A phenomenal work. No retrospective of Japanese literature should be complete without Soseki and his Kokoro. ( )

When I first arrived in Japan, way back in the Showa Era, many of the first Japanese I met, on learning that I was bookish, would immediately, and graciously, present me with a copy of Botchan by Natsume Soseki: I ended up with at least four copies on my shelf. I rather suspect Botchan occupies a place similar in the Japanese literary firmament to that occupied by Catcher in the Rye in the American galaxy—a sort of "Catcher in the Rice," if you will. That is, I assumed it was the sort of book that everyone was forced to read at some point in their lives, or felt they should have read, or had heard a lot of people describe as a masterpiece. I resolved, being the contrarian that I am, not to read it, a decision I stuck to for many years. Now comes the point where I should tell you that I finally did read it, and found it to be marvelous. That's half true. I did, after many years, and having sold all but one copy, open it and found it . . . okay. Not terrible, but not great.

I have, however, just completed another Soseki, Kokoro, and did, in fact find it marvelous. Written in 1914, it seems quite different from contemporary Western novels in its quiet simplicity, and its formal integrity. We are given three sections. In the first the narrator takes on an older man as a mentor; in the second we see the young man removed from Tokyo and his "sensei," and in the third we delve into Sensei's past and find out what made him the person he is. Soseki invites us—quietly, subtly—to slide these three puzzle pieces around, to attempt to make them cohere into a portrait of our young first person narrator.

It may be time for me to reread Botchan.

An insight into the mind of a man «of the past» entering Japanese modernity.
This intimate book illustrates the clash between two generations of Japanese men (I emphasize on MEN since this book really sets women apart)... This is a highly philosophical book, not in a theorical way, but in it's capacity of finding a way to explain through
a simple voice the change that took place with the end of an «obsolete», or traditional, way of thinking the world (in contradiction to the «modern world») in Japan.

I think one needs to have at least minimal knowledge of Japanese history and philosophy to appreciate what this novel is about.
Worth rereading, since this book is about a lot more than a simple character's story. ( )

The first wee bit was difficult to read as I didn't really like the narrator at first, though overcame this. A good look at Japanese society, social norms, relationships, but this also has a universal appeal. ( )

Japanese writers have this knack of tugging at one’s heartstrings. They expressed deep and honest sentiment without too much fuss. Their honesty is their own subtlety. They can avoid sentimentalism by hiding under its veil. Soseki is one such writer, and in ‘Kokoro’ he has given us an anatomy of loneliness and mortality. The existential pain is muted, as if dampening the piercing cries of a melodrama, only to produce a howling silence.

The novel is divided into three parts, all told in the first person point of view. The first two were related by a student, and the last part by Sensei, his newfound friend who in some ways he considered his mentor. The character of Sensei lies at the heart of ‘Kokoro’, which in the foreword the translator Edwin McClellan said a word that means ‘the heart of things.’ The book gave us a portrait of the man Sensei, how he came to be an aloof and detached man that he was and how he came to have such a singularly bleak worldview where men are always suspect and were out to get the better of his fellowmen.

It can be said that ‘Kokoro’ is a product of its time, with its reference to the passing Meiji era and to certain famous personalities of the Japanese empire at that time. It is less a eulogy to the past era than a meditation on what it all amounted to. It illuminates some of the customs and norms of Japan (including its depiction of gender relations) at the turn of the 20th century. However, in its modern (existentialist) treatment of the themes of friendship, love, betrayal, and guilt, the book remains as timeless as can be. ( )