Sōseki

Sōseki PDF Author: John Nathan
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231546971
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
Natsume Sōseki (1867–1916) was the father of the modern novel in Japan, chronicling the plight of bourgeois characters caught between familiar modes of living and the onslaught of Western values and conventions. Yet even though generations of Japanese high school students have been expected to memorize passages from his novels and he is routinely voted the most important Japanese writer in national polls, he remains less familiar to Western readers than authors such as Kawabata, Tanizaki, and Mishima. In this biography, John Nathan provides a lucid and vivid account of a great writer laboring to create a remarkably original oeuvre in spite of the physical and mental illness that plagued him all his life. He traces Sōseki’s complex and contradictory character, offering rigorous close readings of Sōseki’s groundbreaking experiments with narrative strategies, irony, and multiple points of view as well as recounting excruciating hospital stays and recurrent attacks of paranoid delusion. Drawing on previously untranslated letters and diaries, published reminiscences, and passages from Sōseki’s fiction, Nathan renders intimate scenes of the writer’s life and distills a portrait of a tormented yet unflaggingly original author. The first full-length study of Sōseki in fifty years, Nathan’s biography elevates Sōseki to his rightful place as a great synthesizer of literary traditions and a brilliant chronicler of universal experience who, no less than his Western contemporaries, anticipated the modernism of the twentieth century.

Sōseki

Sōseki PDF Author: John Nathan
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231546971
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
Natsume Sōseki (1867–1916) was the father of the modern novel in Japan, chronicling the plight of bourgeois characters caught between familiar modes of living and the onslaught of Western values and conventions. Yet even though generations of Japanese high school students have been expected to memorize passages from his novels and he is routinely voted the most important Japanese writer in national polls, he remains less familiar to Western readers than authors such as Kawabata, Tanizaki, and Mishima. In this biography, John Nathan provides a lucid and vivid account of a great writer laboring to create a remarkably original oeuvre in spite of the physical and mental illness that plagued him all his life. He traces Sōseki’s complex and contradictory character, offering rigorous close readings of Sōseki’s groundbreaking experiments with narrative strategies, irony, and multiple points of view as well as recounting excruciating hospital stays and recurrent attacks of paranoid delusion. Drawing on previously untranslated letters and diaries, published reminiscences, and passages from Sōseki’s fiction, Nathan renders intimate scenes of the writer’s life and distills a portrait of a tormented yet unflaggingly original author. The first full-length study of Sōseki in fifty years, Nathan’s biography elevates Sōseki to his rightful place as a great synthesizer of literary traditions and a brilliant chronicler of universal experience who, no less than his Western contemporaries, anticipated the modernism of the twentieth century.

The Gate

The Gate PDF Author: Natsume Soseki
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 1590175875
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
An NYRB Classics Original A humble clerk and his loving wife scrape out a quiet existence on the margins of Tokyo. Resigned, following years of exile and misfortune, to the bitter consequences of having married without their families’ consent, and unable to have children of their own, Sōsuke and Oyone find the delicate equilibrium of their household upset by a new obligation to meet the educational expenses of Sōsuke’s brash younger brother. While an unlikely new friendship appears to offer a way out of this bind, it also soon threatens to dredge up a past that could once again force them to flee the capital. Desperate and torn, Sōsuke finally resolves to travel to a remote Zen mountain monastery to see if perhaps there, through meditation, he can find a way out of his predicament. This moving and deceptively simple story, a melancholy tale shot through with glimmers of joy, beauty, and gentle wit, is an understated masterpiece by one of Japan’s greatest writers. At the end of his life, Natsume Sōseki declared The Gate, originally published in 1910, to be his favorite among all his novels. This new translation captures the oblique grace of the original while correcting numerous errors and omissions that marred the first English version.

Sanshirō

Sanshirō PDF Author: Natsume Sōseki
Publisher: Graphic Arts Books
ISBN: 1513288326
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 165

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Book Description
Sanshirō (1908) is a novel by Natsume Sōseki. Inspired by the author’s experience as a student from the countryside who moved to Tokyo, Sanshirō is a story of family, growth, and identity that captures the isolation and humor of adjusting to life on one’s own. Recognized as a powerful story by generations of readers, Sanshirō is a classic novel from one of Japan’s most successful twentieth century writers. Raised on the island of Kyushu, Sanshirō Ogawa excels in high school and earns the chance to continue his studies at the University of Tokyo. On his way there, he naively accepts an invitation to share a room with a young woman in Nagoya, realizing only too late that she has other things than sleep in mind. As he adjusts to life in the big city, he finds himself stumbling into more uncomfortable situations with women, radical political figures, and interfering colleagues, all of which shape his sense of identity while teaching him the value of trust, courage, and self-respect. While he misses his family and friends in Kyushu, Sanshirō learns to value his newfound independence, forming friendships that will last a lifetime. Sanshirō proves a gifted student but struggles to understand the intricacies of academic life. As he begins a relationship with the lovely Mineko, he begins to doubt his ability to defy tradition. Will he return home to raise a family in Kyushu, or remain in Tokyo to chart a path of his own? Eminently human, Sanshirō is a beloved story of isolation, morality, and conflict from a master of Japanese fiction. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Natsume Sōseki’s Sanshirō is a classic work of Japanese literature reimagined for modern readers.

Rediscovering Natsume Sōseki

Rediscovering Natsume Sōseki PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 900421402X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 171

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Book Description
First publication in English of Soseki’s travels through Manchuria on the then recently-acquired South Manchurian Railway. 6-week travelogue including boat from Osaka to Dairen, railway up the Liaodong Peninsular to Fushun. Many descriptions of Manchuria. It is a lively, informative and sometimes very funny narrative, which reveals Soseki's wit and Western-style humour in observing the human condition, as well as the literary techniques that characterize his subsequent achievements in shaping the modern Japanese novel. The Introduction by Inger Sigrun Brodey provides both a new perspective on Soseki the man and writer, as well as an insightful commentary on the SMR journey itself and the place of the travelogue in Soseki's writings. A selection of Sammy Tsumematsu's collection of previously unpublished photographs of Soseki is also included.

Sun at Midnight

Sun at Midnight PDF Author: Musō Soseki
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781556594397
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Out of print for two decades and reissued in this updated edition, Sun at Midnight is the first translation into English of the work of Muso Soseki, a Zen roshi of the fourteenth century and father of what we now think of as the Zen rock garden. These sublime translations reveal W.S. Merwin's own resources as a gardener; the heart of both his and Soseki's endeavors can be seen with clarity through these inspiring poems and letters. Intensely lyric and rich with the concrete details of sight, sound, and scent, deeply immersed in the great philosophical questions, the work is transformative and full-spectrum. From a telling smile and handshake in "the one wind" to "something beyond happiness / inside the gate / of this mountain," the infinity in a moment can be found everywhere. All worries and troubles have gone from my breast and I play joyfully far from the world For a person of Zen no limits exist The blue sky must feel ashamed to be so small Book jacket.

Kusamakura

Kusamakura PDF Author: Natsume Soseki
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101097558
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
A stunning new English translation—the first in more than forty years—of a major novel by the father of modern Japanese fiction Natsume Soseki's Kusamakura—meaning “grass pillow”—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 Soseki'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.

Three Cornered World

Three Cornered World PDF Author: Natsume Suseki
Publisher: Regnery Publishing
ISBN: 9780895267689
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Book Description
Roman.

And Then

And Then PDF Author: 夏目漱石
Publisher: PeriplusEdition
ISBN: 9780804815376
Category : Adult children
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"And Then," ranked as one of Soseki Natsume's most insightful and stirring novels, tells the story of Daisuke, a young Japanese man struggling with his personal purpose and identity, as well as the changing social landscape of Meiji-era Japan. As Japan enters the 20th century, ancient customs give way to western ideals, creating a perfect storm of change in a culture that operates on the razor's edge of societal obligation and personal freedom.

210th Day

210th Day PDF Author: Natsume Soseki
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
ISBN: 146290209X
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 106

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Book Description
First published as Nihyaku Toka in 1906, The 210th Day is published here for the first time in English. Focusing on two strongly contrasting characters, Kei and Roku, as they attempt to climb the rumbling Mount Aso as it threatens to erupt, it is a celebration of personal experience and subjective reaction to an event in the author's life. During their progress up the mountain—where they encounter a storm on the 210th day (the lunar calendar day traditionally associated with typhoons)—and during a stopover at an inn along the way, Roku, the main protagonist, banters with Kei about his background, behavior and his reaction to the things they see. Kei surprises his easy–going friend by advocating a radical social agenda. Written almost entirely in the form of an extended dialogue, carried over several episodes, the book reveals Soseki's gift for the striking image and his vivid imagination, as well as his talent for combining Eastern and Western genres—the Western auto–biography and the Japanese traditional literary diary—into a work with a unified theme and atmosphere. In his Introduction to the book, Dr Marvin Marcus, Associate Professor of Japanese Language and Literature at Washington University, provides insight into Soseki's life and work.

Ten Nights Dreaming

Ten Nights Dreaming PDF Author: Natsume Soseki
Publisher: Courier Dover Publications
ISBN: 0486807231
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 100

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Book Description
A murderer discovers his true nature from a talking infant, a samurai is frustrated in his attempts to meditate, and a dying man bestows his hat on a friend in these surrealistic short stories. The dream-like, open-ended tales by the father of Japanese modernist literature offer thought-provoking reflections on fear, death, and loneliness. Their settings range from the Meiji period of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the era in which the tales were written, to the prehistoric Age of the Gods; the twelfth-century Kamakura period, in which the samurai class emerged; and the remote future. A scholar of British literature, author Natsume Sōseki (1867–1916) was also a composer of haiku, kanshi, and fairy tales. The stories of Ten Nights Dreaming, which were originally published as a newspaper serial, constitute milestones of Japanese fantasy. Like Sōseki's other writings, they have had a profound effect on readers, writers, and filmmakers. This edition features an expert new English translation by Matt Treyvaud, who has translated the story "The Cat's Grave" for this work as well.