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Botchan: A Modern Classic
Sōseki Natsume
Newly Translated by J. Cohn
Hardcover 176 pages
132 x 189mm 330g
ISBN : 978-4-7700-2122-9 / 4-7700-2122-4
Publish : Jul, 2005
Price : $22.00 |
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[ About the Book ]
Like The Catcher in the Rye or The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Botchan, a hilarious tale about a young man's rebellion against "the system" in a country school, is a classic of its kind. Among Japanese readers both young and old it has enjoyed a timeless popularity, making it, according to Donald Keene, "probably the most widely read novel in modern Japan."
The setting is Japan's deep south, where the author himself spent some time teaching English in a boys' school. Into this conservative world, with its social proprieties and established pecking order, breezes Botchan, down from the big city, with scant respect for either his elders or his noisy young charges; and the result is a chain of collisions large and small.
Much of the story seems to occur in summer, against the drone of cicadas, and in many ways this is a summer book—light, funny, never slow-moving. Here, in a lively new translation much better suited to Western tastes than any of its forebears, Botchan's homespun appeal is all the more apparent, and even those who have never been near the sunlit island on which these calamitous spisodes take place should find in it uninterrupted entertainment.
Reviews
"Entertaining...cheerful, a nice mix of the serious and comic that help make the book particularly winning.... a quick and enjoyable read."
—The Complete Review
"Sōseki's lightest and funniest work." —Donald Keene
"Natsume Sōseki is unquestionably one of Japan's greatest modern novelists, and the easiest approach to his work is through his delightful early satire, Botchan."—Oliver Statler
"This rollicking rebel, and the spice and pace of the narrative, will appeal to parent, teacher, and schoolchild alike."
—Times Literary Supplement
About the author
NATSUME SŌSEKI, one of Japan's most acclaimed and beloved writers, was born in Tokyo in 1867. After graduating from Tokyo Imperial University with a degree in English literature, he spent a few years teaching in secondary schools on the southern islands of Shikoku and Kyushu. In 1990 he was sent to England by the Japanese government to pursue further literary studies. He returned to Japan in 1903 and became a lecturer in English literature at Tokyo Imperial University, the first native Japanese to hold this post. For the next four years he combined his academic work with the composition of a series of fictional works including the novels I am a Cat, Botchan, and The Three-cornered World, which established him as a writer of major importance. In 1907 he resigned from the university to devote himself to full-time literary work. The lighthearted satirical spirit of some of his early writing gradually gave way to a darker, deeper quality as he probed the themes of solitude, alienation, and other social and psychological consequences of modern life in a series of celebrated novels including Sanshirō, And Then, The Gate, The Wayfarer, and Kokoro. He died in 1916.
The Translator: J. Cohn studied Japanese at Cornell and Harvard Universities, as well as in Japan, and now teaches Japanese literature at the University of Hawaii. He is the author of a study on the comic spirit in modern Japanese fiction.
This book is published within the Japanese Literature Publishing Project managed by the Japan Association for Cultural Exchange on behalf of the Agency for Cultural Affairs of Japan.
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