Natsume, Sôseki. Kokoro, (The Heart) (1914).
From Linda Flores:
Natsume Sōseki was a wonderful writer and his prose is incredibly beautiful.
I find the novel fascinating because it is about a nation on the verge of dramatic change. Sōseki’s life (1867–1916) overlapped almost entirely with the Meiji period (1868–1912), and the novel articulates the sensibilities of the late Meiji era and the tensions of a modernising nation. There is a scene in the beginning of the novel where the student is watching people bobbing about in the sea, suggesting that we are all somehow adrift in a sea of modernity. At the end of the Meiji era, people were struggling to make sense of the implications of living in the modern world. In the novel, the student leaves behind his family and his hometown to pursue the life of a modern intellectual in Tokyo, but he comes to realise that there is always a price to be paid for one’s choices in life.
When you read Kokoro, there is a palpable tension that is sustained throughout – from the first pages to the last. It is a riveting read, a novel that grips you on an almost visceral level; it draws you in and refuses to let you go, even at the end of the narrative.
Summary and Commentary by Kumiko Sato
The narrator "I," a college student, comes to know a man during vacation in
Kamakura. He calls the man "sensei," because he
respects the man's sharp insight in things. Sensei always looks sorrowful. The
narrator wants to know the secret source of the sorrow sensei keeps in his mind,
but sensei never reveals it. Sensei observes the narrator well, and points out
that the narrator is expecting affection from him but he can never give that
sort of secure feeling to the narrator. In summer after graduation, the narrator
returns home because his father fell ill. He has not found a job yet, and as
recommended by his mother, he writes a letter to sensei asking for any connection
of available jobs. This summer, the Meiji emperor dies, and General
Nogi follows the emperor in death on the day of the imperial funeral, as the most
loyal servant of the emperor.
The condition of the narrator's father worsens,
and now seems to be in a critical condition. At this point, a letter from sensei
arrives. The letter has no mention of jobs, as the narrator expected, but is
actually a confession by Sensei, which has the length of a book. Sensei writes:
when he was young, he fell in love with a beautiful daughter of the widow owner
of the boarding house where he used to live. His best friend, K, also came to
live in the same house. K confessed his secret love of the young lady, but Sensei
himself could not express his own feeling to his friend.
K was a smart, frank man
who had rich knowledge of religion. As the lady seemed to like K, Sensei tried
to indirectly stand in the way, by saying to K, "how stupid it is to get involved
with those who never progress." This was what K himself said in contempt of
the stupidity of women. Sensei, on the other hand, secretly asked the widow
to allow him to marry her daughter. She permitted the marriage, and her daughter
agreed. Three days after K learned of this fact, he committed suicide. Sensei
believed that he caused his friend's death. The beautiful lady is his wife now,
but he has never been able to erase the sense of guilt and loneliness because
of the secret. It seems that he, too, will die after the emperor, because the
Meiji era (1969-1911), which represented his generation's spirit, is now gone
with the emperor. I's father is ill and on the verge of death as well, and General
Nogi's suicide features in the narrative as well, so all of the patriarch's
seem to be dying in this novel. We read in the text of all the darkness and
the ominous sound of the canons firing as the funeral for the Emperor is held.
Clearly, the text is "about" the end of something.
Comments
This is a little unbalanced confession novel. If it does not have the narrative
frame that contains Sensei's confession, it is apparently one of the modern
Japanese novels that focuses on the question of the modern subject. What characterizes
Sensei as the modern subject is, first, the ritual of confession. It is discussed
in my note on Mishima's Confessions of a Mask. Second, loneliness. The
loneliness, in connection with the ritual of confession, creates the inner self
that can never be understood by others--thus, the essential loneliness of the
subject. Sensei is attracted by the idea of death (suicide), when he realizes
that even his wife, his most beloved and closest to him, cannot understand his
inner consciousness, nor he can tell her why. Sensei gropes for "understanding"
by confessing his sin to the narrator, but only in exchange of life. Karatani
Kojin (Origins of Modern Japanese Literature) points out that the ideological
production of the "modern" took place in the Meiji era.
Sensei also says that his life should end with the death of the
Meji emperor, not because he is loyal to the emperor but because he
could only be "represented" by this particular age called Meiji. What
does it mean? As Sensei suggests, his suicide is not compensation of
his sin he commited to his friend K, but because he knew that K was
the future of himself. What matters to Sensei is thus not the reason
for K's suicide but the very impossibility of understanding K's
suicide--even death cannot compensate for the deep gap lying between
the inner self of the modern subject and the exterior facts and
interpretations.
The reason Karatani locates the birth of the modern subject in Meiji era is
that Meiji is the period when Genbun-itchi, the conformity of written
and spoken language, became rooted enough for people to forget the system of
the conformity itself and feel as if this reality depicted in the new language
has been the reality of a universal humanity. Genbun-itchi was also the
adoptation of realistism in writing, following the Western tradition of mimesis,
for now human speech and narrative descriptions can be represented in language
that is easily accessible. It was within this system, this new mode of the conformed
realist language that the modern subject found its interior self-awareness.
Sensei is, so to speak, very conscious of this system of the inner self, and
cannot help putting himself into the system. It may be the feeling Soseki himself
had, probably, since Sensei seems to be born in the same year as Soseki himself.
The narrator (not the narrator of Sensei's Testament), as opposed to the character
Sensei, is a very detached, characterless narrator. His personal life is mentioned
everywhere, especially his father's death, but his narrative is extremely flat
and shallow, in contrast to the rich, emotional narrative of Sensei's confession.
The young narrator employs the already established system of realism, in a matter-of-fact
style. One example is that dialogues are directly quoted as dialogues in the
young narrator's part, while Sensei narrativizes dialogues into his subjective
first-peron narrative. To me, this young narrator seems to have no trouble trusting
the reality of his words. Sensei is much less assured.
Kumiko Sato
(adapted from Kumiko Sato's web page, no longer online):
10/12/1999
ADDITIONAL COMMENTS (from Loftus):
Sensei's lack of certainty referred to above is clearly a central feature
of Kokoro. Characters are anxious, existence seems contingent. Consider
how much of the language of the text is given over to interiority. We read about
Sensei being "frightened," gripped with fear, turning rigid, experiencing
paralysis, feeling trapped and dead-ended in his life. He talks about his shame,
his humiliation, his "whole body began to tremble" as he stands transfixed,
staring at K.: "It was then that the great shadow that would forever darken
the course of my life spread before my mind's eye." (229) So this is certainly language describing characters' inner, psychological state. It's about one's "kokoro," about one's "heart and mind," or, also, the "heart of the matter."
Darkness is also
another distinct motif that runs through the text. Sensei writes about how "fear
gripped my heart," and how even when he was getting married, he notes that "over
my happiness there loomed a black shadow" (236). All this is very much the
language of interiority, the language of the mind reflecting on its own self
and its processes. But also, it is about understanding pain and loneliness, dealing
with the fact that "A dark shadow seemed always to be following me."
Is this the language, and hence the fate, of the new modern Meiji person in Japan (and
elsewhere)?
Let us not forget that while Sôseki was in England, 1900-1902, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness was being serialized and then published as a single volume in 1902. It, too, featured a great deal of introspection and interiority though it was also a clear denunciation of colonialism. Is "modernity" a condition that involves introspection, relfection, and, in the end,
profound isolation and loneliness? This may be what Soseki is trying to tell us. Recall the famous line on p. 30: "You see, loneliness is the price we have to pay for being born in this modern age, so full of freedom, independence and our own egotistical selves."
I have long believed that Kokoro can be read as a cautionary tale. By this, I mean that Sôseki aims to show his readers how society might work when it becomes an open competition with everyone acting according to their own self interest. This is what industrial capitalism requires and while it may bring many benefits, it is not always pretty. It promotes competition among individuals and perhaps more than a little frightening. Social Darwinism, which made quite an impact on Japan through the writings of Herbert Spencer, suggested that this is the way the world works. It's every person and every nation for him/her/itself.
In order to become modern, Japan needed to release the popular energies of its people, and see that these energies are dedicated to the cause of building a rich and powerful nation. Sôseki understands this and doesn't really question the necessity of doing it; but he does want his readers to think about the costs of living this way, what it means to set up one's society on these terms.
Don't forget that Sôseki was steeped in Chinese thought and his remarks on Individualism suggest that he had grave revervations about unbridled individual freedom. As Marvin Marcus points out, Sôseki is often associated with the sokuten-kyoshi (則天去私) philosophy--"Be in accord with Heaven and reject the self"-- or "Follow the Way of Heaven and Leave the Self Behind" as in transcend the self; move beyond selfishness in order to approach selflessness. As Marcus points out, the exact source for this phrase and its precise meaning--what Sôseki actually means by it--are not unequivocally clear. Supposedly he muttered the phrase several times before his death. It was something he believed in.
Another scholar, David Pollack, draws on the writings of Japanese scholar Eto Jun who pointed out that in the very first bound version of Kokoro, for which Sôseki himself designed the cover, he placed the Chinese character for Kokoro, 心 , followed by a quote from Chinese Confucian philosopher Xunzi (Hsün Tzu, c. 310—c. 220 B.C.E.) to the effect that
All human misery arises from the fact that the Heart is coverd over with warped ideals that conceal its capacity for reason...By what means does man know the Way? By means of the heart.
So, for Xunzi, the heart was a kind of gateway; everything proceeds through it. He did not believe that Human Nature was fundamentally Good, as Mencius had believed. Rather, he actually saw it as bad--which is why education was so important. It was necessary in order to to help people rid themselves of this layer of warped ideals and to overcome their evil nature.
At the very least, this would suggest that Sôseki took a cautious, even skeptical approach to the individual self. Some of his reservationa about unbridled individualism are clear from the lecture he gave at the prestigious Peers School on "My Individualism." See here for this lecture. He seems to believe that with freedom, should come responsibility.
So when Sensei writes about being "born an ethical creature, and brought up to be an ethical man," what kind of ethics are we talking about? Most likely, some variation of Confucian virtues and values. Since Sôseki was deeply influenced by Confucian thought, can we think of Kokoro as a vehicle for taking a hard look at what happens if you take Confucianism out of the picture? He could even be seen to be turning Confucian ideals on their head, forcing the reader to consider where Japan will be if those values fade and in their place we have western-style individualism? Might this breed selfishness and egoism?
Remember, the Five Cardinal Relationships in Confucianism were:
-- Father-child,
--Ruler-subject,
--Husband-wife,
--Elder brother-younger brother, and
--Friend-friend
Can't we say that Kokoro challenges all of these?
The first and most important of the Five Confucian Relationships is between Father and Child--but "I" has seemingly been insensitive and unfilial to his own father. He compares him unfavorably with Sensei and feels that Sensei gives him "far greater intellectual satisfaction as a companion." But then he was quick to backtrack and say that "intellectual" isn't really the right word, it has a "too cold and impersonal sound," so the word should be "spiritual" instead.
It seems, then, that there is something deep, something nonverbal that Sensei can transmit to "I," perhaps it is something philosophical, moral or spiritual. What he has is "real" in the sense of being meaningful. Because it grows out of his real life experiences. This is what he tries to teach I, to transmit to him.
He says, "Indeed, it would not have seemed to me then an exaggeration to say that Sensei's strength had entered my body, and that his very life was flowing in my veins. And when I discovered that such were my true feelings towards these two men, I was shocked. For was I not of my father's flesh?" (50)
「肉のなかに先生の力が食い込んでいると云っても，血のなかに先生の命が流れていると云っても，其時の私には少しも誇張でないように思われて...... 私は父が本当の父であり, 先生 は又いう迄もなく，あかの他人であるという明白な事実を，ことさらに眼の前に並べて見て，始めて大きな真理でも発見したかの如くにおどろいた」)
Indeed, he was of his father's flesh; and in Confucian terms, that means that his first loyalties should be to his father. But the pull of this mystical side of Sensei is so strong that "I" ultimately abandons his father on his deathbed. That is hardly very filial. So this is one very fundamental Confucian virtues that apparently does not stand up in these modern times which are so full of independent and egotistical individual selves.
The bond between Ruler and Subject comes next in the Confucian hierarchy, and this is complicated; the Emperor Meiji is a forceful presence in the novel, but only in death. His death requires all his subjects to repress their everyday happinesses or joys in order to mourn his passing. Cancel all festivities, run out and buy black crepe and decorate the house. These mourning rituals are imposed upon his subjects, and then his top general commits suicide during his funeral in order to follow his lord in death. These are dark, somber times. Yes, loyalty is supposedly being trumpeted here, but was it over the top? Too extreme? Was it necessary? Is it convincing? Does such an act really belong in the modern world? Do we think Sôseki approves of it?
I's Father does seem loyal to the emperor...but he is apparently dying of the same disease that is plaguing his sovereign, so doesn't that make them similar or comparable? Yet the emperor was supposed to be so special, so transcendant, so high above everyone else in Japan, semi-divine or sacred figure--in other words, not at all like us ordinary folk. In addition, I's father is also losing his faculties...so is anything he says or does reliable? Is it meaningful? Can he be a role model in this narrative? All of these things seem to be in question here!
The Brother-to-Brother relationship does not seem to be working well in this novel, either. Sensei's Father's brother, Sensei's uncle, betrayed his obligations and screwed over both his own brother and then his nephew. Ooops. Plus, he helped himself to his late brother's assets. Basically, he ripped off his late brother and his nephew.
And more in the narrtive present, "I"'s older brother from Kyushu is not willing to step up and act like the elder brother, the first son. He wants to pass this responsibility off to his younger brother, the narrator. Doesn't sound too very Confucian, does it?
How about Husband and Wife? How is Sensei and Shizu's marriage portrayed? Since they don't have children ("divine punishment"?), somehow the circle is not complete. Perhpas that is another reason why Sensei needs an "I" in his life, so he can transmit his legacy to someone. More importantly, communication is lacking; Sensei cannot bring himself to tell her of his role in K's death...and she remains totally clueless. Is that even plausible? Would she really have no inkling that K was developing feelings for her and that this was bothering Sensei? Could she not even put two and two together later, after the fact? Does it make sense that she still has no clue what is bothering her husband? She seems smarter than that....I have often felt that Sôseki is not as his best developing female characters. Probably the nature of his times....
Friend-to-Friend relations are an obvious disaster, too: Sensei betrays his best friend and neither "I" nor Sensei seem to have any real friends; nor does Shizu, as far as we know. So, Kokoro does not depict any meaningful friend-to-friend relationships.
Finally, then, what is left is that people are alone in the world; lonely and adrift. Born into the modern age, an age so full of loneliness, darkness and egotistical individuals. In the new modern, industrializing economy, isn't it everyone out for themselves? The Five Confucian Relationships are not able to provide the buffer, the anchor, thsat they once did. They can no longer hold the family together. Sensei has no children, so there is no future generation for that particular family. "Divine punishmnet," Sensei says mysteriously on p. 17; but by the end of his Testament we know what he means by this. He is being punished for his sins, for the wrong that he did. “I did not cease to blame myself for K’s death.” And, "With a shock, I realized 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) How do you come back from a decision like the one Sensei made? How can you recover and live normally?
He realizes that what he has lost something "as a man" as a result of his victory through "cunning." He had acted out of his own self-interest; he had protected what he felt he needed to defend, and he came out on top, I guess you could say. He put himself first, he acted out of his "egotistical self," but at what cost? What about others? What about his own humanity?
As for "I," well, we just don't really know about him or his future, do we? This is the very open part of the text. We can hope. We can hope that I LEARNS from Sensei, that he will understand and accept his "Teaching" about the pitfalls and dangers of modern life. Hopefully, "I" will play it straight in his own human relationships in the future, and he will speak up before things between himself and others get out of hand. Maybe, he will learn how to communicate effectively with people, and how to trust them and treat them with respect. If Sensei's Testament teaches "I" anything--if it enables a new life to be lodged in his breast, as Sensei hopes--then something will be able to grow there. A "Heart," perhaps; one that he can look into and not feel afraid.
If things are to work out for the better, then the younger man needs to learn the painful lessons that his older mentor learned; he must internalize the Teaching that is rooted in Sensei's life and experience. That is what he claimed that he wanted, after all. He was so insistent, so sincere, that it is what he wanted above all other things.
He will need to make this teaching fully his own and to become a new and better person if all is to end well. He needs to become a person capable of honesty, love, and trust; someone who can become genuine and loving. He needs to become what Sensei could not; he needs to become fully human and not live like a mummy, or like he is already dead.
It seems that Kokoro sets this up as a distinct possiblity; the younger generation does not have to repeat the mistakes of their elders, their mentors, their teachers. The ending certainly does not lock us in. It is open and full of possibilities. But there are no guarantees.
As readers, then, we too, are left to fend for ourselves. Do we believe that there is hope? Or are we doomed to live in moral darkness? Are we capable of learning? Can we grow? Can we change? Can we generate a light that will penetrate the darkness of the world? It may not take much; perhaps just a thin ray of light will suffice. If it can lead us to the hope we need to get us through, that might be enough.
To me, one of the most impressive things about Kokoro is that it looks at some very tough issues unflinchingly, and its power is enhanced by what it does not do. It does not tie things up neatly in a bow. The ending kind of explodes into our consciousness. The young narrator is sitting on a train heading towards Tokyo, reading Sensei's last words, his Testament. He is in motion, on a train--that most modern mode of transportation, the one that is the very symbol of modernity.
Then the narrative voice shifts and we read Sensei's story in his own words, over "I's" shoulder, if you will. There is no Epilogue that has "I" disembarking from the train and resolving that he will live differently; he will learn his lessons from his teacher, and his generation will do better. Sensei will have finally fulfilled his duty: he will have become a true "Sensei," the Sensei that he never was before, and he will have really taught someone something, something important. Even essential. The orchestral music swells, the sun shines through and "I" walks steadfastly towards a better future.
This would be wonderfully reassuring, but Sôseki does not let us off that easily. If Burch is correct, perhaps we as western readers are driven to find this kind of clarity at the end of a text; we expect at the end of a narrative to find resolution and closure. It is what our tradition and reading practices have conditioned us to expect. We look for a Beginning, a Middle, and an End. An End means that we should have a real ending!! But, no! It won't be that easy in Kokoro.
We will have to enter into the text and engage with it, and decide the final outcome for ourselves. This seems to be the ultimate expression of our second SLO: "To understand the significance of literary form and the dynamic relationship between author, reader and text." We are going to need to collaborate with the author in order to construct meaning. This is what Noel Burch suggested we might need to do sometimes. So this is good for us!!
The form, the structure of this novel, by having it end in the middle and then shift the narrative voice over to Sensei and ultimately to leave us in a state of suspended animation--this is what makes the text have such a powerful impact on us.
Intertextuality
Another thought, entirely. Burch pointed out the significance of Intertextuality in Japanese literature and film, and I have always thought about this largely in terms of the clear references to other texts that we may find within the one that we are reading. For example, we find this variety of Intertextuality in our next novel, Enchi Fumiko's Masks, where Intertextuality is clearly more literary, and more obvious. As early as p. 5 in the novel, we learn that one of the characters has engaged in a detailed study of Heian spirit possession, and 45 pages later a 1937 essay by this character is reproduced in the text for us to read. So it sits there as a clear intertext. Of course, it is a fictional intertext, but it purports to be real and it is an essay that probes deeply into the characters from the Tale of Genji, so in this way, the Genji is also brought into the body of Masks, so as we read the 1950s novel, we are also reading and experiencing parts of the Genji. But, back to those early pages of Masks, the purpose of four of Enchi’s characters meeting up is to go visit the house of a Noh master whose son will show them their collection of Noh masks and costumes, so here we have another example, and quite a direct one, of intertextual references to Noh theatre, Noh performances, Masks, robes, and how they impact Enchi's characters. But, before they do that, there is a reference to a séance that had happened earlier, and this becomes another kind of intertext, which takes us back to the past, to 1912. So then two historical markers in terms of time appear int he text: 1912, the year the Meiji Emperor Meiji died and one long, impressive era ended, and 1937 which marks the start of Japan’s all-out ground war in China, another kind of "intertext" marking a profound turning point in modern Japan's history. And there is much more intertextuality to be found in Masks including poems, sons, moments form the Tale of Genji, etc..
But now I am realizing that while this is obviously a clear, highly effective usage of literary intertextuality, the way that history and socio-political moments enter into Kokoro, is also a form of intertextuality at work in this text as well.
The point is that Intertextuality is a way of accounting for the role of literary and extra-literary materials without recourse to traditional notions of authorship. It subverts the concept of the text as self-sufficient, hermetic totality, foregrounding, in its stead, the fact that all literary production takes place in the presence of other texts; they are, in effect, palimpsests--that is, parts of a manuscript or pieces of written material on which the original writing has been effaced in order to make room for later writing but of which traces remain; or, also, something reused or altered but still bearing visible traces of its earlier form.
For Roland Barthes, who proclaimed the death of the author, it is the fact of intertexuality that allows the text to come into being:
Any text is a new tissue of past citations. Bits of code, formulae, rhythmic models, fragments of social languages, etc., pass into the text and are redistributed within it, for there is always language before and around the text. Intertextuality, the condition of any text whatsoever, cannot, of course, be reduced to a problem of sources or influences; the intertext is a general field of anonymous formulae whose origin can scarcely ever be located; of unconscious or automatic quotations, given without quotation marks. ("Theory of the Text," 39).
And since it is clear that Intertexts need not be simply "literary"--historical and social determinants are themselves signifying practices which transform and inflect literary practices, we have to be open to these things. (Consider, for example, the influence of the capitalist mode of production upon the rise of the novel). It means we have to consider the presence of Emperor Meiji and General Nogi's deaths as an integral and intertextual part of Kokoro. Moreover, a text is constituted, strictly speaking, only in the moment of its reading. So, the reader's own previous readings, experiences and position within the cultural formation also form crucial intertexts.
http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/elab/hfl0278.html
Since intertexts are not limited to the strictly literary, then social-historical events like the death of the Emperor Meiji and General Nogi’s suicide in Kokoro can also qualify; they can also become important intertextual markers which affect how we read it. Like a painted backdrop on the theatrical stage, the moment of the emperor’s funeral and General Nogi’s suicide set the tone for the end of the novel, and the booming of the cannons seem to Sensei to be a lament for the passing of an age. Very powerful stuff! You can find a lot of detail about the funeral rites and ceremonies if you scroll down once in the Auested link.
The anachronistic feel of General Nogi’s ritual suicide reminds all Japanese readers how far Japan has come during the last 45 years. Nogi’s hara-kiri now seems shockingly odd and out of place in this new Japan. And that reinforces what this text is all about, ne?
I also love the way that Linda Flores, in a recent interview, also comes around to this idea that the choices we make in life do exact their price, and that legacies--what we have to pass on to others--matter:
Natsume Sōseki was a wonderful writer and his prose is incredibly beautiful.
I find the novel fascinating because it is about a nation on the verge of dramatic change. Sōseki’s life (1867–1916) overlapped almost entirely with the Meiji period (1868–1912), and the novel articulates the sensibilities of the late Meiji era and the tensions of a modernising nation. There is a scene in the beginning of the novel where the student is watching people bobbing about in the sea, suggesting that we are all somehow adrift in a sea of modernity. At the end of the Meiji era, people were struggling to make sense of the implications of living in the modern world. In the novel, the student leaves behind his family and his hometown to pursue the life of a modern intellectual in Tokyo, but he comes to realise that there is always a price to be paid for one’s choices in life.
When you read Kokoro, there is a palpable tension that is sustained throughout – from the first pages to the last. It is a riveting read, a novel that grips you on an almost visceral level; it draws you in and refuses to let you go, even at the end of the narrative.
[One] of the key motifs of the novel [is] the question of legacy – of things being handed down from one generation to the next. Sensei passes on his secrets to the student, and we, as readers of the novel, also become purveyors of that knowledge. As the novel demonstrates, knowledge is never without its costs. I would describe Kokoro as a sublime piece of literature, but it is also a very sombre novel.