Synopses & Reviews
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.
Review
"This elegant novel...suffuses the reader with a sense of old Japan."
-Los Angeles Times
"Soseki is the representative modern Japanese novelist, a figure of truly national stature."
-Haruki Murakami
Review
Synopsis
One of Japan's most treasured novels--new to Penguin Classics
A hilarious tale about a young man's rebellion against -the system- in a country school, Natsume Soseki's Botchan has enjoyed a timeless popularity in Japan. The setting is Japan's deep south, where the author himself spent some time teaching English in a boys' school. Into this conservative world, with its social proprieties and established pecking order, breezes Botchan, down from the big city and with scant respect for either his elders or his noisy young charges. The result is a light, funny, fast-paced novel.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Synopsis
Botchan is a modern young man from the Tokyo metropolis, sent to the ultra-traditional Matsuyama district as a Maths teacher after his the death of his parents. Cynical, rebellious and immature, Botchan finds himself facing several tests, from the pupils - prone to playing tricks on their new, na ve teacher; the staff - vain, immoral, and in danger of becoming a bad influence on Botchan; and from his own as-yet-unformed nature, as he finds his place in the world. One of the most popular novels in Japan where it is considered a classic of adolescence, as seminal as The Catcher in the Rye, Botchan is as funny, poignant and memorable as it was when first published, over 100 years ago.
In J. Cohn's introduction to his colourful translation, he discusses Botchan's success, the book's clash between Western intellectualism and traditional Japanese values, and the importance of names and nicknames in the novel.
Synopsis
No collection of Japanese literature is complete without Natsume Soseki's
Kokoro, his most famous novel and the last he complete 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.
Synopsis
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.
Synopsis
One of Japan's most treasured novels—new to Penguin Classics A hilarious tale about a young man's rebellion against "the system" in a country school, Natsume Soseki's
Botchan has enjoyed a timeless popularity in Japan. The setting is Japan's deep south, where the author himself spent some time teaching English in a boys' school. Into this conservative world, with its social proprieties and established pecking order, breezes Botchan, down from the big city and with scant respect for either his elders or his noisy young charges. The result is a light, funny, fast-paced novel.
About the Author
Natsume Soseki (1867–1916) is widely considered the foremost novelist of the Meiji era.
J. Cohn teaches Japanese literature at the University of Hawaii.