ABSTRACT
Mon is not generally considered one of Soseki’s masterpieces. It is said, however, that Soseki himself, in his later years, came to see Mon as his favourite work and expressed confidence in this novel. 1 Two points in particular seem to stand out in Mon. One is unusual warmth, which Soseki seems to have intentionally brought into the novel. By creating characters who are not intellectuals as well as by depicting the lives of these ordinary people, he made Mon unique among his works, since he usually presents the lives of a selected élite. He apparently followed a passage from his earlier work Kusamakura, in which he says, ‘Approach everything intellectually, and you become harsh.’
