Kokoro: A masterpiece of Soseki at his peak.

1.
Japan’s encounter with the Western Civilization in 1852 when Commodore Perry arrived, started to change the society in a drastic manner. With his masterpiece Kokoro, Natsume Soseki raises an outstanding question which is still unanswered even in the 21st century for the modern Japanese people:

Where would individualism of the Western Civilization lead us to?

One of the core issues in this story is individualism which was a highly foreign concept for the Japanese people. Soseki, as long as I perceive him,believed that individualism could lead to selfism. He gives two illuminating examples when this happens. One is when it comes to money. Another is love. In this story, for instance, the former occurs when Sensei’s parents die due to a deadly inflectional disease and his uncle steals the money Sensei should have inherited. The latter is the intricate relationships between Ojosan, K and Sensei as exemplified in details in the novel.

It will be