ABSTRACT
When Natsume Sōseki (1867–1916) completed Kokoro, he was seriously ill and near the end of his life. Illness, to be sure, figures as metaphor in much of his writing. He is often perceived as a novelist of victims, especially self-victimizers—those Japanese intellectuals who had serious, prolonged exposure to the West and were showing resultant pathological signs. Sōsekt’s life spanned, and was strongly identified with, the Meiji period (1868–1912). If any modern writer can be said to speak for his time, it is Sōseki. Though he did not begin writing in earnest until his middle years, in little more than a decade he produced more than a dozen books on a very few themes—betrayal, loss, and a certain “sickness unto death” are chief among them. His work reveals a scrutiny and an intelligence lacerating enough to expose both the inner turmoil and the dislocations this transformative age produced.
