions and overlarge egos and misogyny, that I cannot relate. I don't like the main characters, I don't understand what makes t ...more

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