The protagonist, called ‘Master’ by a narrator, left a “testament” to the young student/narrator. It is because the climax of this novel describes a protagonist’s decision to commit suicide, following a real event committed by a veteran member of Japan’s military, General Nogi who took his life in a feudal act known as ‘junshi’-meaning ‘following one’s load in death-as atonement for losing in battle some thirty year ago, when the Emperor Meiji died in 1912. This masterpiece is supposed to be the last respects and nostalgic praise of a noble masculinity, more in tune with the feudal Edo period (1603-1867) than the capitalist and westernized nation born after the Meiji restoration. Praising Samurai Masculinity by way of the biblical language - The Influence of Christianity and Oscar Wilde on Soseki Natsume’s Kokoro - Kasumi MIYAZAKI This essay is motivated by the author’s perception that the most important novel in modern Japanese literature, Kokoro(1914), written by Soseki Natsume, has the narrative structure of the Bible, and has got inspiration in particular from Oscar Wilde’s religious thinking in the essay, De Profundis(1905).
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |