Natsume Soseki, widely viewed as Japan's greatest literary figure, was a complicated man. A new full-length biography by John Nathan, "Soseki: Modern Japan's Greatest Novelist," sheds light on the challenging, and often painful, life of this literary giant.
Natsume Soseki's Pre-Raphaelite dreams
In 1900, the future novelist Natsume Soseki — then a scholar of English literature — arrived in London to commence two years of study abroad. Back in Japan, his best friend, the renowned haiku poet Masaoka Shiki, had — as explained in the first ...
Never mind the love hotels: Negishi is home to haiku, tea and famous pines
Alighting at one of the JR Yamanote Line's quietest stops, Uguisudani Station, I chat with the stationmaster about its name, which means "Bush-Warbler Valley." Apparently, the area used to have limpid streams and a bucolic setting that attracted the feathered songsters, also known as ...
How the visual arts shaped Japan's modern literature
Early on in Natsume Soseki's 1908 campus novel "Sanshiro" — one of the most important expositions of the inter-connectedness of visual and literary art ever written — a young scientist, Nonomiya, looks up at a long, thin, white cloud floating diagonally in the sky. "Do ...
The hidden heart of Natsume Soseki
Dec. 9 marks the 100th anniversary of the death of Natsume Soseki (1867-1916), a novelist widely regarded as being the one of the greatest writers of modern Japan. Events commemorating this anniversary have been held throughout 2016 but, in case you think it will ...
