J314 Teaching and Learning in Natsume Sôseki's Kokoro
Some thoughts inspired by John Nathan's book, Sôseki: Modern Japan’s Greatest Novelist (Columbia University Press, 2018)
NOTE: This book, by a major Japanese literature scholar, came out in 2018, just after I retired. When I taught again in 2019, I only had time to peek briefly into it, but I loved what I was seeing. I knew I would want to integrate some of Nathan's "take" on Sôseki the next time I had the opportunity to teach Sôseki's work!
The next 5 paragraphs are taken directly from the Preface of Nathan's book. I just thought you might find them interesting:
1. In the panorama of modern Japanese literature, Natsume Sôseki (1867-1916) stands alone, an unflaggingly original pioneer. He was thirty-eight, a scholar of English literature with serious doubts about himself, when he finally turned to writing fiction. Between 1905 and his death in 1916, he produced fourteen largely grim novels that revealed characters with a depth and exactitude that had no precedent in Japan. He is properly viewed as Japan’s first modern novelist, certainly in the western sense of that notion.
2. The interest and significance of Sôseki’s life extend beyond his literary achievement. He was born on the cusp of a social revolution; his struggle to synthesize Japanese sensibilities and western approaches to the novel mirrored the national effort to build a “modern” state by fusing traditional and modern elements. His life reveals poignantly the pain and paralyzing cost of, as he put it, “incurring a foreign culture.”
3. Sôseki’s accomplishment appears the more remarkable considering he had no predecessors…[H]is complete oeuvre, including novellas and short stories, was written in the scant space of eleven years—an astonishing feat enabled by his vast talent and desperate energy…
4. The portrait of Sôseki that coalesced in my imagination as I pored over him for three years is disturbing. Like another of his contemporaries, Marcel Proust, he appears to have been un enfant nerveux all his life: finicky with extreme likes and dislikes, demanding, superior, gregarious or withdrawn by unpredictable turns… Sôseki suffered all his life from severe physical and mental illness, recurrent attacks of which often assailed him at the same time. Though he was capable of warmth and, certainly in his writing, compassion, in the grip of his compound sickness he could be cold, sardonic, irascible, and even violent…
5. In the end, Sôseki was a novelist: the beauty he achieved in his novels and the truth of the human condition as he perceived it are a legacy that transcends his personal limitations. Indeed, in his indefatigable pursuit of his art despite terrible afflictions, we may even glimpse nobility. (ix-xii)
Nathan seems to address some conclusions I had already reached on my own, over several decades of teaching Kokoro, about whether Sensei succeeds in the end in transforming himself into an actual teacher. In other words, transforming himself from someone for whom the title, "Sensei" is just an empty, meaningless perhaps even ironic title. In the process of writing and communicating his very personal story of the life that only he experienced, is he transformed into a person who actually personifies that role, someone who infuses life and meaning into this otherwise empty title. In the end, has Sensei truly become a Teacher?
Hee are couple of paragraphs from a review of Nathan's book by Marvin Marcus:
Nathan’s case for Sōseki’s stature as a modern author centers on an ongoing survey of the author’s psychological quirks and disorders, his fraught marital and family life, his landmark literary career, and the backdrop of a rapidly urbanizing nation, centered in Tokyo. Nathan traces the course of Sōseki’s ailments: a chronic and often debilitating gastrointestinal disorder that would claim his life at age forty-nine, and a clinically diagnosed psychopathology that resulted in frequent bouts of irascibility, violent mood swings, and symptoms bordering on madness. Nathan probes the interface between the author’s various ailments and the manner of their representation in his literature, noting Sōseki’s observation, perhaps tongue in cheek, that he has his insanity to thank for his literary successes. “I pray,” he once remarked, “that my illnesses will not abandon me” (quoted on 115).
Nathan’s study can be regarded in part as a clinical case history of his subject’s insecurities and anxieties. Consider for instance his account of Sōseki’s two-year stay in London (October 1900–December 1902), in chapter five. Having married Nakane Kyōko, a younger woman with whom he shared little and quarreled regularly, he was sent off to England by the Ministry of Education, tasked with achieving a mastery of English literature and literary theory. He read voraciously and widely, all the while having to make do with a meager government stipend. Nathan traces the growing evidence of mental disorder—an almost debilitating sense of inferiority and disorientation that led to his being ordered to return home. Nathan cites Sōseki’s reflection on this painful experience following his return to Japan: “The two years I spent in London was the most miserable time of my life. Among the English gentlemen, like a stray dog mixing with a pack of wolves, I eked out a pathetic existence” (73). Any of us who has experienced the ex-pat existence understands these feelings....still it seems Sôseki's experience was extreme! Nathan even suggests that Sôseki may have experienced madness or insanity during his sojourn and after his return to Japan.
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Two things stand out to me about Nathan's book.
1. The revelation that Sôseki serialized in the Asahi Newspaper the Final Section of Kokoro, "Sensei and His Testament," first. He began the serialization April 20, 1914. So, he started at the end of his story and then followed Sensei's Testament with the two, shorter sections, completing them on August 1, 1914. These two sections were, respectively, "Sensei and I," on the narrator (I)'s attraction to and relationship with Sensei, and "My Parents and I," on I's relationship with his family who dwell in the countryside, a slower-paced, rural lifestyle miles away from the dynamic metropolitan center of Tokyo to which so many young Japanese, including the young narrator, were drawn. In the bound and printed form of Kokoro, of course--and this is the way we read it today--we start with the two earlier sections and then have the narrative voice shift from the young narrator "I" to the older Sensei in the final section, where he bequeaths to "I" and to his readers, his "Testament." This means as readers we often forget the fact that from the very opening line, "I always called him Sensei," the narrator had already read, and was obviously aware of all the material contained in Sensei's "Testament," information that we Readers are not privy to until we complete that final section of the book. But "I" knows all of this, and we see several refrences to Sensei's death if we pay close attention, starting with p. 8. I always found the book form to be structurally very creative and innovative, the narrative present ending with "I's" boarding of a train bound for Tokyo and starting to read Sensei's long narrative. Brilliant! Does it make any difference that the original order was reversed for the bound book version?
2. Also, of special interest to me, is the argument Nathan discusses that was originally put forth by a Japanese scholar, Komori Yôichi, that would have us revisit some of our assumptions about Kokoro. He is the one who reminds us that when the narrator begins his story with "I always called him Sensei," he would have already read Sensei's "Testament." Komori notes when looking at those opening lines of Kokoro, where the narrator is explaining why he prefers to call this older man “Sensei,” ending the first paragraph with these lines (as translated by McClelland): “And with pen in hand, I cannot bring myself to write of him in any other way.” Does your translation say something similar?
A close look at the original Japanese, however, reveals that Sôseki actually wrote: “I can never bring myself to refer to him with an impersonal capital letter," (a “kashira moji 頭文字). In other words, from the very outset, the narrator distinguishes himself from his mentor, Sensei, who chose to refer to his best friend in just this way, calling him “K” throughout the narrative. The narrator tells us in the opening lines, however, that he could never do such a thing with Sensei. By indicating that he chooses not to do this, Komori argues that “I,” the narrator, is distancing himself from Sensei and his whole worldview, his old values, especially his approach to gender and interpersonal relationships. A great point!
3. A third and rather bold argument that Komori makes stems from the conversation about children that "I" has with Sensei and his wife where “I” responds to the comment by Shizu that “It would be so nice if we had children,” by saying, “Yes, wouldn’t it?” Adding, however, that he could feel no real sympathy for her at this point because “At my age, children seemed an unnecessary nuisance." (McCelland, 17) Again, the original Japanese includes the important phrase "sono toki":
Kodomo o motta koto no nai sono toki (子供を持つた事のない其時)
which literally means “At that time when I [as yet] had no children,” suggesting that at some later date, the young man DID, in fact, have children. Komori even goes so far as to argue that he may well have had them with Shizu after Sensei’s death, though this seems like quite a stretch, to me!
In Komori's defense, he does cite textual evidence for his argument, pointing to the lingering glances with which she favors the younger man. When talking about the couple not having children, Shizu demurs saying "An adopted child," she said and looked at me."(17) And some other lines that McClelland didn't necessarily include in his translation like "I" referring to Sensei's wife saying "her eyes were on me," or, she was "glancing at me again," and "her gaze intentionally on me." This textual and narratological evidence may be subtle and slight…but it is there. Komori considers it as evidence for "a silent dialogue" taking place between "I" and Shizu.
I find this quite fascinating, and he may be onto something. But even if we don't accept his argument, it has always been my feeling that the point of the open ending—that is, we find “I” seated on the train heading for Tokyo, and presumably Sensei's house, immersed in the act of reading Sensei’s "Testament"--is to allow for multiple possibilities. The scene at the end of Part Two reminds me of the "freeze frame" ending we see in films. And since we as readers have no definitive way of knowing what might happen when he gets there, this seems to be Sôseki's way of asking us as readers to jump into the narrative and help construct an ending for ourselves, or at least to think about or imagine some possibilities. Sôseki has decided that he won't dictate the truth to his readers; we can only discover it by joining in the creative process with him. There may be a strong impulse experienced by western readers to get clarity or final closure from a novel, but, as Burch suggested, this is not necessarily the case in Japan in 1914. Also, arguably, this is where Sôseki is at his most bold and innovative as a writer.
I often think about how when we first meet him, “Sensei” is not really a “Sensei” at all, right? At least not in the sense of actually being a Teacher in any formal or even spiritual sense. He has no offical position, no teaching job, he is not a professor anywhere, he has no classses and no students. He doesn't even write anything for public dissemination. But could this text be all about his difficult journey towards becoming a true Sensei, fulfilling the role the title would suggest, maybe actually doing something more along the lines of what his friend "K" hoped to do with his life? In the end, does he finally succeed in teaching somebody something in the form of his long letter to "I," his final "Testament"? It was a hard piece for him to write, it was painful for him to reveal himself to anyone else. He was deeply ashamed of his own conduct, he was mortified by the fear, cowardice and selfishness that he manifested. Who wants to admit anything like this about oneself to others?
But can't we say that he used his story, his past, his mistakes, his terrible pain and agony, to instruct someone else? Finally?!! As he explained it, if “I” had not come along, and had not convinced him that he was sincere about learning from Sensei’s life, from his precious experiences, then Sensei could not have carried out his final revelation in the manner that he did. "I" sought out Sensei because he wanted something, needed something more, something he could not get from his his regular professors at the university. H wanted to learn about life from someone who had experienced something weighty and substantial. "I" was looking for something deeper, something beyond book learning, something that would shed light on the meaning of life at its deepest levels, some truth that would illuminate what it means to be human in a time of great turmoil and change. Perhaps only someone whose life corresponded closely with the years of the Meiji Era (1868-1912) and who imbibed the spirit of that remarkable age, could have something deep and meaningful to say about life in those years.
But to believe this, you wouldn't you have to accept the idea that Sensei did actually accomplish something other than just kill himself, that his death did help a new life lodge in "I"'s breast as he hoped? Personally, I have always felt that he did do this and even though Nathan alludes in a footnote that he is not sure he can fully buy Komori's argument, I find that Nathan’s biography does succeed in bringing up a couple of arguments that support this position. But, as I said, I was already inclined to believe that this was the case anyway! Why?
As a reader of Kokoro, I had always asked myself at the end, will “I” read Sensei’s "Testament" and learn from it? Will that new life actually lodge in "I"'s breast, giving him the opportunity to be and to live in a way that Sensei never could? Will "I" go on, as Komori’s argument suggests, to have a normal family life with children? Will he treat both women and his friends better than Sensei did? If Komori is onto something about how "I" was consciously distancing himself from Sensei in the opening lines of his narrative, then there is every reason to harbor the hope that, yes, "I" did read Sensei's Testament carefully and learned from it. His life will avoid some of the worst pitfalls of Sensei's.
There is much "I" could learn from Sensei's tragic story, and many things he could avoid. After all, did Sensei really succceeded in giving his wife the life he wanted for her? There were no children. Moreover, Sensei completely cut Shizu out of a large portions of his life. Yes, he thought he was protecting her, keeping her from being “tainted” by the sordid events of an ugly world; but didn't his refusal to be open with her and tell her the truth, make their whole relationship, their marriage, very problematic? By withholding so much of the truth from her, didn't he riddle their marriage with falsity, perhaps even rendering it a sham? There is this huge wall between them, this big, dark secret, this chasm that separates them. That can hardly be considered ideal!
I also struggle with the idea that nothing about what really happened ever occurs to Shizu, not even once. Is this plausible? She was there, she spent time with K, interacted with him--quite happily it would seem--and perhaps even enjoyed flirting with him. Don't we usually know when there is some connection, some spark between ourselves and another person, regardless of how slight it may be? But apparently Shizu has no clue, no awareness of any of this, nor of any possible jealousy on Sensei's part when she was discovered hanging out with "K" in his room, laughing and enjoying herself. How many times did Sensei come home and hear them talking but when he went to check up on what was going on, she would just be sneaking out of K's room?
Are we to believe that the idea would never cross Shizu's mind--even much later--that his withdrawn, misanthropic nature, his deep melencholy, his monthly visits to K’s grave, all his pain, agony, and morose sadness, had nothing to do with those times back in the day in which she was an active participant? She even mentions to "I" that his melancholy began after K's "unnatural death." Does she never once consider that K may have been harboring feelings for her and that there was some kind of "love triangle" going on?
If we are to believe that she had no idea about any of this at the time, and it has never once ocurred to her since, wouldn't that suggest that she was not a very self-aware or self-reflective person? Perhaps part of Shizu's charm is that she really was that naive and unsuspecting. But still...I wonder. How plausible is that?
Kokoro is a protean form of the modern Japanese novel, so we cannot expect it to be perfect. I always thought that some of this might be because depicting female characters fully and convincingly was not one of Sôseki's strengths as a writer. Few Meiji male authors were capable of this. That could be the reason it is difficult for us today to swallow the idea that Ojosan could be so clueless about what was going on all around her--things that she was right in the very thick of. Still, there is so much of the novel that is artfully constructed that perhaps Sôseki could be forgiven for not achieving something that no other novelist would until decades later.
It is not unfair to say that Death and Suicide occupy prominent space in Kokoro. That is why we find it so dark. As Sensei says in his Testament, "I am about to force you into the shadows of this dark world of ours."(128) But the darkness is not inpenetrable. There is a small ray of hope to be found, a distinct hope, that, yes, we can learn from the past, we can get better, we can avoid the pitfalls of our elders, the mistakes which the previous generation made…We can do better, we can make the world a better place. If we look into that darkness, and take away the hard truths that we see there, then yes, things can get better. Isn't that why Sensei believes that "If my story helps you and others understand even a part of what we are, I shall be satisfied." (247) It seems quite clear that he is addressing not only "I" here, but his whole generation. He is a man who experienced his fair share of hard lessons in his life. The least he can do is teach others so that they may learn. To do so means that he has to reveal painful truths about himself, totally unflattering truths. But no one will be able to learn, and "we" cannot make any progress, if we do not face up to the hard truths of life. And that's exactly where a modern novel, one like Kokoro, comes in!
Literature in all it’s forms is about pointing us to some kind of truth isn't it? Unless its purpose is just to entertain us, to help us forget our own troubles by escaping into another world, maybe like in sci-fi, mysteries or fantasy--not that there is anything wrong with that, mind you! But literature that endures contains something more, some form of truth that we can take away from it.
Thoughtful, serious, reflective writing asks something more of us. It asks us to grapple with difficult questions, the big questions about life, death, love, happiness, trust, and--most importantly--how we can find meaning in the human experience. A powerful literary work can help us discover the truth about some little corner of life—and in doing so, it can shed light on what it means to be human. What we ultimately do with that truth is up to us; but at least an author like Sôseki initiates us into some form of the truth as he has experienced it, and and as a result of what he has learned through his own personal writing experience, his journey as a writer.
That’s why it is not always about simply transferring a writer’s own personal life experiences directly into a literary text. Sure, Sôseki had a rough childhood and upbringing. He was weird, definitely "off" mentally, subject to rages and mistreatment of those around him, especially his wife and children. He could be an aloof, irascible, and very difficult person. Happiness eluded him most of the time. He was never a great husband or father. His children often feared him. Perhaps that is why most his works are so grim and dark.
The sad truth here is that in Kokoro, Sensei behaved despicably toward his best friend. Some critics believe that he acted just as any individual in modern society might--when our individual interests are threatened, we are likely to react. Like Sensei, we may panic, or freeze up. Remember how Sensei's first response to K's confession that he was in love with Ojosan was unadulterated Fear: OMG, he's beaten me to it! And this might this be a very basic human tendency--to look out for one's own best interests--especially in the modern, western-style capitalist-industrial system. The old bonds and beliefs from premodern society, that may have buffered things and held them together, have been cast aside and individuals are forced to fend for themselves. Values, morals, mores--everything is different. Everything is up for grabs. This is not to condemn either industrialization, modernization, or westernization; Sôseki himself was obviously completely enmeshed in these things, negotiating like a pro with the Asahi Newspaper to make sure he was generously compensated for his work. But as a man born in 1867, he could see how his society was transforming right before his eyes and as a writer, his obligation was to shed some light on what these changes might mean for his readers. He experienced doubts, uncertainty, confusion, moral ambiguity and ethical conundrums. Can't we all learn Something from his insights?
When it came down to it, Sensei was not confident that he could best his friend in a head-to-head contest. He knew his friend well, a man of strength and principle, much more so than himself. He was smarter, better looking and endowed with superior will-power. He worked constantly to strenghthen his "concentration of mind," so he could stay on his path of spiritual development, what he called "the true way." Sensei and K shared some basic notions of ethics and morality, of the need to stand strong. But Sensei knew that K was better at that stuff than he was! He was stronger, deeper, more resolute; his commitments more fiercely held. So, the more Sensei thought about it, the more fearful he became that he could never beat K at this game. And he did not want to be the one who failed to come away with Shizu's hand in marriage. As a result, he became defensive, strategic, and cunning. He began to see K not just as his rival, but his opponent, his enemy--even his personal devil. A little voice inside him was telling him that he had to strike back now, while K was weak and vulnerable. He was like a wolf crouching before a lamb, ready to strike at any moment. (216) He felt he had to crush and destroy his opponent mercilessly, and this he did by throwing K's own words back in his face: "Anyone who has no spiritual aspirations is an idiot." (214)
But merely weaponizing language was not going to be sufficient. Ultimately, Sensei completely betrayed his friend by going behind his back, secretly, to ask Okusan for her daughter's hand in marriage. After he did so, he was not even able to face K and tell him what he had done. In that moment, he was not capable of standing up and doing the right thing. We know that Sôseki was a devoted student of Chinese philosophy, and he had absorbed the Confucian belief that Virtue requires a person stand up and do the right thing. "Sokuten-kyoshi" (則天去私) was a favorite phrase of his. "Align with Heaven, Depart the Self." In other words, leave your selfish interests behind and do the right thing, i.e., align your values with heaven. Moreover, he loathed his Uncle and other relatives because they would not do this for him. However, when it was his time to stand up and do the right thing, he was not capable of doing it either, and this realization hit him hard. He knew he had been tested and had come up short. It was extremely difficult for him to live with that painful truth, that reality. As much as anything, this may be why he did not feel he could continue living. He got caught between his values, his ethics, and his actions.
The reasons for anybody taking their own life is difficult to comprehend. Did K commit suicide as he declared in his note because "there was no hope of ever becoming the firm, resolute person that he had always wanted to be?"(230) Or was there something more? Certainly, when "K" heard the news from Okusan that his best friend had asked for Ojosan's hand in marriage--they very thing K wanted to do--and he had to hear this news not directly from his best friend--we can presume that he was crushed. This may be what pushed him over the edge. He killed himself soon after, cutting his carotid artery with a small knife. No doubt, the fact that he had opened himself up to Sensei only to be betrayed, added to his malaise and despair. The person who had looked out for him and saw him through the hard time of the end of his adoption ultimately deceived and betrayed him. That was cold and could have pushed him over the edge. But he WAS already confused and conflicted over his unexpected feelings for Ojosan. In his own way, like Sensei, he was caught between his values, his self-image, and the stirrings of his heart. This wasn't how things were supposed to be. Could he have reconciled these contradictions? Could he have compromised with himself and "settled" for a life that incorporated love, a family, and physical and emotional pleasure? Could that coexist with his "true way"? It is certainly possible but that wasn't really K's style. He liked to be "all in," and everything coming to a head the way it did, he simply couldn't handle it.
And yet perhaps it is oddly fitting that K took the high road when ending his life, making no mention in his suicide note of Sensei's betrayal of their friendship or anything about his own feelings for Ojosan. Still, though, Sensei is hardly off the hook. Remember when Sensei discovered K's body he went rigid with fear, feeling like he was turning into iron or stone? In that moment, though, all he could do was think about himself, about his own selfish interests, and he felt relieved: Whew, "I'm safe!" (230) he said. We all would like to think that we would do better in such circumstances; but mightn't there be a little bit of Sensei in all of us?
Some read Sensei's selfishness at this critical juncture as an indictment of the nature of a modern industrial society shaped by capitalism which places emphasis on competition between individual members of society. For Japanese, used to primacy of the group and long acceptance of fixed social roles and clearly defined classes backed by Confucian philosophy, the modern world seemed like a free-for-all in which everyone is out for themselves, so naturally they must put their own interests first. Bonds from the older, traditonal society weaken and can no longer be relied upon as an adhesive, capable of holding society and relationships together.
The text is quite clear: If you tempt people with riches--or with position, status, power--they may easily turn into "rogues." They might steal from their friends or family, or sell them out. If you are looking out for Number One, anything is fair game. In fact, there might not be any rules to the game anymore. The gloves have come off. You do whatever you have to do to survive economically and emotionally in this cruel world. If the former, traditional society offered some solid ground rules, when you adopt a foreign ideology that says good things come out of open competition, much of that can be undermined. Where are we going to learn about how we ought to behave towards others?
The most difficult thing for Sensei to accept is that after everything that happend to him with his uncle ripping him off and all, he took pride in the fact that he managed to come away convinced that he was not like that! "I thought that in a corrupt world, I had managed to stay virtuous." He believed that he was better than his uncle, more ethical and morally upright. He may not trust others very much, but at least he knew who he was. Until he had to face the fact that when it came to the possibility of losing Shizu to his best friend, then NO, this was not true!
As Sensei acknowledged to himself at the time, "Through cunning I have won. But as a man, I have lost." (228) He was tormented for the rest of his life by his own shame and humiliation. That's why he had to go the K's grave every month to beg for forgiveness. As he explained near the end of his Testament, "there was a painful and unending struggle going on inside me." (244) And perhaps that is why he ended his life. Not because he could no longer endure the pain and suffering that he had lived with for so many years, but because he felt that now he could finally atone for what he did. Much as Gen. Nogi had done.
Sensei had been living "like a mummy," forced to accept and live with the fact that "I was no better than my uncle. I became as disgusted with myself as I had been with the rest of the world." (238) So why end his life at that particular time? Why do it after the Emperor and General Nogi's died? How did their deaths operate as a trigger for him? He was definitely NOT committing junshi in old traditional sense. He was too modern for that. Instead, he claims that the end of the era somehow freed him up to do so, if only temporarily. His era was now over and he no longer had to keep going on with his charade.
Sensei was NOT reverting to or embracing the old traditional pre-Meiji values. He was not, in my opinion, rejecting the modern world and returning to some mythic traditional roots or values. Both Sensei and K were very much a part of the modern world even though they had their origins in an earlier time. Sensei had even alluded that his ethics were rooted in an earlier time. But they were his own values, he insisted. He wasn't about to change them like a man might a suit of clothes, he declared. But he left the countryside when he was young, went to the university in Tokyo and continued to live there the rest of his life. He embraced modern education and urban life. He had no desire to go back either in time or geographically. But he did acknowledge that when the Emperor Meiji passed away, "I felt as though the spirit of the Meiji era had begun with the Emperor and had ended with him. I was overcome with the feeling that I and the others, who had been brought up in that era, were now left behind to live as anachronisms." (245) Weren't both K and Sensei anachronisms, caught in between two worlds? Didn't both suffer the kind of confusion about which Sôseki himself wrote in his diary in March of 1902?
People say that Japan was awakened thirty years ago, but it was awakened by a fireball and jumped out of bed. It was not a genuine awakening but a totally confused one. Japan has tried to absorb Western culture in a hurry and as a result has not had time to digest it. (Sôseki Complete Works Vol 13: 49)
Sensei and K's generation were caught in between two worlds which sometimes left them plagued by doubts, confusion and uncertainty. Neither wanted to die but nor could they continue to live their lives after what had transpired. If they were "men of Meiji," then perhaps they were men forced to experience all the lonelines, isolation, and alienation which was "the price we have to pay for being born in this modern age, so full of freedom, independence, and our own egotistical selves." (30) K, always strong willed, had pushed ahead with what he wanted to do in life, damn the consequences. At times he could be stubborn, self-absorbed, and, yes, egotistical. Until he crossed paths with Ojosan. Maybe, Sensei once pondered, K did what he did because he suffered from the very same kind of loneliness that Sensei experienced after he betrayed K.
Perhaps it all came back to this loneliness born of freedom and independence...but also, the egotism that came along with it. Writing on the experience of "becoming modern," Marshall Berman referred to it as a "maelstrom" with a divided legacy. On the one hand, it "promises us adventure, power, joy, growth, transformation of ourselves and the world--and at the same time [it] threatens to destroy everything we have, everything we know, everything we are." (All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity: 15ff)
We should recall what Sensei wrote at the end of his "Testament":
My own past, which made me what I am, is part of human experience. Only I can tell it. I do not think my effort to do so honestly has been entirely purposeless. If my story helps you and others to understand even a part of what we are, I shall be satisfied. (247, italics mine)
私を生んだ私の過去は、人間の經驗の一部分として、私より外に誰も語り得るものはないのですから、それを僞りなく書き殘して置く私の努力は、人間を知る上に於て、貴方にとつても、外の人にとつても、徒勞ではなからうと思ひます。
Isn't it likely that he is writing here not only to "I" but to "I"'s whole generation, and he writes out of a sincere desire to help them understand, "what we are," meaning what we are as human beings, what human nature is, and what it can be?
Looking at the Japanese version above, if anything, the Japanese is even more explicit: Sensei writes:
Ningen (w)o shiru ue ni oite, anatagata ni totte mo, hoka no hito ni totte mo. or, literally,
"As far as better understanding human beings, for you and others, and for anyone else..."
So by specifying not only "for you and your colleagues," but also, "as well as anyone else," it's made pretty clear. At the beginning of his Testament, Sensei indicated that "To you alone, then, among the millions of Japanese, I wish to tell my past." (128) Now, after he has gone through the tortuous process of revealing the truth about all the wrong decisions he made, and the unfortunate actions he took, he realizes that his story should be destined not just for one person, but for an even wider audience. And the part about understanding "even a part of what we are" is clearly linked in the origianl to arriving at a better understanding of what we are as human beings (ningen 人間).
Sensei is clearly tormented by the reality of how he behaved at a pivotal moment in his life, a moment that cost the life of his best friend. In this sense, Sensei does have something very important to teach. He has finally arrived at this all-important crossroads and this time, he is going to take the right path. It is not an easy thing for westerners to think of suicide as the correct path, but in Japan, it can sometimes be perceived as an honorable choice. Here it seems to scream out "Pay attention! Be careful. Don't always think only about yourself." Not unto ourselves alone are we born!
But if Kokoro teaches us anything, it is that the act of writing itself is what leads to these kinds of deep personal discoveries, and as readers, we can participate in that process of uncovering and discovering truth right along with the author. Sensei himself understood through constructing his narrative that his experience needed to be shared with more than just one person if it was to have a deeper meaning, and a greater impact. That's how these things work, and that's the beauty of it. And as Nathan suggests above, "in his [Sôseki's] indefatigable pursuit of his art despite terrible afflictions, we may even glimpse nobility."
I would like to think so. Sometimes, we have to take what we can get, wherever we find it!
Footnote: Nathan reminds us that the success of the novelized form of Kokoro literally made the small publishing house of Iwanami shoten into the publishing giant that it is. As he puts it, "Iwanami was and remains the house that Sôseki built." (230)