Title: Kokoro
Author: Soseki Natsume
Publisher: Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1927

私は其人を常に先生と呼んでゐた。

Watashi wa kono hito (w)o tsune ni Sensei to yonde-ita.

I always called him "Sensei."

Much was made of the fact that this 1914 novel opens up with the word "I," signalling, perhaps, a new emphasis on the individual that was appearing in Japan. Individualism was a concern for Soseki as indicated by his remarks to students at Gakushuin on the subject. He clearly had his reservations about the concept, seeming to say that without some inner cultivation, some development of charcter, then individualism did not really count for much. There is something very Chinese about this, it seems to me, and indeed, Soseki was a staunch devotee of Chinese philosophy. The notion here would be that a "cultivated" man was someone who was on a path of spiritual development--such as K. was, perhaps--or those who were disciplining themselves outwardly and developing their inner, spiritual being as well. Soseki seems to suggest that people who do this are the ones who can really achieve some kind of freedom, and they are the only ones for whom individualism is really very meaningful. In that sense, I suppose it is an elitist outlook but the elitism is not based on social class or income, but on one's willingness to undertake spiritual work.

Soseki was very knowledgeable about English literature. He studied in England from 1900 to 1903. Hence he would definitely have been paying close attention when Joseph Conrad published his very influential work, Heart of Darkness in 1901 which probably influenced Soseki's choice of a title if not the idea of chronicling the inward journey of a man. Structurally there are similaries with Heart of Darkness as well, as Conrad's work is divided into three parts as well, just as Kokoro is. But it was probably the whole idea of focusing a text on the mind that intrigued Soseki. Many people think of Kokoro as a "psychological novel." We need only think about how much the language of pain and anxiety permeates the text. In Accomplices of Silence, Masao Miyoshi also notes how the "language of silence" is prevalent, a language, for example, that describes nature and that, as Miyoshi says, "surely contains 'meaning," but without naming it." (76) Miyoshi also asks us to think about how both characters, "I" and Sensei, are really the same person: one is the potential and the other is the actualized version of the man. However, we must ask a question about whether or not the younger "I" can transcend or move beyond the spot in which Sensei got stuck. There is much darkness in Soseki's vision, but if we don't think that "I" can learn from his mentor and avoid at least some of the same pitfalls, then it would be difficult to have any hope about the future and about our potential for meaningful human relationships. So, we might ask ourselves, can Kokoro, in the end, be read as a transmission from teacher to student, hence a teaching? What do you think?