This, the first full-length study of Soseki in English, is based upon the proposition that "beneath the emphasis on order, responsibility and a clear sense of morality, [there] lurks a dark, romantic voice that repeatedly directs our attention to the forces of chaos." Though this is true of every writer, it is perhaps a bit more self-evident in Soseki, whose chaotic depths were sometimes noticeable.
Here I will intrude some details of one such occasion. Several years ago I was staying in a hotel in rural Scotland, and when the proprietor learned I was from Japan he said: "Japan -- my grandfather used to talk about a Japanese guest we had way back at the turn of the century. He used to cry all the time, this Japanese gentleman. Would take a turn in the garden and burst into tears. I remember what he looked like. Never met him, of course, but my grandfather, curious, took a picture once."
Thinking of unhappy Japanese in the British Isles, I extracted a 1,000 yen note from my billfold and asked my host if this were the man. "That's him, that's him. But on such a large note. Was he famous or something?"
Yes, and well-known for being miserable abroad as well. In 1900 the Ministry of Education sent the 34-year-old Soseki to England to study and he stayed for over two years, both of them forlorn. I later learned from Donald Keene that, seeking to escape the horrors of London, he had gone to Edinburgh and beyond.
Beyond fleeing England, he was also looking for a tutor in the language. He never discovered one. Perhaps it was just as well. Komiya Toyotaka, a Soseki scholar, notes that the famous writer later compared the Scottish dialect to that spoken in northeastern Japan, the much-derided zuzu-ben. Back in London, the author passed for an Irish person, which led Keene later to wonder if Soseki did not then speak with a bit of a brogue.
Of the Scottish adventure, Soseki later wrote that after Edinburgh he stayed at a country hotel. "One day when the master and I took a walk in the garden, I noted that paths were covered thickly with moss. I offered a compliment, whereupon my host replied that he intended soon to get a gardener to scrape it all away."
So Soseki had something to cry about. At the same time, however, such misery does seem immoderate. Others have thought so as well. A visitor to the Japanese Foreign Office asked if the man wasn't mad, and the author's unhappy wife was certainly of that opinion. So, Soseki did indeed perceive chaos always there, bubbling beneath the carefully patterned surface of his life.
Now, having completed my contribution to Soseki studies, I will return you to the book at hand. It well illustrates its slender thesis, doing so through discussions of six novels, a collection of literary essays, a series of lectures and the author's Chinese poetry. Not only do these arguments support the theory of the tension between chaos and order in Soseki's creative progress, but they also offer us entry into works not yet translated.
Thus the 1907 "Nowaki" ("Autumn Wind") is rendered for the first time in English, as is the 1915 "Garasudo no Naka" ("Within the Glass Door," a collection of essays that Keene calls "Within My Glass Doors"). In addition, the introduction gives an up-to-date and valuable analysis of recent Soseki study.
This is important since the last decade has seen a great blossoming of scholarly interest in this author, often called Japan's most important modern writer and certainly its most revered. Professor Yiu's book is itself an indication of this recent academic enthusiasm.
Its methodology is resolutely contemporary and it avails itself of the options available to the postmodern literary scholar -- including viewing such large oppositions as the conflict between chaos and order as a determinant that offers a hoped-for insight into the muddled mysteries of creation.
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