My Individualism
and
The Philosophical Foundations of Literature
Sōseki Natsume (1867-1916) is widely considered the foremost novelist of the Meiji period (1868-1914). After graduating from Tokyo Imperial University in 1893, Sōseki taught high school before spending two years in England on a Japanese government scholarship. He returned to lecture in English literature at the university. Numerous nervous disorders forced him to give up teaching in 1908 and he became a full-time writer for the Asahi newspaper. In addition to fourteen novels, Sōseki wrote haiku, poems in the Chinese style, academic papers on literary theory, essays, autobiographical sketches and fairy tales.
Sammy I. Tsunematsu is founder and curator of the Sōseki Museum in London, and the translator of several of Sōseki’s works. He has also researched and published widely on the Japanese artist Yoshio Markino, who was a contemporary of Sōseki’s living in London at the beginning of the twentieth century. Tsunematsu has lived in Surrey, England, for thirty years.
Published by Tuttle Publishing, an imprint of Periplus Editions (HK) Ltd, with editorial offices at 364 Innovation Drive, North Clarendon, VT 05759 U.S.A. 61 Tai Seng Avenue, #02-12 Singapore 534167.
English translation © Sammy I. Tsunematsu, 2004
First Tuttle edition, 2004
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN 978-1-4629-0222-4
The Translator would like to acknowledge the assistance of John Edmondson who kindly read through the English version and made many helpful changes.
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This translation is dedicated to Professor Nakashima Saikichi and Professor Nishi Tadaomi in recognition of their warm encouragement and support.
OTHER TUTTLE CLASSICS
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
And Then
Botchan
Grass on the Wayside
Hearing Things
The Heredity of Taste
I Am a Cat I, II, III
Inside My Glass Doors
Kokoro
Light and Darkness
Mon
Record of Chips and Shavings
Spring Miscellany and London Essays
Ten Nights of Dream
The Three-Cornered World
To the Spring Equinox and Beyond
The 210th Day
The Wayfarer
Contents
The Philosophical Foundations of Literature
Introduction
A Crisis of Belonging
From his earliest years, Sōseki Natsume (or Natsume Kinnosuke, as he was born), experienced a series of crises concerning his sense of belonging and identity. The sad events of the first years of his life led to a powerful sense of dislocation that permeates his oeuvre. As we shall see in the important essays now available in English for the first time in this volume, his personal experiences led him to consider the philosophical and cultural significance of human isolation from a variety of perspectives. It is impossible to say whether Sōseki would have been as preoccupied with issues of isolation and belonging if he had not also lived in Meiji Japan—a culture obsessed with the issues regarding belonging and identity that arise from rapid change and dissociation from one’s past. In any case, although a genius in his own right, the similarity between his individual concerns and the broader cultural concerns of the Meiji period enhanced the reception of his work and led him to become one of Japan’s most important modern authors. His popularity is witnessed in contemporary material culture by the fact that Sōseki’s face still circulates in Japan on the ¥1000 note—an honor that Sōseki might have declined, had he had the opportunity to do so, just as he declined many other public honors.
Sōseki’s parents were upper-class administrators who found their social standing suddenly undercut with the fall of the feudal system, as the Tokugawa Shogunate collapsed. Partially because of their financial embarrassments, they gave their youngest son Kinnosuke to a local greengrocer. The green-grocers, busy with their daily work, neglected Kinnosuke, leaving him outside their shop in a basket. Finally, taking pity upon her young brother lying outside in the cold, one of Kinnosuke’s sisters brought him home to his original parents. His parents gave him away again after a year, this time to a childless former
