Thoughts on Kokoro, by Natsume Soseki
Since I've finished reading this book in September, I've found myself thinking back on various aspects of it time and time again, so maybe sharing these thoughts might be of some value.
This is going to be more of a discussion, rather than a recommendation. I do recommend it though, especially if you like looking for subtle details and decyphering, bit by bit, a composition of someone's soul.
The book is, for the most part, centered on a single person, who is referred to by the main character as the Teacher. Now, even this nickname is itself somewhat curious: as Teacher himself, and others, note, the he doesn't have, on the surface, much to teach the main character, neither is he that respected. He's a learned man, but not bursting with knowlege or charisma. He's fairly wealthy, but not a businessman, his wealth is mostly inherited. He doesn't talk much, and acts even less. It's almost comedic sometimes, when someone asks the main character why he's so interested in this man, and he almost has to make up excuses about it.
One thing that was very refreshing about this book is the freedom of interpretation. There's a lot of different lines one could follow and reach different conclusions about the meaning of all this: how did the events affect the main character, does he run away out of cowardice, or does he want to help the dying man? What about the Teacher, was his entire philosopy a delusion, a product of paranoia, or was there really a connection between his personal story and that age between two worlds, of late Meiji and Taisho?
A lot of writers try to give you an illusion of neutrality when it comes to the interpretation, but when you pick deeper, there really is just one "correct" interpretation, and the rest are just a sham. Even very good writers, Tolstoy's very guilty of this for example. But in the case of Soseki this doesn't seem to be the case. Rather than giving you the a puzzle he himself has crafted and watching you try to solve it, it's almost like he discovered a series of caverns, and shows you what he himself had seen, but leaves it up to you to discover more.
One part of the book that I still don't understand that much is the middle part, which feels frustrating, since it plays a large role in the development of the main character, allowing him to look at his relationship with the Teacher from outside, and compare him with his father, as well as his immediate contact with death. For Teacher himself, the emperor's death seems to be a turning point too. So it'd be interesting to see, if someone else has read the book, what did you think the deeper meaning of this part was?
As a final note, between other works of Soseki, the Teacher is a recurring character type (I've also read parts of "I'm a cat" and "Three-cornered world" in addition to this one, but this one is the only one I've read to completion). It seems that to Soseki, he was a symbol of that time, a small indecisive world stuck between two much larger and clearer ones.
Jan 07 ยท 9 months ago
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