Leading up to Kokoro’s publication in 1914, Japan had emerged as the sole Asian imperial great power. It invaded and colonized neighboring territories in Korea and China, defeated Russia in a naval war, and entered a military alliance with Britain. Japan’s national fortunes were possible because of Japan’s modernization and the Western influence that followed. The visible symptoms of this process were the railroads and factories that emerged through industrialization, the cities that sprang up from urbanization, and the masses of educated individuals that emerged through an education system that was initially modeled on those of the West. Yet there were less visible symptoms of this rapid modernization as well, such as a crisis of national and cultural identity that was particularly acute among intellectuals.
“What did it mean to be Japanese, and to suddenly borrow so much of the culture of the modern West?” Professor Steven Ericson asks this question in his Dartmouth course, “HIST 05.05: The Emergence of Modern Japan.” Indeed, Harvard historian Andrew Gordon notes that Japan’s reforms “led to to the question: To what ultimate end are we making these changes? As we build railroads and adopt a European-style constitution, do we have a unique identity as Japanese people?” (Gordon 110) Sōseki himself echoed such doubts, writing that Japan had only superficially mastered the learning of the West, but that if it was able to complete its enlightenment in just fifty years, “the inevitable result will be nervous collapse from which we will not be able to recover.” Sōseki’s doubts were by no means unique, since modern Japan had essentially cast off most of its philosophical traditions in Buddhism and Confucianism and replaced them with shallow emperor-centered nationalism. As Ericson states, “Modernization in the material sphere had not been accompanied by a parallel development of values.”
Sōseki’s disillusionment with Japan’s modernization is detailed by Hibbett in Tradition and Modernization in Japanese Culture:
“Like so many other men of his generation, Sōseki saw his own difficulties as symbolic of the historical predicament of his nation. After decades of study of Western culture he came to the conclusion that even such arduous efforts had yielded only a superficial result, and at the cost of excessive nervous strain.” (Hibbett 310)
Knowing that Sōseki harbored these thoughts and feelings, we shouldn’t be surprised to see the ways in which modern Japan is depicted in Kokoro. For instance, the entirety of Kokoro’s plot and its ill-fated characters are set in the backdrop of late Meiji, with the novel ending just after Emperor Meiji himself expires and General Nogi commits seppuku in an act of junshi. In this setting, Parts II and III of Kokoro are choked with the deaths of the narrator’s father, Sensei, and K. Sōseki is careful to emphasize the isolated nature of each death, and the ways in which such isolation is inextricably linked to modern Japan’s characteristics. These deaths, and the role that isolation played in each, will be explained in the next blog post: Isolation in Modern Japan!