Kokoro Essay
Kokoro written by Natsume Soseki
Natsume Soseki throughout this novel went into great detail about friendship and the different stages of friendship. With a little help from a man he met on the beach at Kamakura he went from a young man trying to grasp the future to a very intelligent university graduate with all his morals set straight. Soseki’s novel the Kokoro (“The heart of things”) was a very pleasant novel to read. This novel was written in 1914 which was two years after the death of Emperor Meiji. Throughout this novel a lot of questions were raised and for the most part eventually answered. Japanese people during Meiji era (1868-1912) were in the midst of a major reformation, The moderation of the country of Japan. Natsume Soseki at the later parts of the movement was perhaps the most profound and most versatile novelist of them all[1]. Japanese people at this time mostly lived in Traditional housing. By this I mean houses were usually one story basic essentials nothing like some of the houses that are being built today. Sensei[2] on the other hand lived in non traditional housing thus meaning he had some kind of wealth. After a few visits that Soseki had given Sensei at his lodgings I began to realize that Japanese people at this time were very humble. Although Sensei was very confused on why Soseki continued to visit him and seek knowledge from him there was never a point in the book that Sensei wished anything harmful or bad upon Soseki. Around this time of the first meeting of Soseki and Sensei, Soseki was going through a change as well. It states that over the couple months that Soseki went home to be with family and his return to Tokyo that he was no a University student. This caught my eye because it states that he was a college student before[3]. After much research on this topic I could only come to a few assumptions of what this could meant. First “College” student might mean high school student here in the US. Secondly
Natsume Soseki throughout this novel went into great detail about friendship and the different stages of friendship. With a little help from a man he met on the beach at Kamakura he went from a young man trying to grasp the future to a very intelligent university graduate with all his morals set straight. Soseki’s novel the Kokoro (“The heart of things”) was a very pleasant novel to read. This novel was written in 1914 which was two years after the death of Emperor Meiji. Throughout this novel a lot of questions were raised and for the most part eventually answered. Japanese people during Meiji era (1868-1912) were in the midst of a major reformation, The moderation of the country of Japan. Natsume Soseki at the later parts of the movement was perhaps the most profound and most versatile novelist of them all[1]. Japanese people at this time mostly lived in Traditional housing. By this I mean houses were usually one story basic essentials nothing like some of the houses that are being built today. Sensei[2] on the other hand lived in non traditional housing thus meaning he had some kind of wealth. After a few visits that Soseki had given Sensei at his lodgings I began to realize that Japanese people at this time were very humble. Although Sensei was very confused on why Soseki continued to visit him and seek knowledge from him there was never a point in the book that Sensei wished anything harmful or bad upon Soseki. Around this time of the first meeting of Soseki and Sensei, Soseki was going through a change as well. It states that over the couple months that Soseki went home to be with family and his return to Tokyo that he was no a University student. This caught my eye because it states that he was a college student before[3]. After much research on this topic I could only come to a few assumptions of what this could meant. First “College” student might mean high school student here in the US. Secondly