Theory of Literature and Other Critical Writings

Sōseki Natsume, Michael Bourdaghs, Atsuko Ueda, Joseph Murphy

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9780231518314
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Asian Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Natsume Soseki (1867-1916) was the foremost Japanese novelist of the twentieth century, known for such highly acclaimed works as Kokoro, Sanshiro, and I Am a Cat. Yet he began his career as a literary theorist and scholar of English literature. In 1907, he published Theory of Literature, a remarkably forward-thinking attempt to understand how and why we read. The text anticipates by decades the ideas and concepts of formalism, structuralism, reader-response theory, and postcolonialism, as well as cognitive approaches to literature that are only now gaining traction.

Employing the cutting-edge approaches of contemporary psychology and sociology, Soseki created a model for studying the conscious experience of reading literature as well as a theory for how the process changes over time and across cultures. Along with Theory of Literature, this volume reproduces a later series of lectures and essays in which Soseki continued to develop his theories. By insisting that literary taste is socially and historically determined, Soseki was able to challenge the superiority of the Western canon, and by grounding his theory in scientific knowledge, he was able to claim a universal validity.

PART ONE

EXCERPTS FROM THEORY OF LITERATURE

(BUNGAKURON, 1907)

PREFACE

With its personal narrative of the author’s experiences in London and its recounting of his motives in launching the project to construct a scientific theory of literature, the preface is the best known section of Theory of Literature. In fact, many scholars seem content to read only it, without venturing into the main body of the work. Despite the powerful emotional tone that characterizes much of the preface, it—like the rest of the book—is written in a formal, scholarly style that partakes of many elements drawn from classical forms of the Japanese language. It is quite distinct from the genbun’itchi vernacular writing style that Sōseki used in most of his fictional pieces.

N.B.: We have translated the preface in its entirety.

As I set this work before the public, perhaps I had best recount the original motive under which it germinated, the motive by which it then became a series of lectures, and the reasons I am publishing it now.

In Meiji 33 [1900], when I received orders to go to En gland as an overseas student, I was a teacher at the Fifth Higher School. At the time I harbored no Particular desire to go abroad, and I believed there were others much better suited to it than I was. I conveyed these sentiments to the then current president and head of faculty of the school. The president and head of faculty replied that whether there were others more qualified was not a matter for me to concern myself with; the school had nominated me to the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Education had approved that nomination and appointed me to serve as an overseas student, nothing more, nothing less. If I had a specific objection, that was one thing, but if not, then it would be proper and good for me to obey the order. All I could say was that I harbored no Particular desire to go abroad. Having no other reasons for refusing the order, I gave my consent and departed.

The subject I was ordered to study was English—not English literature. Feeling the need to know better the extent and details of what was expected of me in this, I paid a visit to Ueda Kazutoshi, the then chief of the Specialized Educational Affairs Section at the Ministry of Education, to ask him about this.¹ Ueda replied that there was no particular need to place tight restrictions on this; I should simply specialize in a subject or subjects that were suitable for teaching at the Higher School or University level after I returned to Japan. In this way I confirmed that there was some leeway for modifying, according to my own views, the subject matter of English that I had been assigned. I departed for the West in September of that year and arrived at my destination in November.

Upon arriving, the first thing to decide was where to study. Even in far-off Japan I had heard of Oxford and Cambridge, those august seats of learning. As I was debating in my mind between the two, I was fortunate enough to receive an invitation to Cambridge from an acquaintance there, and so I set off for a visit—partly in order to sightsee.

In addition to the man I visited, I met two or three other Japanese there. They were all the sons of wealthy families who, in their mission to acquire the status of “gentleman,” were able to expend thousands of gold pieces year after year. My government stipend was only 1,800 yen per year, a sum that—in a place where the power of money controlled everything— would make it impossible for me to carry on as if I were their equal. Even if I didn’t try to keep up and contented myself with merely trying to observe the “gentleman” style from a distance, it still wouldn’t suffice: I knew I would be hard pressed to support myself even if I refused all social intercourse and did nothing but sit in on appropriate classes. Even if I used great care and somehow managed to scrape by, I wouldn’t be able to buy any books to bring back with me to Japan—one of my goals for the trip. And so I reconsidered. My situation as an overseas student was different from the carefree life of those privileged youths. The gentlemen of England might well be an exemplary collection of model persons, endowed with noble characters and worthy of imitation. But for someone like me, who had spent his youth in the oriental fashion, chasing after much younger English gentlemen and trying to acquire their habits of conduct would be like a fully grown adult whose bones are no longer limber trying to master all the deft techniques of a lion-dance acrobat. No matter how much I might admire them, no matter how much I might worship them, no matter how much I might adore them, this belonged to the realm of impossibility—even if I resolved to cut my daily meals from three to two.

When my companions heard this, they told me they attended one or two hours of lectures in the morning, that they used the two or three hours after lunch in outdoor exercise, that at teatime they paid social calls, and that in the evening they engaged in communal dining at their colleges. I realized that, irrespective of whether it was seen from the perspective of expense, the use of time, or my character, I had no business trying to acquire the deportment of a gentleman. I permanently abandoned the notion of settling in there.

I believed the situation at Oxford would be no different from that of Cambridge, and so I did not bother going there. I considered heading north to Scotland or across the sea to Ireland, but I quickly realized that both places were ill-suited for the purpose of practicing English. At the same time, I recognized that London was the best place for me in terms of linguistic training. And so I set my bags down there.

In terms of linguistic practice, London was the most expedient choice— for obvious reasons. I believed this to be true then and find no reason to doubt it now. Yet I had not come to England solely for the purpose of improving my language skills. Orders were orders, but I had my own agenda as well. I was free to satisfy my own desires insofar as I respected the broad outlines that Ueda had suggested. I believed that carrying out research in literature in addition to acquiring linguistic proficiency was not merely a matter of following my own curiosity but, in fact, was also one way of obeying his instructions.

There is one thing I should note here to avoid any misunderstanding. The reason I chose not to devote my two years wholly to the study of language was not that I look down on linguistic ability or think it unworthy of study. Rather, it was the result of my taking it all too seriously. Two years was hardly sufficient time for acquiring proficiency even in one branch of language training—be it pronunciation, conversation, or written expression—much less to attempt to master the whole discipline! I counted on my fingers the length of time allotted for my overseas studies, considered my own lack of talent, and set to thinking about how much I might really be able to develop within the time limits I faced. After giving this careful thought, I came to the realization that it would be difficult if not impossible to produce the good results I hoped for in the short time available. Given my situation, it was unavoidable that my research agenda deviate at least partly from the terms of my orders from the Ministry of Education.

The next problem to arise was how one might go about studying literature. What specialty should one master in order to learn it?² Looking back now, I regret that I was unable to reach any conclusion regarding the naive and ill-formed question I had set myself. As a result, I ended up following a rather mechanical course of action. I headed for the university and audited lectures on contemporary literary history. Moreover, I availed myself of one other convenience: I sought out a private tutor with whom I could consult on matters that were unclear.

I gave up on the university lectures after three or four months. They were neither as interesting nor as informative as I had hoped. As for my private tutor, I recall that I saw him for about one year. During this period, I read every work related to English literature that I could get my hands on. Of course, I had no notion then of using these as materials for an essay, or of using them in a university lecture course after returning to Japan. I was merely flipping randomly through as many pages as possible. To be honest, I was not very knowledgeable about this field—certainly not knowledgeable enough to deserve selection for the honor of overseas study, as might befit the bachelor of arts in English literature that I was supposed to be. Following my graduation, I was forced to move repeatedly, meaning I daily grew estranged from the main literary circles [in Tokyo]. Not only that, but due to my personal and family circumstances, I did not have the opportunity to read as widely as I would have liked, and as a result even the famous classics that were on everybody’s lips were in the main known to me only by their titles; it was my constant regret that I had not passed my eyes over sixty or seventy percent of them. As a result, I could not think of a better policy for using this opportunity than to read through as many books as possible. After using up more than one year in this pursuit, I compared the number of books I had managed to read with the number I still needed to read—and was shocked at how little progress I had made. I came to the realization that to spend my remaining year in the same fashion would be utterly foolish. I needed to make a drastic change in my approach to studying.

(A note to young students: Some in your situation, with their whole lives still in front of them, believe that before they can make some original contribution to their field of scholarship, they must first make an exhaustive survey of the field. They therefore resolve to read through the entire canon of relevant literature, new and old, high and low, accumulated over the millennia. Should you resolve to follow this course, know that even when your hair has turned white with age, you will still not have completed your exhaustive survey. As a specialist in English literature, I have yet to make a complete survey of the canon in my field. I doubt very much that this will change even after another twenty or thirty years.)

As I increasingly felt the pressure of time constraints, there were other factors that caused me to depart from this course of action—in addition to the fact that my utterly undisciplined method of reading was leaving me in somewhat of a daze. In my childhood I was very fond of studying the Chinese classics. Despite my having studied them for only a short while, I nonetheless acquired from the Four Histories³ the vague notion that they defined what literature was supposed to be. I then simply assumed that English literature must be of a similar nature and, if that were so, I believed it was a subject that one could devote one’s life to studying without regret. The decision I made on my own to enter the English literature department, which was hardly fashionable at the time, was based entirely on this childish, simplistic reasoning. But the three years I stayed at the university were largely spent being tormented by Latin, overwhelmed by German, and acquiring only the shakiest acquaintance with French—all of which eluded my grasp, but thanks to them I had almost no time left for reading the works of what was supposed to by my area of specialization. At the time I graduated and received the lofty title of bachelor of arts, my heart was assailed by a terribly desolate feeling.

Since then I have watched ten springs and autumns slip past. I cannot claim that I had no spare time for studying; all I can do is lament my failure to study more thoroughly. Moreover, when I graduated I was bothered by a notion that lingered at the back of my mind—that somehow I had been cheated by English literature. Still harboring that troubling notion, I headed west for Matsuyama, and a year later headed farther west for Kumamoto. ⁴ After several years in Kumamoto, that troubling notion had still not dissipated—at which time I traveled to London. If I could not resolve this troubling notion even after coming to London, there was little hope that I could fulfill the main task for which I had been ordered overseas. But could I, in the coming year, conquer the doubt I had been unable to resolve over the preceding decade? If not completely impossible, this was at least highly unlikely.

Having abandoned my reading, I considered what lay before me. It was quite regrettable that, given my innate stupidity and lack of scholarly ability, I had not attained any mastery of foreign literature, my supposed specialty. Given my past record, it seemed unlikely that my scholarly abilities would improve much in the future. Faced with these poor prospects, it seemed that I must develop some other means besides scholarly ability if I wanted to enhance my appreciation. But I was finally unable to discover any such method. In reflecting on my own past, moreover, I realized that, despite lacking a solid scholarly foundation in classical Chinese, I nonetheless believed myself able to appreciate fully the Confucian classics. Of course, my knowledge of English was not particularly deep, but I did not believe it to be inferior to my knowledge of classical Chinese. For my sense of like and dislike between the two to be so widely divergent despite my having roughly equal scholarly abilities must mean that the two were of utterly different natures. In other words, what is called “literature” in the realm of the Chinese classics and what is called “literature” in English must belong to different categories and cannot be subsumed under a single definition.

In sum, it was not until I sat under the solitary lamp in my London room, years after my graduation from the university, that my intellectual worldview first encountered its home territory [kyokusho]. It may well be that others would call this childish. I myself think it childish. That I only stumbled upon this far too obvious question after traveling all the way to London was something of an embarrassment for this overseas student. But facts are facts: it may be shameful that I only then first became aware of this issue, but it is also true. Facing this situation, I decided that I must, first of all, resolve the more essential question: What is literature? At the same time, I made up my mind to use my remaining year as a first stage in carrying out research on this problem.

I closeted myself in my room. Furthermore, I shut away all books of literature in my wicker trunk. To read literary works to try to learn what literature was, I believed, was the same as trying to wash blood with blood. I vowed to determine what psychological necessity there was for literature— for its emergence, its development, and its decline. I vowed to pursue what social necessity there was for literature—for its existence, its rise, and its fall.

Because the problem I had set before me was by its nature so vast in scope—and also so new—I believed it would not lend itself to being solved in a year or two no matter who undertook the effort. I devoted all of my time to it, gathering research materials from the various relevant fields and using as much of my stipend as possible to purchase reference works. The six or seven months that followed this decision were the most ardent and diligent period of study in my entire life. It was also during this time that I received official reprimands from the Ministry of Education for failing to file my regular progress reports.

I devoted all of my energies to my task, reading the books I had acquired one after another, jotting down comments in the margins of what I read and—where necessary—taking extensive notes. After five or six months I began to feel as if I were somehow honing in on the real substance of the matter in the midst of what at first had seemed an amorphous, endless pursuit. At the time I was not a university ...

Table of contents

• Cover 
• Half title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents 
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Natsume Sōseki and the Ten-Year Project
• Part One: Excerpts from Theory of Literature
• Part Two: Other Writings on Literary Theory, 1907–14
• Notes
• Index