Contemporary Japanese Thought

In addition to his haiku and Chinese-style poetry, Sōseki’s writings extend from such early fiction as Wagahai wa neko dearu [I am a cat], Botchan [The young master], Yōkyoshū [Drifting in space], and Kusamakura [Grass pillow], to Meian [Light and darkness]. These writings, in other words, encompass a great variety of different styles and genres. Such a writer is unique in both Japan and abroad. How was Sōseki’s diversity possible? This is a great mystery. For example, Sōseki scholars have sought to discover the mystery of his texts in his personal life, and particularly in his romantic experiences—but this hardly merits the name “mystery.” Such linguistic diversity cannot be explained away as mere versatility or literary talent, for ultimately it is related to the question of “history.” Regardless of future literary talent, Sōseki’s achievements will never again be repeated.

Sōseki’s works are generally read as a process of development, or deepening, from such early period writings as Wagahai wa neko dearu and Kusamakura to Meian. Certainly these early works are different from modern novels. Yet it is questionable to even use the term “early period” here in regard to a writer who was nearly forty years old at the time, had already written his “theory of literature,” and had only twelve years of life remaining, for it is highly unlikely that Sōseki substantially changed his views during those final years. It is thus a mistake to regard him in terms of a linear development of his works, or from a modern-novel-centered viewpoint that places Meian at the apex. Rather what is essential is the mystery of how Sōseki’s linguistic diversity became possible.

One thing that can be said is that Sōseki studied eighteenth-century English literature, which preceded the notion of “literature” as established in mid-nineteenth century France—a notion that was formative of Sōseki’s own literary world in Japan at that time. Furthermore, as Ōoka Shōhei points out, the genre of bun, or writing, existed when Sōseki began his literary work, and he composed such works as “Rondon tō” [London tower] not as a short novel but rather as “writing.” Of course Masaoka Shiki’s notion of shaseibun, or literary sketching, is also a form of “writing.” Such literary sketching could become meaningful only because “writing” already existed as a genre in the first place. “Writing” is not necessarily related to realism, nor is it merely the germination thereof. Sōseki’s “writing” was later read as a short novel, but it is no such thing. Sōseki would have known this, as he was already deeply familiar with the Western novel.

What is the significance, then, of Sōseki’s adherence to “writing”? Perhaps his novels and indeed the great variety of his works were derived from “writing.” Sōseki did not begin composing novels, as Wagahai wa neko dearu is an example of “writing.” It was while working on this book that his creative activity suddenly began, and for the next decade he would compose an enormous body of works. “Writing” can be described as that “degree zero” which contains all possibilities; it is écriture, to use Barthes’s terms. I think that Sōseki saw in “writing” those possibilities excluded by the modern novel in its attempts at self-purification.

Now Northrop Frye has examined fiction (including nonfiction) by dividing it into four genres. In Frye’s definition, fiction contains all prose writing. The first genre is the novel. Since we are already familiar with this genre, I shall speak of the other three—but let me simply note here that the novel is different from the other genres. The first of these others is the “romance,” which can also be called monogatari, or narrative. In the romance, the protagonist is not an ordinary person; rather he or she is beautiful, heroic, and possessed of superhuman abilities. In this regard, one can even say that the modern novel consists of ordinary people becoming protagonists. The romance also possesses a certain structure, which can perhaps be described along the lines of what Origuchi Shinobu called the “wandering noble narrative.” This is not the prosaic world but rather one that has as its topological structure the existence of another or different world.

The next genre is the “confession.” The confession did not begin with such modern writers as Rousseau; rather its traditions are those of, for example, Augustine’s Confessions. Noteworthy here is the intellectual nature of this genre. Such tradition also exists in Japan, as for instance can be seen in Arai Hakuseki’s Oritaku shiba no ki [Told around a brushwood fire]. The following genre is what Frye calls “anatomy.” This includes such works as encyclopedic texts, pedantic texts, and satires. In Western literature, anatomy refers to writers like Rabelais, Swift, and Laurence Sterne. The eighteenth-century English literature (including Swift) that Sōseki studied belongs to this genre rather than that of the novel.

Now what is remarkable is that Sōseki wrote in all of these genres. Yōkyoshū is literally a romance, Wagahai wa neko dearu is satire, or what may also be called pedantic anatomy, Botchan is picaresque, and Kusamakura is not a “novel,” as Sōseki himself had intended. What then of Kokoro [The heart], which I wish to speak of today? In my view, Kokoro is a “confession”—but this is not to say that the work is confessional, as would be the case with Michikusa [Grass on the wayside]. In Kokoro, Sensei’s letter reads as follows: “My own past, which made me what I am, is a part of human experience. Only I can tell it. I do not think that my effort to do so honestly has been entirely purposeless. If my story helps you and others to understand even a part of what we are, I shall be satisfied.”¹ And again: “I want both the good and bad things in my past to serve as an example to others. But my wife is the one exception—I do not want her to know about any of this.”²

We can see how true to form this is from the perspective of such “confessions” as those of Augustine and Rousseau. The “confession” contains intellectual reflection, which distinguishes it from the autobiographical novel. Indeed, a work like Kokoro becomes possible by adopting such a premodern novel form. This form is also rather old-fashioned, as we can see in Kokoro in the focus on Sensei’s letter, which appears in the latter half of the book. The epistolary form was used widely in eighteenth-century English literature, for the modern novel’s narrative form had not yet been established. As soon as this narrative form emerged, however, the epistolary form appeared antiquated. Because of this, Kokoro has not been highly regarded in the Japanese literary world, nor have the other works I mentioned. Those works have generally been widely read and quite popular, and it is for precisely this reason that they have been dismissed. They have come to be seen as early works written prior to such novels as Meian. Yet Sōseki’s greatness lies in the fact that he wrote in all of these genres.

Now although Frye arranges these fictional genres in this manner, the fact is that they are not all equal. The “modern novel” has been the most dominant genre since the nineteenth century, while the others have been marginalized. Despite this dominance, however, these other genres are always necessary. This is very much like the state of affairs since the emergence of industrial capitalism, in which not all modes of production have been capitalized—as others, such as agriculture, still continue—and which even presupposes as indispensable those things that cannot be capitalized.

In contemporary Japan, the anatomy and monogatari (narrative) are the most popular. This is related to the fact that the idea of the modern novel has come under suspicion. Yet these cannot replace the modern novel. No matter how the anatomy and monogatari are revived, such revival takes place strictly “within” the modern novel—and in this way the novel is activated and lives on. This process can already be seen in Sōseki. Despite the fact that he wrote in all of the different genres, Sōseki already belonged to the world of the modern novel, and thus tried to revive those things that were excluded from that world.

Kokoro is such a famous work that it is particularly unnecessary to explain its plot, but let us here simply review its main points.

In the first half of the book, the student known only as watakushi meets Sensei at the Kamakura seaside. Finding himself somehow attracted to Sensei, watakushi draws closer only to discover that there is something about him that he cannot understand. Watakushi’s father falls ill without him having discovered Sensei’s secret, and while he is back home, Sensei dies. The second half of the book takes the form of a testament Sensei has written to watakushi. While in school, Sensei was betrayed by an uncle, who stole the property left him by his father, and this causes him to grow suspicious of people and suffer a kind of nervous breakdown. At the private boardinghouse where he lives there is a woman and her daughter, and during his convalescence he becomes acquainted with them. He grows fond of the daughter, but his feelings have not yet reached the stage of love.

Sensei has a friend named K, whom he both venerates and finds slightly comical. Sensei wishes to help K in his financial difficulties as well as to ease the nervous exhaustion from which K suffers. On the other hand, however, Sensei wishes to destroy K’s sense of ascetic idealism, which he himself cannot attain. “In an attempt to make him more human, then, I tried to encourage him to spend as much time as possible with the two ladies,”³ and thus Sensei brings K to his lodgings. This action is a sign of both friendship and malice, as Sensei is here attempting to seduce K, as it were.

Once K moves in, however, things become increasingly strange. K confesses to Sensei that he loves the daughter, and yet, even prior to this, Sensei had begun to grow conscious of his own love for the girl because of K’s presence, in other words, through his envy of K. Sensei is forced to hear K declare his love for the girl first, and although Sensei should have replied at that time, “No, it is I who loved her first,” he is unable to do so. This failure to speak, or “delay,” will have grave consequences, and yet such “delay” was actually present from the very beginning. For example, Sensei fell in love with the daughter only after K came to stay with him. Since Sensei first became conscious of his love while suspecting that K might also be in love with her, his claim that he loved her “first” is a lie. There is something about Sensei’s “delay” that cannot be explained away as a mere failure to speak. More essentially, this “delay” represents a certain unavoidable condition for man in his relation to the other. I shall speak more about this later.

After hearing K’s confession, Sensei one day feigns illness and stays in his room, telling the woman, “I want to marry your daughter.”⁴ This request is of course granted, but Sensei is unable to tell K. Completely ignorant of K’s feelings, the woman goes ahead and tells him the news, as a result of which K commits suicide. Guilt-ridden, Sensei yet remains unable to share his feelings with the “daughter,” whom he has married, i.e., his wife. He confesses only to the young student (watakushi), whom he swears to absolute secrecy in regard to his wife.

Upon the death of the Meiji Emperor, Sensei tells his wife, “As people of the Meiji era we have now become anachronisms,” to which she suddenly and quite inexplicably replies, “Well then, self-immolation is the solution to your problem.” He is struck by this term “self-immolation,” which by that time was hardly in use, and responds, “I will commit self-immolation if you like; but in my case, it will be through loyalty to the spirit of the Meiji era.”⁵ One month later, however, General Nogi actually commits this act. This prompts Sensei to make his own decision, and he begins to seriously consider suicide. He writes his confession as a testament during the ten days prior to his death. This, then, is a synopsis of Kokoro.

I would like to touch upon the question of “delay” that I mentioned earlier. Sensei conceives this “delay” as his own baseness, and is consumed by guilt because of it. But is this really the case? Could this “delay” have been avoided if Sensei were utterly honest and compassionate? Could it have been avoided if he were clearly aware of his own consciousness and desires? The answer is no. For example, Sensei fell in love with the daughter only after K had moved in with him—or rather, after K had fallen in love with her. If K had not been present, no amount of reflection would have revealed to Sensei his own love for the girl. For that love did not yet exist, but only first came into being through K’s mediation. Sensei’s consciousness of this love thus arose when he was already in such a position that K had to be sacrificed. This is not the mere anguish of the triangular relation, since love itself is first formed through such triangularity.

For example, let’s say there is an unwanted toy lying in the corner of a child’s room. Another child enters, sees the toy, and wants it. At that point, the first child suddenly clings to the toy, declaring, “No, it’s mine!” When another child wants something that is usually neglected or ignored, the first child clings to it as if nothing were more important. And yet he loses interest in it when that second child gives up and leaves. Is this child merely being spiteful? He might later think that he did something wrong; but at that moment he was not lying, he really valued the toy. Later, however, having lost interest in the toy, he thinks that he lied and did something spiteful.

This is not so different from Sensei’s feelings in Kokoro. That is to say, without once lying to himself, Sensei nevertheless comes to lie to and betray K. At no point does Sensei lie, nor is he unaware. Effectively, however, he comes to deceive K. After his father’s death, an uncle deceives Sensei and steals his property. Sensei grows suspicious of people and suffers a nervous breakdown, but recovers through his contact with the woman and her daughter at the boardinghouse. He should have thus hated all deception, but still he betrays a close friend. Why did this happen?

Sensei excitedly shouts to watakushi that people suddenly change: “People will suddenly change when it comes to the question of money. I myself have witnessed such a change.”⁶ But I wonder about this. For example, even if the uncle appears to Sensei to suddenly change, others would perhaps not be so surprised. People who know the uncle well might think that he was capable of such behavior. The problem is that Sensei, who believes to the very marrow that he would never betray someone as his uncle did, nevertheless “suddenly changes.” What is important is not the object that causes such change, whether this be money or women. People can “suddenly change” over other things as well. Noteworthy here is that this “change” is not something of which one can be conscious, or that consciousness occurs too late. Now, then, why is this so?

Let us think about this question philosophically. Hegel states that desire is the other person’s desire, that is, it is the desire for this other’s recognition. There is here a distinction between need and desire. For example, wanting to eat because one is hungry represents need, whereas wanting to eat fine food or dine at nice restaurants already signifies another’s desire. The sexual urge is also seen as a physical need, but having such urges only with beautiful women signifies desire. The standard for “beautiful women” does not exist objectively, but rather changes according to culture, ethnicity, and history. A “beautiful woman” is someone whom other people find beautiful. Since then the acquisition of a beautiful woman is really the acquisition of something deemed valuable by others, this desire is ultimately nothing but the desire for these others’ recognition. Yet it is difficult to change one’s feelings. Pure need is actually quite rare. In extreme situations it is possible that one would eat and drink anything, but otherwise we exist fundamentally within desire—that is, where the other already mediates.

We often say that one should not imitate but be original and spontaneous. When we aim at something, however, we always see someone as a model. This is the same as saying that our desires are mediated by other people. We often speak of spontaneity and subjectivity, but it must be said that the self and the subject are already formed by incorporating the relation with the other.

Making use of Hegel’s ideas, René Girard has examined the notions of desire, imitation, triangular relations, and the exclusion of the third person. In Japan, Girard’s views have been applied by Sakuta Keiichi in his discussion of such figures as Natsume Sōseki. Please read here Sakuta’s Kojinshugi no unmei—kindai shōsetsu to shakaigaku [The fate of individualism—The modern novel and sociology]. Sakuta provides a lucid analysis of Kokoro in terms of Sensei’s relations with both watakushi and K. He reinterprets these relations, which psychologists have previously seen as “homosexual,” along the lines of a modelrival theory. For example, Sakuta writes:

“Sensei” relates in his testament that he brought K back to his home out of a sense of friendship, that he wanted to ease this student’s hardships. Yet there remains something in this explanation that is difficult to understand. In my interpretation, “Sensei” wishes to have the respected K guarantee that the daughter is worthy of marriage, even if “Sensei” himself comes to be sacrificed by his own tactics. At the same time, “Sensei” wants to boast to K that he plans to marry her.⁷

And again: “K is the model to whom ‘Sensei’ turns for judgment, for Sensei’s choice of spouse is first justified by K’s attraction to her. And yet K can in this way also become ‘Sensei’s’ rival, for if he finds her attractive he will fight ‘Sensei’ over her.”⁸

Sensei’s love for the daughter certainly requires K’s presence, and yet this third person must be excluded. Even if it appears otherwise, love potentially contains the triangular relation. The same holds true even if the third person is not a concrete individual but a vague entity, like the public. For example, those who wish to marry celebrities want to possess the object of many others’ desires. It can be said that they desire the other, not the celebrity. This is also one instance of the triangular relation.

Moreover, there is in Sensei’s friendship for K something ambivalent. Sensei respects K, and yet, while he sees K as a model, he feels that he cannot go to the same lengths. Because of this, Sensei wants to drag K down and corrupt him—and this is what Sensei means when he speaks of “humanizing him.” There is nothing forced in such a reading. Elsewhere Sensei says to watakushi, who continues to respect him, “At any rate, don’t put too much trust in me. You will learn to regret it if you do. And if you ever allow yourself to feel betrayed, you will then find yourself being cruelly vindictive.”⁹ And again: “The memory that you once sat at my feet will begin to haunt you and, in bitterness and shame, you will want to degrade me. I do not want your admiration now, because I do not want your insults in the future.”¹⁰ In other words, the relation with one’s model changes from respect to hatred both when one outdoes him and when one realizes one will never be his equal.

What I would like to consider, however, concerns the question of “delay” that I mentioned earlier. Our consciousness and desire, which appear to us as immediate (or unmediated), are already mediated by the other—and this too is a kind of “delay.” Even if one clearly reflects upon oneself beyond all doubt, it is each time already mediated. In this sense, the “present” is always “delayed.” The title Kokoro is ironic, for there is here no attempt to peer within the “heart.” Or rather, such peering yields nothing, for our actions derive not from the “heart” but from the relation with the other. Regardless of how one thinks about the heart, then, there is a void there that cannot be filled. This point can perhaps be explained by psychoanalysis, but there is always a “delay” that can never be cleared up.

This issue is related to “history,” for in fact Kokoro has come to be widely read not only because of its focus on love and triangular relations, but also because of its treatment of historical problems. For example: “Then, at the height of the summer, Emperor Meiji passed away. I felt as though the spirit of the Meiji era had begun with the Emperor and had ended with him. I was overcome with the feeling that I and the others, who had been brought up in that era, were now left behind to live as anachronisms.”¹¹ This notion of “anachronism” (jisei okure) does not simply refer to the fact that one is old and out of date; rather it is actually related to a certain “delay” (okure).

Having grown up under the influence of Buddhist doctrines, he seemed to regard respect for material comfort as some kind of immorality. Also, having read stories of great priests and Christian saints who were long since dead, he was wont to regard the body and the soul as entities which had to be forced asunder. Indeed, he seemed at times to think that mistreatment of the body was necessary for the glorification of the soul.¹²

In this description, K appears simply like the type of young seeker of truth from long ago. But it must be said that such an extreme type as K is characteristic of a certain period, one that differed from past and future periods in regard to both Buddhism and Christianity. For example, by the end of the second decade of the Meiji era, Kitamura Tōkoku turned toward Christianity while Nishida Kitarō turned toward Zen Buddhism. Like K, both these men were extreme types (K also read the Bible).

These men became confined within such absolute interiority because the possibilities that were present during the Meiji Restoration were by this time becoming closed off. On the other hand, their confinement can be attributed to the institutional establishment of the modern nation-state system. That is to say, defeated in their respective political battles, these men sought to express their opposition by rejecting the secular and privileging the spiritual, or interior. Yet Tōkoku committed suicide and Nishida returned to the humiliation of becoming an imperial university nondegree student. Similarly, K’s suicide was not prompted by mere heartbreak or a friend’s betrayal, as Sensei later realized. For in his very attraction to the opposite sex, K perceived the collapse of such spiritual resistance.

Sōseki himself perhaps experienced something similar to this. Although not committed to any political movements, he doubtless felt that in the second decade of the Meiji era there must be a deepening of revolution as an extension of the Meiji Restoration. At this time Sōseki thought that he would devote his life to the “Chinese classics,” and yet he came to study English literature. In the preface of his Bungakuron [Theory of literature], moreover, he wrote something to the effect that he felt betrayed by English literature. There the “Chinese classics” are not seen as something from the Edo period, and thus old-fashioned. Rather they were bound up with the very thought and character of those students of that second Meiji decade. English literature, meanwhile, was part of the imperial university system; it was something that one studied in order to achieve worldly success. Sōseki in fact highly distinguished himself in this literature, yet he always felt the urge to escape it. This explains why he left the imperial university and became a novelist, which was considered at that time a rather disreputable profession.

In this regard, we can see that the “spirit of Meiji” Sensei refers to (“I will commit self-immolation if you like; but in my case, it will be through loyalty to the spirit of the Meiji era”) has nothing to do with the so-called Meiji Zeitgeist. Rather this “spirit of Meiji” signifies the diverse range of possibilities during the “second Meiji decade.” For example, what struck Sensei about General Nogi’s suicide letter was not his way of thinking but rather that, having lost his banner in the 1877 Seinan War, “he had been wanting to redeem his honor through death.”¹³ The people of the “second Meiji decade” in fact considered the Seinan War as the “second Meiji Restoration” in its pursuit of the Restoration’s ideas. Saigō Takamori became the symbol of this movement, and was also the symbol of the later “Shōwa Restoration.” Although Sōseki himself never ceased denouncing the “elder statesmen of Meiji,” he also said that he wished to pit himself against the novel “like the Meiji Restoration patriots.”

Thus what Sōseki called the “spirit of Meiji” can be understood as the diverse “possibilities” excluded from the modern nation-state system that would be established during the third decade of Meiji. In other words, “history,” as I am trying to define it here, refers to those things that are now concealed and forgotten. From another standpoint, these possibilities are also the various possibilities of literature, as I spoke of earlier. Literature does not consist solely of the modern novel of the nineteenth-century West, nor does the movement toward the novel represent development. Perhaps Sōseki resisted this novel-centered notion of literature or its repressive nature. We must not see such resistance merely in terms of Sōseki’s own tastes and temperament, nor should we see it as nostalgia for the Orient or Edo period. For it is actually the opposite of these.

In the tragic work that is Kokoro, Sōseki may have been trying to separate himself from the past by evoking it so intensely. Marx also said that tragedy was a means to happily part with the past. In fact, Sōseki wrote Michikusa after Kokoro, and this work won praise from the Naturalists who then dominated Japan’s literary world. Sōseki had finally written a novelistic novel, they said. He also set to work on Meian, but died before completing it.

Meian has been praised up to the present day as Sōseki’s most genuine modern novel, but this is really quite ironic. It is said that Sōseki wrote Meian in the morning and “Chinese-style poetry” in the afternoon. Perhaps this book was not all that he had hoped, but that, having lived so far, he felt that he could only follow this path as thoroughly as possible. We should not regard Sōseki’s works in linear terms, with Meian at the apex. What is concealed within such a history is precisely what I have called “history.”

Karatani Kōjin, “Sōseki no tayōsei: ‘Kokoro’ wo megutte,” in Kotoba to higeki [Language and tragedy] (Tokyo: Kōdansha Gakujutsu Bunko, 2001), pp. 40–57. Originally given as a public lecture on February 27, 1985, in the city of Kawaguchi.