In the autumn of 1909, Natsume Soseki, already a well-known author in Japan, was invited to tour Manchuria and Korea. The invitation was extended by the South Manchurian Railway Company, the president of which was an old school friend. The company picked up all expenses, and the Asahi Shimbun, which published Soseki, encouraged the project. The young railway would profit by association with the author's name, the newspaper would sell more copies when the results were published, and government policy would be gratified.
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Soon, however, things went wrong with this plan. For one thing, Soseki was not well. He suffered much from stomach ulcers (a complaint that would eventually kill him) and every page is as devoted to the trials of gastritis as it is to the glories of the far-flung Japanese empire.
The author also seems to have been at least somewhat aware that he was being used for political purposes. A particularly sincere author, he coped with this by fully revealing his former schoolboy association with the railway president and picturing himself as awkward, a jocular ploy that had proved popular in such works as "Botchan" and "I Am a Cat."
In the very first sentence of the journal, Soseki ingenuously wonders aloud just what exactly this Southern Manchurian Railway Company is, to which his school pal, now the president, can say: "Old boy, you really are a fool!" This exchange sets the tone for what follows. Soseki is the blundering but well-meaning intellectual amid the power people who run the railway, the occupation of Manchuria, the Japanese government itself.
That this is a distancing device becomes ever clearer as the account progresses. Though Soseki was truly a bad traveler (as his disastrous sojourn in England indicates), he now had more reasons to be (his poor health, the fact that he was being used for advertising) and he outdid himself on this Manchurian jaunt.
In fact, he never reached his destination. Though the account's title speaks of both Manchuria and Korea, he stopped writing while still in the former occupied area and never got to the soon-to-be-occupied peninsula.
A number of reasons for this have been given. One is that he much admired Laurence Sterne, who, in his "A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy," never gets to Italy. Another is that this Manchurian travel journal was published at the end of the year (1909) and the paper thought it fitting to begin the new year with something else.
A more likely reason for dropping both the journal and its publication was that during this season Ito Hirobumi was assassinated by a Korean nationalist. This prompted the Asahi to run a vitriolic series titled "Dreadful Korea." It ran alongside Soseki's Manchurian pieces and must have caused the author many a gastric attack. But the series on Korea served the government's purposes. During the next year, Japan would annex that unhappy peninsula and (for a time) enlarge its overseas empire.
Soseki's unhappiness with the project shines on every page. The man who once criticized "Gulliver's Travels" for being too political now found himself in a political adventure that he did his best to poeticize. He talks about the color of the sky, the sea, about various natural sights such as the flights of northern birds.
He carried this to such an extreme, jumping from one safely poetic subject to the next, that dissatisfied readers gave the journal the name of "Soseki Here and There" (Soseki Tokoro Dokoro), a play on the original title, "Here and There is Manchuria and Korea" (Mankan Tokoro Dokoro).
The author has also been criticized for finding the Chinese dirty and for using pejorative terminology ("chang," somewhat like the now ostracized English "chink"), but political correctness had not been invented in 1909 and Soseki was merely echoing public opinion, no matter how deplorable we may now find that opinion to have been.
One might more fairly criticize him for getting himself into such a compromised venture in the first place, and to have continued even when he knew what it was about. His old school pal states his own intentions clearly: "You know, it is interesting to go and have a look at what the Japanese are doing abroad. Guys like you, who know nothing at all, take patronizing attitudes and create misunderstandings."
But Soseki swallowed no bait. He was not about to endorse his country's expansionist ambitions. Instead he talks about the local soybean soap, the beauty of the northern sky, the curious situation at Mukden, where the ground "had for countless centuries been saturated with urine and excrement," with "the disastrous results still noticeable in the drinking water." And, on one page, he exposes the whole setup. His companion asks how far they will travel and Soseki says, "Well, if I didn't reach Harbin, it would look bad."
The translators in their preface plainly state that this has long been Soseki's least popular book, and it has certainly had to wait longest for an English translation. One might say that it is a project that the author himself aborted, and he certainly rarely referred to it -- nor does anyone else: Donald Keene does not mention it in his monumental survey.
At the same time, however, it is a fascinating glimpse into the mind of the author and a lesson on how to comport yourself in a difficult situation. Also, an author this good as well as this famous (his face is on the 1,000 yen bill in your pocket or purse), one must read just everything.
This well-translated volume is in local bookstores. It is distributed by Tuttle Shokai, Seki 1, 21-13, Tama-ku, Kawasaki-shi, Kanagawa-ken, 214.
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