In my last blog post, I quoted Miyoshi as having said that “Japanese society does not, in short, promote the necessary condition for growth of the novelistic imagination: the egalitarian sensibility that sees a unique human personality in powerful statesman and day-laborer alike. Instead, people are regarded according to their assigned social slots.” (Miyoshi 79) Yet Sōseki undoubtedly possessed such an “egalitarian sensibility” with which he imbued each character in Kokoro.
Furthermore, Kokoro helps Sōseki communicate many of his thoughts regarding Western influence and modernization in pursuit of his goal “to write books, to tell people that they need not imitate Westerners, that running blindly after others as they were doing would only cause them great anxiety.” (Rubin & Sōseki 34) He illustrates his complex thoughts regarding the death of traditional Japan and the loneliness accompanying the individualism that emerged in modern Japan. He offers implied but not imposingly explicit commentary on the complex relationship between nationalism and individualism in Japan in 1914, which possibly remains valid to this day.
While Sōseki could not possibly have reconciled the duality of Japan on his own, his writing undoubtedly helped many Japanese, and even foreigners, better understand the nature of Japan’s changing society and its struggle to reconcile tradition and modernity.