Kokoro (Paperback)

Thus, I believe this story though sad ends optimistically. We see that the narrator can learn much from Sensei's experiences. We also feel as though Sensei, though petrified, overcame his fear of friendship because of a sense of obligation.

Sensei's relationship with the young boy, although a salve to the lonesomeness both feel (for both the young boy growing up in modern Tokyo and a reclusive old man living alone with his wife), is tainted by Sensei's mysterious past about which he refuses to talk. From the narration, we gather a sense of the deep internal torment conflicting Sensei, but are not explicitly told why. His dark apprehensions continue to haunt him up until the present time, many years later. It is not until Sensei's final epistle before he kills himself, a story-in-itself which takes up the entire second half, that Sensei explains the rationale for his brooding and unsettling behavior ever since the suicide of his boyhood friend, "K".

Throughout the letter, we witness Sensei's most vulnerable weaknesses, and also his increasingly looming guilt over the feelings he could not help but harbor for K during his jealous fits for their admiree, Ojosan. In effect, we have a story wrapped up in its own emotional turmoil, and central to it all, though sadly unaware that they are, the victims: Ojosan, who later does become Sensei's wife, and, in some manner, the narrator, who is at a loss for his mentor's great escape from his undead reality. At the end, though, we see some resolution both physically and emotionally. Sensei's original intent to honor his friend through the taking of his own life is finally realized, and not with sadness. Soseki makes this point clear by the end that it would've been far worse had Sensei lived on as he did in paralysis, thereby perpetuating his own lingering guilt and the irreconciliable guilt he induced in others, particularly, Ojosan. Also, Sensei's need to preserve beauty at all costs, even at the expense of truth and a chance at redeemed happiness for both he and his wife, dies as another symbol of restoration that results from Sensei's death. Thus, in a matter of roundabout-ness, Soseki succeeds in conveying the equilibrium that is restored through the commission of right deeds.

By the end, we are forced to consider Sensei as a good, but ultimately flawed and deeply cowardly, man who ends up doing the right thing.

Unfortunately, the sitting on Sensei's inner embattlement with both his own cowardice and his jealousy of K becomes too much of a stumbling block and causes the narrative to become paralyzingly slow. Though it suceeds in eliciting pathos at first, it repeats in somewhat agonizing fashion; the characters do not seem to change at all during the course of the story. Indeed, the story-logic becomes somewhat circular, showing the irrational inconsistencies that emotional strife wrecks on the mind. I found this as somewhat of an annoyance and particularly galling was the fact that the tripartite divisioning of the story leaves out all traces of the original thread, which describes the burgeoning relationship between Sensei and the narrator. Their surrogate kinship is never returned to after the opening segment and one wonders whether Soseki was aware of this loose end in the novel; if so, then the entire first half of the book was unncessary--just the final epistle would've been sufficient to convey his admittedly morbid sentiments about love as it pertained to the tragedy of this young man, who, in the end, proved himself capable of heroicism.

The book does shine, though, in some parts, especially in its discussion of love's two-headed spear. That even in one's victory in gaining love, there is guilt over the taking of it from another. This is Soseki's primary message, among others, that motivates the telling of his story, and it is one that would've been even more potent had the prose been more concentrated into its most essential parts, namely, the beginning and the end. Had this been a short story, the poignancy of the message would not have been lost. As it is, the theme comes across at best as diluted and overly melodramatic, both mistakes characteristic of amateur writers, though we should not expect this from a legend like Soseki.