This is not a book I would’ve picked up on my own but andrewblackman.net posted about it and I’ve read little Japanese literature so I figured I should give it a try. I can’t say I loved it, and at times I was a bit bored, but also it’s the kind of book that leads to deep reflection about human nature and emotions, especially within a specific culture. 

Published in 1914 and set in the late Meiji period (which I had never heard of), it appears to be kind of a moral questioning about focusing on the common/expected good vs acting on individual needs and desires.

The book is divided into three parts. In part one, the narrator is a young man living in Tokyo as a university  student where he meets an older, educated man, Sensei, whom he looks up to and follows around, asking for conversation and seemingly some sort of mentorship. In the middle section the narrator goes back to his rural home to help with his ailing father, but he is torn between this family duty and continuing his studies and his friendship with Sensei. 

The third section – the most interesting one – is a long cathartic letter from Sensi back to the narrator in which Sensei discloses why he was often closed off, not answering many of the narrator’s questions, ultimately revealing guilt and shame he has carried his whole life. 

The book contains little action or plot. It’s more of a psychological analysis of values, isolation, depression, guilt, honor, jealousy, and many other repressed emotions not spoken about or acknowledged, especially in this dominant male Japanese culture of the early 20th c. 

There are multiple translations of this book, and this one (from 1957) seems to offer more accessible language as well as very short chapters. The book’s themes are not so different from other cultures and time periods, but its style–simple, short, and blunt, yet also agonizingly analytical–bring out its uniqueness. I’m glad to have read it.