・We talked of this and that. I should not have remembered the conversation at all, had it not been for the fact that in the course of it we talked of one matter which was of particular interest to me.
Sensei lived in complete obscurity. Souseki Natume：Kokoro Translated by Edwin McClellan
Few people today would feel enthusiastic about the victory in the Russo-Japanese War. However, the death of Emperor Meiji and the suicide of General Nogi had an immeasurable impact on the Japanese people and the literature of the time. The “Sensei” in Natsume Soseki’s “Kokoro” was also inspired by these events to take his own life.
Meiji era and K
In Natsume Soseki’s novel “Kokoro,” the character known as “Sensei” also chooses to end his life following the deaths of both Emperor Meiji and General Nogi. The story’s narrator, a young man referred to as “I,” encounters a man accompanied by a Westerner at a seaside tea house in Kamakura. This man comes to be called “Sensei” by the narrator.
If you, the reader, were a teenager picking up this book without any prior knowledge, General Nogi might not occupy your thoughts much. Initially, readers are likely to be drawn in by the narrative style of “Sensei” and “I,” the youthful student. Soseki skillfully has Sensei declare early on, “I am a lonely man,” which gradually draws the lonely young readers from the shore into the deeper, darker themes of death. This exploration extends beyond the simple end of life to questions of loyalty, righteousness, the enigma of suicide, and different views on life and death. Readers are left grappling with these themes, recalling that mourning is an act of the living, and are eventually brought back to reality, likely feeling profoundly moved by the experience.
At any age, and especially when young, people seek proof of ‘love’. This is why this story is so clever. The ‘Sensei’ tells ‘me’, who doesn’t know much about love, “But do you know, that there is guilt also in loving?”
The young man is drawn to the Sensei because he wants to love, and because he is already driven by love.
The Sensei explained that this was but a preparatory step (a staircase to love). In this way, both ‘I’ and the reader come to stand on the same ground.
With this groundwork laid, the stage is set. From here, the reader descends into the section of Sensei’s ‘testament’. This novel, composed of the sections ‘Sensei and I’ and ‘My Parents and I’, features a young calligrapher as the narrator. However, the ‘Sensei’s Testament’ chapter takes us back to Sensei’s younger days. Sensei became distrustful of people after his parents died of illness, and his uncle embezzled his inheritance. Here, Sensei also articulates one truth: money changes people. He then sold his family home, leaving only his parents’ graves intact, and decided never to return to his hometown. He continued his education at Tokyo Imperial University, lodging with a military widow in his youth. He noted that the widow’s daughter, Shizu, exuded a fragrance of the opposite sex. There, both the widow and her daughter took good care of him, providing him with the best room.
Initially, he was suspicious of their kindness, but over time, he grew to trust and develop an affection for Shizu. This affection was less about sexual love and more akin to ‘faith’. While Sensei had his doubts about money, he harbored hopeful and unwavering beliefs about ‘love’. Sensei had a childhood friend named K（initial）K was the son of a temple priest but was adopted by another family on the condition that he would become a doctor by attending medical school. However, K felt that the spiritual demands of ‘devotion’ did not align with medicine, so he went to a different university, lying to his adoptive family. Eventually, the burden of this deception became too heavy for K, and he confessed the truth to his adoptive family. Naturally, K was disowned.
Sympathetic to K’s plight as he ran out of funds for his education and began to suffer a nervous breakdown, Sensei brought K to his own lodgings. K, influenced by his Buddhist upbringing, was a sincere and honest man. Therefore, it wasn’t long before he began to suspect that Sensei was becoming too friendly with Shizu. Ultimately, K confessed to Sensei that he had fallen in love with Shizu.
The Sensei wanted Shizu more than loyalty and friendship for his longtime childhood friend. So he offered to marry the young lady to her mother, without even telling Shizu directly.
The Sensei and Shizu got engaged, but he never told K. However, the young lady’s mother had already informed K about the engagement; K knew about it and talked to the Sensei in a normal way.
Then K committed suicide.
Death and Righteousness
The last part of the Sensei’s farewell letter referred to the fall of Emperor Meiji and the suicide of General Nogi. He tried to count the years during which General Nogi had contemplated suicide. But in the end, the Sensei could not understand General Nogi’s desire to commit suicide. And he left in his will that no one should understand his own death. Regarding this first-person and third-person death, the philosopher Jankélévitch described death as first-person death, second-person death, and third-person death, but this story encompasses all deaths, including suicide. As for second-person death, the Jewish rabbi Grollman says that it can take away the past, present, and future of the ‘I’. The Sensei may also have been deprived by K’s death. For us, the deaths of both Emperor Meiji and General Nogi are in the third person and psychologically distant, but Soseki nevertheless reflected the complexity of the human interior through “Kokoro”. The Sensei’s loneliness, guilt, and desire for love show that human nature remains the same, even if the historical background has changed. The Meiji era itself was a time of great change, and people’s attitudes and values were shaken.
Unlike the Christian concept of Logos—“the Word” that was with God from the beginning (John 1:1)—the Japanese notion of kotoba (言葉) does not carry the sense of a transcendent principle. Its etymology points instead to human utterance, something finite and situated at “the end of speech” rather than its divine origin. However, as Kitaro Nishida also mentioned, ‘There is something hidden in the very root of Japan, something akin to perceiving the form of the formless and hearing the voice of the voiceless,’ there exists a culture that finds beauty in impermanence and change, such as in the Tale of the Heike and Sonezaki Shinju. Therefore, when discussing Natsume Soseki, it might be desirable to view Japanese literature in light of the significance that cannot be intellectually constrained by what presently exists, keeping in mind the formless and voiceless meanings.
While there are indeed similarities between Christianity and Japanese literature in their pursuits to grasp the intangible, the barrier of language often obstructs my efforts to fully convey the concept of the transcendent God when translating Christian-related material. Nevertheless, I believe it is crucial not to equate ‘differences’ with ‘wrongness’ due to this, and I do not hold the belief that other countries are inherently superior. I see the act of incorporating the absent, the seeds sown by God, as essential for reaffirming our essence as Japanese individuals. It could be argued that we, from this side, might already be acquainted with the beauty in darkness if it seems a dark place from the other side. I take pride in understanding the beauty of the tragedy of the eight-year-old Emperor Antoku and the nun in the Tale of the Heike. Their deaths tell of what is to come, signaling the passing of time into oblivion. Despite my numerous visits to the shrine in Sonezaki, Osaka, there remains no trace of what the lovers contemplating suicide must have felt. This serves as a reminder that the vibrancy that once thrived there has not endured in the same way. This, one might say, is aesthetics.
Death is an impartial, inevitable aspect of our lives that disregards our thoughts and desires. Love, on the other hand, is subjective and mutable, adapting to individual emotions and values. Love may sometimes evoke feelings of remorse and inner turmoil. Death can be seen as a static entity, while love is dynamic and intimately personal. In ‘Kokoro,’ each character bears the burden of their own sins, with K carrying the guilt of lying about studying medicine and ultimately choosing suicide akin to Hamletesque. It remains uncertain when the Sensei contemplated confessing his sins.
Lastly, I would like to conclude by recounting the story from Luke 18:9-14. The Pharisees, convinced of their righteousness, prayed internally with self-righteousness. ‘I thank you, God, that I am not like others: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector…’ In contrast, the tax collector humbly prayed, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’ Jesus regarded the repentant tax collector as righteous.
In the midst of this, it seems that the Sensei was unable to live up to any of the former Bushido morals of “righteousness, bravery, humanity, courtesy, sincerity, honor, and loyalty”. Even the young woman he married was not important to him. In terms of modern values, how selfish he was! He didn’t work, he only had assets, and he died just so he could leave his fortune to his wife.
He was like a ‘nobody’ in this world. Prophetically, this ‘floating’ existence does not seem like something from the distant past. This is because many people today are still unclear about the meaning of existence and social responsibility. And the striking phrase “Love is a crime” expresses the state of “Kokoro,” which cannot be righteous even through love, in response to General Nogi, who committed suicide following the death of Emperor Meiji.
It could be said that death is something that does not require our input or opinion. But the soul speaks to us and questions us: was K’s irrevocable, unilateral ‘death’, in the context of Adlerian psychology, an act of ‘revenge and accusation’? Or did he carry out the ‘suicide’ that the proud Hamlet refrained from committing? Or perhaps it was like Melisande in Pelleas et Melisande, dying from wounds that even a little bird might not have succumbed to. K left behind a will and then died. The Sensei attempted to reconcile K’s demise in a manner analogous to Salome holding Jokanaan’s head. The Sensei was unable to demonstrate either righteousness or courtesy from start to finish. The Sensei could not believe that K’s will truly reflected his innermost feelings. Taking solely from the will’s contents, it would seem to convey a simple message: ‘I am a weak-willed person with no prospects for the future, so I choose to end my life.’ However, the Sensei stumbled upon the added words, seemingly inscribed by K with leftover ink, saying “I should have died earlier”, which caused him much consternation.
It seemed as if the will was blaming him, saying, ‘It’s your fault,’ but in reality, it was different. while the deliberate omission of certain truths could have eroded the Sensei’s sense of self-worth. It’s possible that there existed a language only comprehensible to the Sensei, and that there seemed to be a language that only the Sensei could hear, as if the shadow of his death loomed over him.The Sensei knew that comparing himself to General Nogi was presumptuous and, realising their differences, he continued to see his own existence as lacking value. Ananda left Buddha’s teachings for later generations, but the Sensei had no means to leave anyone a reason for K’s death.
For a long time, he had kept this burden, until he decided to leave his account, the ‘will’, to just one student. Not even Sizu, whom he married, understood why her close friend K had died. Her innocent sense of isolation was transient, yet there remained a single glimmer of hope amidst the uncertainty. That hope could perhaps be the young scribe reading the last testament on the train at the end. In that act, The Sensei may have finally transitioned from being an obscure individual to becoming a ‘master’ with a meaningful purpose.
I do not intend to connect the Sensei’s conscious repentance akin to that of the tax collector. His ‘death’ is not that. It seems he aimed for righteousness towards K and what could be likened to martyrdom towards the end of the Meiji era, fully aware that he was not akin to Emperor Meiji or General Nogi. Unable to discuss K even with his wife, he penned his life story to a youth who seemed lost. To me, this final act felt like a resistance against an aesthetic leaving no trace. This act of resistance could be seen as what’s ultimately beautiful. Despite declaring love as sinful, the Sensei persistently advised the young man on loving others. He seemed to insinuate that the subject of his apology would vanish. It’s a common misinterpretation among many Christians that a mere apology to God suffices, resembling the self-assured Pharisees. Shouldn’t this passage be interpreted as that Jesus does not wish for pursuits that fail to achieve righteousness? The Sensei could have shown more bravery throughout. He appeared cowardly, choosing to focus on himself rather than his wife. However, what he truly depicted is the inevitable truth that all things tangible will eventually fade away.
What is the contemporary ‘kokoro’?
An important part of addressing the challenges facing the modern Catholic Church is to listen to the complaints of victims. Calls for an apology should be seen as the voice of God and should be met with kindness and understanding. Even if the events happened decades ago, we must not trivialize them. If clergy receive criticism from believers, they should accept it as an opportunity for conversion.
In “Kokoro,” the characters are portrayed at the intersection of love and death, shifting from the first person to the second and third persons, making empathy as a third party significant in the relationship between this book and its readers. In the modern internet age, the right thing is not always received correctly.
I once translated ‘私刑’ (shikei) as ‘mob justice,’ which at the time might have been considered a mistranslation. However, recent events and public opinion have made me realize that this was not a mistake. In Japan, due to the lack of interest in Catholicism, there has been no mob punishment. However, when school teachers have committed similar acts, they have already suffered ‘private punishment,’ with their identities and photos being exposed online by mobs.
The proliferation of social networking sites has made the death and pain of others more immediate, yet the violent nature of mobs under the guise of sympathy is a significant issue. People working on the internet view this violence through the lens of “traffic.” In the future, AI may control inappropriate posts, but individual restraint will still be required.
Today, there is a growing need to distinguish oneself from others. Distant deaths should be considered irrelevant to oneself, and information about wars and disasters is often mingled with fake news, making verification difficult. Expressions of sympathy for victims can sometimes cause more harm, requiring prudence and discretion.
When you hear of someone’s death, intended kind words to the bereaved can be misunderstood and perceived as slander. In such an environment, those who can exercise self-control learn to distance themselves from others, while those who cannot may act violently as part of a mob.
Especially in the Catholic Church, it is crucial to acknowledge past sins, review doctrines and canon law, and take the lead in exercising self-control and self-discipline. We must respect the voices of the victims and understand the pain of revisiting past events. At the very least, we must not participate in any cover-up.
It is important to maintain a conscience, much like the shadow of K that haunted his Sensei. Just as Jesus acknowledged that some people are not righteous, ‘Kokoro’ includes characters ignorant of right and wrong, because the depths of the soul encompass a profound ignorance of good and evil
Everyone, always remember to be grateful for your life and the loved ones in it.
(Introduction)
– To be honest, I don’t really see the “Sensei
” as particularly virtuous, kind of like Osamu Dazai in his way of life. Instead, I got the impression that the character “I” who found the “Sensei” shows potential. The way he picks up and collects memories about the Sensei, acting practically as a disciple, suggests he’s quite a personality. Now, obviously, it’s just a story, but real life isn’t that straightforward. If it were real, then the guy’s memory-gathering skills would be impressive. However, when I lean towards more morbid themes, mistakes seem to happen more often. Recently though, I’ve become more objective and I’ve written more naturally, without the same depth of immersion as before.
In terms of content, through Natsume Soseki’s “Kokoro,” I touched on the aesthetics of impermanence and the struggle against it. Given that K was a Buddhist, I chose elements of Buddhism, and for Christianity, I picked “The Pharisee and the Tax Collector.” Ultimately, this piece reflects the confusion of changing values from the Meiji era, pointing out that in modern times, it’s no longer always right to take the perspective of a third person as if it were your own.
Finally, he addressed the issue of injustice within Catholicism, noting that ethics have changed.In Japan, there is little interest in the matter of Catholic injustice, leading to no occurrences of ‘mob justice.’ （vigilantism）However, sometimes in Japan, ‘school teachers’ who have been involved in incidents are portrayed, including their faces, on social networking sites (SNS) on the internet.While mob power is undoubtedly violent, it’s not entirely evil. There are facts supporting that some found salvation in those situations, for those who couldn’t find help through official channels. Hence, I hope Christians exercise restraint before making such judgments. I also think I’ve brought a touch of contemporary interpretation to Jankélévitch’s “Death” of the third person.
I included Hamlet（Suicide in Conflict with Faith）and Pelléas and Mélisande（Deaths Unseen by Others, Where the Individual’s Strength Fades Away），Salome (because the figure gently lifts his head with both hands, as if to hold it, to see his face in death) to temper the portrayal of suicide.
I juxtaposed these two to soften the sensational depiction of suicide. I regret that I can only express this vaguely, but I do wonder if the metaphor still holds.（I’m not sure if the metaphor is still dead.）
Now, as Catholics, we have become more critical of the mob and our interpretation has evolved somewhat, yet it remains the elusive ‘evil’ that many people seek. In February 2022, it was still before the assassination of former Prime Minister Abe, and we were able to publish this article. However, criminal psychology is one of my research interests.
Chris Kyogetu 