Introduction

IF THERE IS such a thing as a Japanese cultural pantheon, Sōseki Natsume (1867-1916) surely occupies a seat of honor. Sōseki's iconic status is borne out by the ubiquitous presence of his professorial visage on the national currency—the 1000-yen note, to be exact. For serious readers and non-readers alike, this is the famous author of I Am a Cat, Botchan and Kokoro, a writer who died of a bad stomach and came to epitomize the so-called "Spirit of the Meiji". It has been said that Sōseki Natsume, born at the dawn of the Meiji era (1868-1912) and surviving its emblematic emperor by four years, captured an essential quality of the modern condition itself, both in words and in the life that he led. Donald Keene may have echoed the consensus view when he proclaimed Sōseki as the great modern Japanese author.

Contemporary tastes in literature run in every conceivable direction, yet Sōseki Natsume's work remains popular nearly a century after the author's death. He devoted the last decade of his life to crafting fiction of extraordinary subtlety and psychological depth, emerging as the standard against whom others would be judged. We are fortunate that most of Sōseki's novels are available in English translation, and so you may judge for yourselves. With the present volume, his very moving literary reminiscence, written a year before his death, is at long last available as well.

Although novels do indeed represent the bulk of Sōseki's literary oeuvre, fiction was but one of his literary undertakings. He was a poet of the very first rank, both in the native haiku style and the classical Chinese literary style (kanshi). He was the pre-eminent scholar of English literature in Meiji Japan. Like Mori Ōgai (1862-1922), his renowned contemporary, Sōseki was one of Japan's leading public intellectuals, regularly holding forth on literary, cultural and political matters. His wide-ranging personal writings, including Inside My Glass Doors, display yet another side of his storytelling gift.

Literary reminiscence may be thought of as requiring a backdrop of high drama and memorable incident to be worthwhile. In fact, the Sōseki biography lacks these qualities, as does his reminiscence. Yet, this distinctly mundane life, in its various literary transformations, has acquired almost archetypal significance. A native of Edo, renamed Tokyo in 1868, Kinnosuke Natsume (his given name) was a neglected child of aging parents who considered him something of an embarrassment. As an infant he was sent out for adoption, only to be taken back eight years later. The lad, whose father was a nondescript local official who evidently harbored little affection for his youngest son, was fond of theater and traditional amusements. He excelled in his studies and entered the elite Tokyo Imperial University, where he studied English. Intent on pursuing literature, he adopted the pen name of Sōseki, an obscure term in classical Chinese that loosely translates as "gargling with stones". He married in 1896, started a family, then left for England in 1900, where he spent two miserable years doing literary research while trying to survive on a meager government stipend. While in London, he experienced bouts of depression bordering on madness.

Back in his native land, Sōseki parlayed his impressive scholarly attainments into a prestigious academic post at the Imperial University. In the meantime, he eagerly pursued his own literary creations. Turning from poetry to fiction, he achieved a resounding success with his maiden work, the satirical novel Wagahai wa Neko de aru (I Am a Cat, 1905). The enormously popular Botchan (1906), loosely based on his experiences as a teacher in rural Shikoku, established his reputation. Meanwhile, the professor of English gradually soured on academic life, and when he was offered a literary position with the Asahi shinbun, a leading newspaper, he left the university to become Japan's first career novelist—an unprecedented move given the rather unsavory reputation of fiction writing as a literary calling.

Experimenting—not always successfully—with narrative technique and character development, Sōseki gradually matured as a novelist. He achieved a major breakthrough with a series of beautifully crafted novels—Sanshirō (1908), Sore kara (And Then, 1909) and Mon (The Gate, 1911)—that explore the world of ordinary Japanese and their essential loneliness. As his own life settled into a stable, if at times deadening, domesticity, marked by physical disorder and a penchant for moodiness, the author examined this melancholy state of affairs through the lives of his literary alter egos.

Sōseki's reputation steadily grew. He developed a literary following, and his home became a gathering-place for fellow writers and proteges. Spending his days sequestered in his study, beset by deadlines and hounded by reporters, editors and admirers, the harried author kept his family—a brood of children and assorted housekeepers—at arm's length. There were money problems, unwanted solicitations and rude entreaties. These and other personal episodes form the subject matter of Inside My Glass Doors.

Sōseki's dyspepsia was both psychological and physical. Chronically ill, he spent his final years in and out of hospitals. In fact, he nearly died of a gastric hemorrhage in August 1910, and the ensuing convalescence afforded a rare opportunity for quiet reflection on the near-death experience and its larger meaning. This resulted in a fascinating "sickbed memoir" entitled Omoidasu koto nado (Recollections, 1911).

Unable to escape the insistent reminders of his own mortality, Sōseki became preoccupied with death and dying, the notion of human frailty, the corrosive effects of modern selfhood, and the fragile quality of human interrelationships. He pondered the question of individualism, a defining condition of modern society, and labored over the creation of characters who, caught in the grip of egocentrism and self-delusion, were fated to suffer the consequences.

A man of deeply reflective temperament, Sōseki was fully aware of his own complex and conflicted nature, and his novels became arenas for exploring the psychic mechanisms that isolate and separate individuals, that make of modern existence such a lonely and melancholy enterprise. It is no exaggeration to claim that Sōseki Natsume created a literary language for expressing this defining quality of modern life. In the process, he achieved an unparalleled mastery of the modern Japanese psychological novel.

Sōseki's "signature" themes are most brilliantly evoked in the two works widely considered to be his masterpieces—Kokoro (1914) and Michikusa (Grass on the Wayside, 1915). These novels—superbly translated by Edwin McClellan—are fixed properties of the Japanese literary canon. I cannot imagine teaching my survey of modern Japanese literature without including them.

In the shadow of these works is the present volume, Inside My Glass Doors. How does this work of nonfiction fit into the author's literary oeuvre? First, I should call attention to the journalistic conventions that had become a dominant force in the bundan as of the early twentieth century. Following established practice, Sōseki's longer work initially appeared in daily serialization, and only thereafter appeared in book form. In his capacity as Asahi staff writer, however, he was not restricted to novels. Sōseki had early on acquired a taste for the personal vignette, which may reflect a prevailing interest in the sort of authentic, unadorned self-expression espoused by the influential Naturalist movement. Inside My Glass Doors, whose serialization followed Kokoro and preceded Michikusa, is a collection of such brief essays, which are referred to by the curious genre label of shōhin—"Little items". The collected episodes are clearly autobiographical, but they are by no means devoid of literary polish. Moreover, insofar as these three contiguous works share so much in terms of theme and conception—in particular, the manner in which the past is remembered, forgotten and puzzled over—they bear consideration as a trilogy.

Inside My Glass Doors was actually Sōseki's final work in the shōhin vein. In addition to Recollections, mentioned above, he had earlier published the inventive and psychologically suggestive Yume juya (Ten Nights of Dream, 1908) and an eclectic pastiche of sketches entitled Eijitsu shōhin (Spring Miscellany, 1909), which include some interesting accounts of his stay in England. These and other minor works provide a kaleidoscopic view of the author's private world and shed light on his concerns as a novelist. As such, they have served as valuable source material for the Sōseki biographer and literary historian alike—and these number in the hundreds! What is more, they also stand as fully fashioned literary works in their own right.

What is the shape of the private world that the reminiscing author reveals to us in the thirty-nine episodes that comprise Inside My Glass Doors? First of all, this is anything but coherently plotted autobiography. Rather, it is a literary miscellany, heir to the great zuihitsu tradition of Japanese discursive prose. As readers we are ushered into the author's book-lined study, in his residence in Kikui-chō, as he freely muses on his present situation and reflects on the past.

There are scattered episodes from his youth. He recalls his old boyhood friend, Kii-chan, relating an unhappy incident involving some old books [Chs 31-32]. There is the high school classmate remembered for his intuitive brilliance [Chs 9, 10], the pair of ne'er-do-well cousins who would come by the house to make merry and sponge off of the family [Ch 26]. The Sōseki narrator recalls his oldest brother, a sickly young man, who ended up having an affair with a geisha before dying of a lung disorder [Ch 36]. There are fond memories of the old neighborhood in Babashita, just down the road, with its quaint shops and rusticated charm, its traditional entertainment halls (yose), narrow lanes and dark bamboo groves—all of it transformed by the inexorable course of modernization [Chs 19-21].

Sōseki's parents are at best a marginal presence, evoking ambivalent feelings. The father emerges as an austere, petty old man. The mother, who elicits an instinctive, if disembodied, affection, is hardly remembered at all; all that remains are isolated fragments—a pair of eyeglasses, a well-worn blue kimono [Chs 37, 38]. The warmest emotional expression is reserved for a maid, her name and appearance long since forgotten, but whose special act of kindness is vividly recalled [Ch 29]. Struggling to conjure up a coherent picture from the patchwork of ephemeral traces, the narrator muses on the fragility of memory, on our imperfect connection with the past.

There are episodes from the more recent past, and these are related in considerable detail. One concerns the family dog, Hector, and his sad demise [Chs 3-5]. Another tells of a woman, in suicidal despair, who comes by to seek counsel [Chs 7, 8]. There are accounts of victimization by actual burglars [Ch 14] and by the more insidious kind: the magazine photographer, for instance, who manages to extort a smile from the peevish author [Ch 2]; and a certain Mr Iwasaki, whose relentless quest for Sōseki "collectibles" is related in a tone of comic exasperation [Chs 12, 13].

Above all, there is the introspective voice of Sōseki's narrator as he reflects on his world. Reminders of death and dying abound.Friends and relatives are gone, yet he remains a bemused observer, a reluctant survivor. The mind itself seems incapable of retrieving anything more than scraps of the past, much less grasping the totality of things. People do strange things, hurtful things, and one can do little to improve upon the human condition.

But the world inside the glass doors is by no means one of unremitting gloom and self-pity. Rather, it is precisely inside these glass doors where one can find solace, peace of mind, a safe haven. From this quiet space, one can calmly observe the clamorous world outside—with its wars, its political turmoil, its clash and clatter.

"Now that tranquility has returned to the house and to my heart, I shall open the window wide and finish off this piece of writing, taking pleasure in my task and enfolded in the calm light of Spring. And then I intend to have a nap on the veranda, my cheek resting on my hand."

Having spoken in many voices—curmudgeon, philosopher, family man, writer, mere mortal—Sōseki concludes his rambling soliloquy on a lyrical, serene note—one that suggests, perhaps, a Zen-like transcendence. In any event, the minimalist credo of the small, the slow and the understated strikes a responsive chord. For me, at least, the face on the 1000-yen note calls to mind the expression sokuten kyoshi, an aphorism famously associated with Sōseki Natsume. It means "Follow Heaven, Forsake the Self".

Having come across the body of Sōseki reminiscences in the course of related research, I am delighted to share my enthusiasm for them here. With the publication of Inside My Glass Doors, readers are not getting the dregs of a writer already translated to death. This is the work of a great author at the very height of his powers. Indeed, Inside My Glass Doors deserves to take its place alongside the notable literary reminiscences of Turgenev, Stevenson and Twain. I would only add that reminiscence as a literary genre is fully deserving of its proper place in the sun.