Kokoro

Kokoro is a three-part novel published in 1914, and although its publication takes place in the Taisho Period, (1912-1926) it should be considered a Meiji Period (1868-1912) novel.  The Meiji Period was marked by Japan becoming a world power militarily and culturally.  There were a number of great Meiji Period novelists, and reading this book opened me up to one of them, Natsume Soseki.  The first two parts of the novel are rather short, dealing with the unnamed Narrator spending time first with Sensei (Part 1), an older Japanese man that the Narrator befriends, and the Narrator's family (Part 2), respectively.  The heart of the novel is Part 3, which takes the form of a long letter from Sensei.  This sort of shifting of the narrative voice is quite modern for 1914.  In the West, Robert Louis Stevenson used similar techniques in the late 19th century.

Kokoro is a great novel because it captures the existential dread, the loneliness that characterizes post-Romantic literature in the West while still being the prototypical Japanese novel.  Sensei, his friend K, and even the narrator seem to have so little going for them as students and para-intellectuals.  Moreover, Kokoro shows how a heart can be turned.