Natsume Sōseki (夏目 漱石?, February 9, 1867 – December 9, 1916), born Natsume Kinnosuke (夏目 金之助?) was a Japanese novelist of the Meiji period (1868–1912). He is best known for his novels Kokoro, Botchan, I Am a Cat and his unfinished work Light and Darkness. He was also a scholar of British literature and composer of haiku, kanshi, and fairy tales. From 1984 until 2004, his portrait appeared on the front of the Japanese 1000 yen note. In Japan, he is often considered the greatest writer in modern Japanese history.[citation needed] He has had a profound effect on almost all important Japanese writers since.[citation needed]


Early years[edit]
Born as Natsume Kinnosuke in the town of Babashita in the Edo region of Ushigome (present Kikui, Shinjuku), Sōseki began his life as an unwanted child, born to his mother late in her life, forty years old and his father then fifty-three.[1] When he was born, he already had five siblings. Having five children and a toddler had created family insecurity and was in some ways a disgrace to the Natsume family.[1] In 1868, a childless couple, Shiobara Masanosuke and his wife, adopted him until the age of nine, when the couple divorced.[1] He returned to his family and was welcomed by his mother although regarded as a nuisance by his father. His mother died when he was fourteen, and his two eldest brothers died in 1887, intensifying his sense of insecurity.[citation needed]
بدا حياته كطفل غير مرغوب فيه حيث ولد لامه عندما كانت في الاربعين من العمر بينما كان عمر والده ثلالثة وخمسون عاما . وعندما ولد كان له خمسة اخوه اكبر منه سنا وحيث ان العائلة كان لديها خمسة أطفال ثم جاء السادس بعد فترة زمنية فقد اثر ذلك على وضع العائلة وجعلها تشعر بعدم الأمان وكان ينظر الى انجاب طفل في ذلك السن على انه فعل مشين لعائلته وعليه قامت عائلة حرمت من البنين بتبنيه في العام 1868 وظل يعيش لديهم حتى اصبح في التاسعة عندما انفصل الزوجان بالطلاق فعاد الى عائلته فرحبت به امه لكن والده اعتبر وجوده مصدر إزعاج. وماتت امه عندما كان في سن الرابعة عشرة كما مات اخواه الاكبر في عام 1887 مما عزز شعوره بعدم الأمان .
Sōseki attended the First Tokyo Middle School (now Hibiya High School),[2] where he became enamored with Chinese literature, and fancied that he might someday become a writer. His desire to become an author arose when he was about fifteen when he told his older brother about his interest in literature.[1] However, his family disapproved strongly of this course of action, and when Natsume entered the Tokyo Imperial University in September 1884, it was with the intention of becoming an architect. Although he preferred Chinese classics, he began studying English at that time, feeling that it might prove useful to him in his future career, as English was a necessity in Japanese college.[1]
انضم الى مدرسة طوكيو المتوسطة حيث اطلع على الادب الصيني وهناك صار يحلم بانه سيصبح كاتبا في يوم من الايام . وقد ولدت رغبته في ان يصبح كاتب وهو في سن الخامسة عشرة ( بعد عام من موت امه الفعلية) لكن عائلته رفضت هذا التوجه بقوة ولما انضم الى الجامعة في طوكيو عام 1884 كان لغرض دراسة فن العمارة . وهناك درس الادب الانجليزي ظنا منه ان ذلك سيقوده في الحصول على عمل نظرا لأهمية إتقان اللغة الانجليزية في ذلك الوقت.
In 1887, Sōseki met Masaoka Shiki, a friend who would give him encouragement on the path to becoming a writer, which would ultimately be his career. Shiki tutored him in the art of composing haiku. From this point on, he began signing his poems with the name Sōseki, which is a Chinese idiom meaning "stubborn". In 1890, he entered the English Literature department, and quickly mastered the English language. Natsume graduated in 1893, and enrolled for some time as a graduate student and part-time teacher at the Tokyo Normal School.[citation needed]
في العام 1887 التقى بصديق شجعه على الادب وساعده . وبدا يوقع قصائده باسم سوسيكي وهي كلمة صينية تعني العنيد . في العام 1890 انضم الى قسم اللغة الانجليزية في الجامعة وسرعان ما ابدع وأتقن اللغه الانجليزية
In 1895, Sōseki began teaching at Matsuyama Middle School in Shikoku, which became the setting of his novel Botchan. Along with fulfilling his teaching duties, Natsume published haiku and Chinese poetry in a number of newspapers and periodicals. He resigned his post in 1896, and began teaching at the Fifth High School in Kumamoto. On June 10 of that year, he married Nakane Kyoko.[citation needed]



Natsume Sōseki's lodgings in Clapham, South London
In the United Kingdom, 1901–1903[edit]
In 1900, the Japanese government sent Sōseki to study in Great Britain as "Japan's first Japanese English literary scholar".[3] He visited Cambridge and stayed a night there, but gave up the idea of studying at the university because he could not afford it on his government scholarship.[4] He studied instead at University College, London (UCL). He had a miserable time of it in London, spending most of his days indoors buried in books, and his friends feared that he might be losing his mind.[5] He also visited Pitlochry in Scotland.

He lived in four different lodgings, only the last of which, lodging with Priscilla and her sister Elizabeth Leale in Clapham (see the photograph), proved satisfactory. Five years later, in his preface to Bungakuron (The Criticism of Literature), he wrote about the period:

The two years I spent in London were the most unpleasant years in my life. Among English gentlemen I lived in misery, like a poor dog that had strayed among a pack of wolves.[6]

He got along well with the one Leale sister, who shared his love of literature (notably Shakespeare—his tutor at UCL was the Shakespeare scholar W. J. Craig[7]—and Milton) and spoke fluent French, much to his admiration. The Leales were a Channel Island family, and Priscilla had been born in France. The sisters worried about Natsume's incipient paranoia and successfully urged him to get out more and take up cycling.

Despite his poverty, loneliness, and mental problems, he solidified his knowledge of English literature during this period and returned to the Empire of Japan in January 1903.[8] In April he was appointed to the First National College in Tokyo. Also, he was given the lectureship in English literature, subsequently replacing Koizumi Yakumo (Lafcadio Hearn) and ultimately becoming a professor of English literature at the Tokyo Imperial University,[9] where he taught literary theory and literary criticism.

Literary career[edit]
Natsume's literary career began in 1903, when he began to contribute haiku, renku (haiku-style linked verse), haitaishi (linked verse on a set theme) and literary sketches to literary magazines, such as the prominent Hototogisu, edited by his former mentor Masaoka Shiki, and later by Takahama Kyoshi. However, it was the public success of his satirical novel I Am a Cat in 1905 that won him wide public admiration as well as critical acclaim.[10]

He followed on this success with short stories, such as Rondon tō ("Tower of London") in 1905 and the novels Botchan ("Little Master"), and Kusamakura ("Grass Pillow") in 1906, which established his reputation, and which enabled him to leave his post at the university for a position with Asahi Shimbun in 1907, and to begin writing full-time. Much of his work deals with the relation between Japanese culture and Western culture. Especially his early works are influenced by his studies in London; his novel Kairo-kō was the earliest and only major prose treatment of the Arthurian legend in Japanese.[11] He began writing one novel a year before his death from a stomach ulcer in 1916.



Obverse of a 1984 series 1000 Japanese yen banknote
Major themes in Natsume's works include ordinary people fighting against economic hardship, the conflict between duty and desire (a traditional Japanese theme; see giri), loyalty and group mentality versus freedom and individuality, personal isolation and estrangement, the rapid industrialization of Japan and its social consequences, contempt of Japan's aping of Western culture, and a pessimistic view of human nature. Natsume took a strong interest in the writers of the Shirakaba (White Birch) literary group. In his final years, authors such as Akutagawa Ryūnosuke and Kume Masao became close followers of his literary style.[citation needed