Natsume Soseki Books In Order

Botchan

Botchan, like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn or The Catcher in the Rye, is a classic of its kind, a sly, funny, poignant tale about a young mans rebellion against the system. Since its original publication 100 years ago, it has enjoyed a timeless popularity among Japanese readers both young and old, making it, according to Donald Keene, probably the most widely read novel in modern Japan.
The setting is Japan’s deep south, where the author himself spent four years teaching English in a middle school. Into this conservative world, with its social proprieties and established pecking order, breezes Botchan, down from the big city, with scant respect for either his elders or his noisy young charges; and the result is a chain of collisions large and small.
Most of the story seems to occur in summer, against the drone of cicadas and the sting of mosquitoes. And in every way this is a summer book light, sunny, and fun to read. Here, in a lively new translation much better suited to the American reader, Botchan should continue to entertain even those who have never been near the sunlit island on which these calamitous episodes take place.

Kokoro

ReadHowYouWant publishes a wide variety of best selling books in Large and Super Large fonts in partnership with leading publishers. EasyRead books are available in 11pt and 13pt. type. EasyRead Large books are available in 16pt, 16pt Bold, and 18pt Bold type. EasyRead Super Large books are available in 20pt. Bold and 24pt. Bold Type. You choose the format that is right for you. Kokoro is one of the classics of Japanese literature. Soseki introduces readers to the Japanese modern culture and its effect on the young generation of that time. Author narrates the events, when in 1857 Western imperialism invaded Japan. In order to protect Japan and it’s culture, the Japanese Emporer Meiji planned and ordered an industrial revolution in the country. Must Read!To find more titles in your format, Search in Books using EasyRead and the size of the font that makes reading easier and more enjoyable for you.

The Three Cornered World

A key work in the Japanese transition from traditional to modern literature ‘Walking up a mountain track, I fell to thinking. Approach everything rationally, and you become harsh. Pole along in the stream of emotions, and you will be swept away by the current. Give free rein to your desires, and you become uncomfortably confined. It is not a very agreeable place to live, this world of ours.’ Opening with the most famous introductory lines in Japanese literature, this novel has been cherished by generations of readers as a glittering jewel in the crown of Soseki’s artistic achievement. A painter escapes to a mountain spa to work in a world free of emotional entanglement, but finds himself fascinated by the alluring mistress at his inn, and inspired by thoughts of Ophelia by Millais, he imagines painting her. The woman is rumored to have abandoned her husband and fallen in love with a priest at a nearby temple, but somehow the right expression for the face on the painting eludes the artist. Beautifully written, humorous, and filled with bittersweet reflections on the human condition, this work was intended as a unique ‘haiku novel’ with a mood utterly different to anything ever produced in the West. Demonstrating along the way a mastery of everything from Western painting to Chinese literature, Soseki succeeded in creating an artistic tour de force.

I Am a Cat

Written over the course of 1904 6, Soseki’s comic masterpiece, I Am a Cat, satirizes the follies of upper middle class Japanese society during the Meiji era. With acerbic wit and sardonic perspective, it follows the whimsical adventures of a world weary stray kitten who comments on the follies and foibles of the people around him. The New Yorker called it ‘a nonchalant string of anecdotes and wisecracks, told by a fellow who doesn’t have a name, and has never caught a mouse, and isn’t much good for anything except watching human beings in action…
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The Gate

The quiet domestic life of a Japanese man is disrupted when he must courageously fight to keep his family together

Sanshiro

Natsume Soseki’s only coming of age novel, Sanshiro depicts the eponymous twenty three year old protagonist as he leaves the sleepy countryside to attend a university in the constantly moving ‘real world’ of Tokyo. Baffled and excited by the traffic, the academics, and most of all the women, Sanshiro must find his way among the sophisticates that fill his new life. An incisive social and cultural commentary, Sanshiro is also a subtle portrait of first love, tradition, and modernization, and the idealism of youth against the cynicism of middle age.

To the Spring Equinox and Beyond

Legendary Japanese novelist Soseki Natsume dissects the human personality in all its complexity in this unforgettable narrative. Keitaro, a recent college graduate, lives a life intertwined with several other characters, each carrying their own emotional baggage. Romantic, practical, and philosophical themes enable Soseki to explore the very meaning of life.

Kusamakura

A stunning new translation the first in more than forty years of a major novel by the father of modern Japanese fiction

Natsume S?seki’s Kusamakura follows its nameless young artist narrator on a meandering walking tour of the mountains. At the inn at a hot spring resort, he has a series of mysterious encounters with Nami, the lovely young daughter of the establishment. Nami, or beauty, is the center of this elegant novel, the still point around which the artist moves and the enigmatic subject of S?seki s word painting. In the author s words, Kusamakura is a haiku style novel, that lives through beauty. Written at a time when Japan was opening its doors to the rest of the world, Kusamakura turns inward, to the pristine mountain idyll and the taciturn lyricism of its courtship scenes, enshrining the essence of old Japan in a work of enchanting literary nostalgia.

Ten Nights of Dreams

This collection of ten connected stories or dreams has a surrealistic atmosphere. Some are weird, others are grotesquely funny. Among the ten nights, the first, second, third, and fifth nights start with the same sentence ‘This is the dream I dreamed.’ Whether Sosecki actually had these dreams or whether they were complete fictions is not known.

The Tower of London

In October 1900, a brilliant but largely unknown Japanese scholar arrived in London to commence two years of intense study. The scholar would later become the most celebrated Japanese writer of all time, Natsume Soseki, and produce a dazzling collection of novels, memoirs, criticism and short stories that form the bedrock of modern Japanese literature. Against the backdrop of these images, Soseki develops profound reflections on universal themes. The river Thames is transformed into the river Styx; The Tower of London becomes a gateway to the Underworld; mysterious boarding houses and the spirits of the dead are encountered through relics and memoir; time itself is regained and explored. This new translation provides the perfect introduction to the work of one of the world’s greatest authors, accompanied for the first time with a comprehensive critical introduction, and a wry fictional account of a meeting between Soseki and Sherlock Holmes.

Inside My Glass Doors

Originally published as Garusudo no Uchi in daily serialization in the Asahi newspaper in 1915, before appearing in book form, this is the first time Inside My Glass Doors has been published in English. It is a moving literary reminiscence, a collection of thirty nine autobiographical essays penned a year before the author’s death. Written in the genre of shohin little items, the personal vignettes provide a kaleidoscopic view of Natsume Soseki’s private world and shed light on his concerns as a novelist.
Readers are at once ushered into Soseki’s book lined study, in his residence in Kikui cho, as he muses on his present situation and reflects on the past. The story is filled with flashbacks to Soseki’s youth his classmates, his family, and his old neighborhood as well as episodes from the more recent past, all related in considerable detail. There are his characteristic ruminations about his physical well being, and from the quiet spaces inside the glass doors of his study, he also calmly observes the clamorous state of the world outside. The essays in this book, crafted with extraordinary subtlety and psychological depth, reflect the work of a great author at the height of his powers.
In his introduction to the work, Dr. Marvin Marcus provides a fresh perspective on Soseki the man and writer, as well as an insightful commentary on the novel itself and the place of reminiscence in Soseki’s writings. A selection of photographs of Soseki and his family and friends add further interest to the book.

The 210th Day

This novel follows two friends’ attempt to climb the rumbling Mount Aso as it threatens to erupt, recording their banter about; their backgrounds, behaviours and reactions to the things they see along the way. The book combines western autobiography and the traditional Japanese literary diary.

My Individualism and the Philosophical Foundations of Literature

In these rare personal essays, Soseki defines the role of art in light of the isolation of the modern world. Each essay includes personal anecdotes that act as allegories about the fate of Japan.
In her introduction, Soseki expert Dr. Inger Sigrun Brodey masterfully unravels the complexities of the two essays.

The Theory of Literature and Other Critical Writings

Natsume Soseki, widely held to be Japan’s greatest modern novelist, in fact began his career as a literary theorist and scholar of English literature. In 1907, he published Theory of Literature, a remarkably forward thinking attempt to understand how and why we read. Soseki would later critique Theory of Literature as an unfinished work, but the text remains an unprecedented achievement, anticipating by decades the ideas and concepts that would form the critical foundations of formalism, structuralism, reader response theory, cognitive science, and postcolonialism. Employing the cutting edge approaches of contemporary psychology and sociology, Soseki created a model for studying the conscious experience of reading, as well as a theory for how the process changes over time and across cultures. By insisting that literary taste is socially and historically determined, Soseki was able to challenge the superiority of the Western canon, and by grounding his theory in scientific knowledge, he was able to claim a universal validity. Along with Theory of Literature, this volume reproduces a later series of lectures and essays in which Soseki continued to develop his theories& mdash;some of which have never before been translated into English. In addition, the editors of the book provide a critical introduction contextualizing Soseki’s theoretical project in history and exploring its contemporary legacy.