Natsume Soseki's Kokoro

Few novels dare to touch the inner vulnerability of humankind. It is Soseki’s Kokoro that captures the essence of friendship and loneliness, truth and betrayal, and life and death. The novel is, after all, about human nature. Any one reading this powerful work will quickly relate to the characters who go through tremendous strife, personal changes and much reflection. While Kokoro was written in Japan many years ago, it may be valuable to a reader even in contemporary society as its attributes may be embraced today, despite its age and cultural focus. Natsume Soseki’s Kokoro explores a great deal of subject matter. Several themes are woven into the pages of this older novel. It is fair to say, at least based on a personal experience, that one might have a tendency to discount the credibility of the work or deem much of the information irrelevant due to ages age and cultural differentiation. However, it will be shown that Kokoro is a novel that, like so many others, breaks the barriers of time. Soseki successfully creates deep characters that permeate the weak boundaries of the human character. We recognize that this novel shares a sense of timelessness supporting the entire foundation; the themes we see explored here are quite applicable to the lives we live today. Naturally, the Japanese component of the work is what makes the clear distinction between Japanese culture and Western mentality. But all the same, the morals in Kokoro seem to be fundamental enforcing great personal reflection upon the reader.

As the reader progresses through the novel, contemplating themes and depicting the characters, specifically the student and Sensei, he begins to develop the notion that indeed the characters possess a sense of timelessness. They could have been born in the twentieth century and experienced the same sort of friendship and turmoil. However, the relationship between the two men is out of the realm of ordinary fiction. It is unique and something that this author