On the 100th anniversary of his death, an android modeled on him was unveiled to recite selections from his works
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Natsume Sōseki
Natsume Sōseki was a Japanese novelist, poet, and scholar. He is considered one of the greatest writers in modern Japanese history and is often called the first modern novelist of Japan. Sōseki's fiction explored themes of individualism, loneliness, and the conflict between traditional Japanese values and the rapid Westernization of the Meiji era. His major works include I Am a Cat (1905), Botchan…
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culture · Japanese novelist (1867–1916) · writer · poet · novelist · university teacher · narrator · satirical novelist · also Natsume Sōseki, Natsume Kinnosuke, Soseki Natsume, Kinnosuke Natsume, Souseki Natsume, Sōseki
Born 9 February 1867 · Died 9 December 1916 · Q180903
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2016· 1 entry
1916· 3 entries
Died 1916-12-09.
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“A solidão é o preço que temos de pagar por termos nascido neste período moderno, tão cheio de liberdade, de independência e do nosso próprio egoísmo.”
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At the age of 49, leaving his final novel, Light and Dark, unfinished
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1915· 1 entry
Published his only overtly autobiographical work, Grass on the Wayside (Michikusa), which he distinguished from his other "autopsychological" novels
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1914· 1 entry
By Kokoro, his most famous novel in the West
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1912· 1 entry
Wrote The Wayfarer (Kōjin), a portrait of a paranoid scholar descending into madness
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1910· 1 entry
And continued to plague him until his death
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1907· 1 entry
Resigned from his university post to become a full-time author for the Asahi Shimbun newspaper, a move that marked the birth of the professional artist in modern Japan
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1905· 2 entries
Achieved fame with the publication of the satirical novel I Am a Cat
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The story, narrated by a pompous housecat who critiques the absurdities of his human master and his friends, was an immediate success
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1900· 2 entries
Was sent by the Japanese government to study in London, where he spent two miserable years marked by poverty, racial alienation, and a severe nervous breakdown
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The Japanese Ministry of Education ordered Sōseki to study in England for two years as the country's first English literary scholar
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1895· 2 entries
Driven by frustration and what his wife Kyōko later described as turmoil from a broken heart, he abruptly resigned his jobs and moved to a teaching position at a middle school in Matsuyama, Shikoku, a post he took to "bu
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An arranged marriage was negotiated with Nakane Kyōko, the daughter of a high-ranking government official
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1893· 1 entry
Sōseki took up several teaching posts in Tokyo but was deeply unhappy
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1890· 1 entry
Sōseki enrolled in the English department of Tokyo Imperial University
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1888· 1 entry
When Sōseki was twenty-one, a formal agreement was reached
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1884· 1 entry
At age seventeen, Sōseki passed the entrance exams for the First Special Higher School (a feeder school for Tokyo Imperial University), where classes were conducted almost entirely in English
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1881· 1 entry
Dropped out without telling his parents in order to enroll in Nishō Gakusha, a traditional academy focused on classical Chinese literature
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1876· 1 entry
Sōseki's biological father, Naokatsu, reclaimed him after learning that Shiobara was planning to put the boy to work in a restaurant
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1870· 1 entry
At the age of four, he was adopted again by a childless couple, Shiobara Shōnosuke and his wife Yasu
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1867· 1 entry
Born 1867-02-09.
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