Kokoro

by Natsume Soseki

Rating: 4 (5 votes)

Tags: Set in Japan Male author

Kokoro

Description:
The great Japanese author’s most famous novel, in its first new English translation in half a century No collection of Japanese literature is complete without Natsume Soseki's Kokoro, his most famous novel and the last he completed before his death. Published here in the first new translation in more than fifty years, Kokoro—meaning "heart"—is the story of a subtle and poignant friendship between two unnamed characters, a young man and an enigmatic elder whom he calls "Sensei." Haunted by tragic secrets that have cast a long shadow over his life, Sensei slowly opens up to his young disciple, confessing indiscretions from his own student days that have left him reeling with guilt, and revealing, in the seemingly unbridgeable chasm between his moral anguish and his student's struggle to understand it, the profound cultural shift from one generation to the next that characterized Japan in the early twentieth century.

Reviews:

Read Around The World Challenge user profile avatar for Cristina
(1 year ago)
04 Mar, 2024
Constant reflecting on death
avatar
(6 months ago)
23 Mar, 2025
A beautifully sad story. I’m sure everyone will be able to relate to some part of the narrative which touches loneliness, guilt, self-doubt, isolation and love.
Read Around The World Challenge user profile avatar for Clinton
(2 months ago)
12 Aug, 2025
I read Kokoro on the suggestion that it was like a literary version of an Ozu Movie. Similarities: Set in urban Japan; about relationships and family; in the first half little happens and nothing is fully spelled out so a lot is left to your interpretation; characters infrequently show strong emotion (we have to infer their emotions from oblique actions and words); has trains in it Dissimilarities: set pre WWI so a different context; in a word based medium and primarily the internal monologue or letters of a character, so very ‘talky’, unlike Ozu which is primarily visual and shows us gestures and expressions and a lot of quiet; In the second half the main character reveals he is surprisingly melodramatic and paranoid (which makes for frustrating reading) Also, strong misogyny (“Women are stupid” is a statement from one character)

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