Kusamakura

Written by Natsume Soseki and Meredith McKinney

Narrated by Kotaro Watanabe and Elizabeth Jasicki

A stunning new English translation—the first in more than forty years—of a major novel by the father of modern Japanese fiction

Natsume Soseki's Kusamakura—meaning “grass pillow”—follows its nameless young artist-narrator on a meandering walking tour of the mountains. At the inn at a hot spring resort, he has a series of mysterious encounters with Nami, the lovely young daughter of the establishment. Nami, or "beauty," is the center of this elegant novel, the still point around which the artist moves and the enigmatic subject of Soseki's word painting. In the author's words, Kusamakura is "a haiku-style novel, that lives through beauty." Written at a time when Japan was opening its doors to the rest of the world, Kusamakura turns inward, to the pristine mountain idyll and the taciturn lyricism of its courtship scenes, enshrining the essence of old Japan in a work of enchanting literary nostalgia.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Audio
• Translator: Meredith McKinney
• Release date: Aug 10, 2021
• ISBN: 9780593416990

Natsume Soseki

Soseki Natsume, pseudónimo literario de Kinnosuke Natsume, naceu en 1867 no seo dunha familia de samurais en decadencia. Cando tiña dous anos, os seus pais dérono en adopción a un dos seus serventes. Estudou lingua inglesa na Universidade de Toquio e tras graduarse comezou a traballar como mestre. En 1900 estableceuse en Inglaterra cunha bolsa do goberno xaponés, pero levou unha vida de miseria. Á súa volta ao Xapón, deu clases na universidade e comezou a publicar novelas: Eu, o gato, A torre de Londres e Botchan, obra que o levaría á fama. Escribiu catorce novelas ao longo da súa vida.

Reviews for Kusamakura

[gypsy_boy · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

While I was very impressed with this work in the first twenty or thirty pages, I became the less enthusiastic the more I read. The plot is minimal: an artist retreats to the mountains and stays in a remote, almost empty inn where he becomes infatuated by the divorced daughter of the inn’s owner. The book begins promisingly, is often beautifully written, and the artist’s initial musings are clever and well worth considering. Sadly—for me, anyway—these musings soon become the essence of the book. Soon the artist’s thoughts on art, aesthetics, the place of the artist in society, and a comparison of art and poetry take over the book. Soseki’s artist frequently refers to Western art, beginning with his comparison of the owner’s daughter to Millais’s painting of Ophelia. In the course of the (short) book, he mentions not only classical Chinese poets (and occasional Japanese writers) but Oscar Wilde, Henrik Ibsen, and even Laurence Sterne. By the end, the reader has to choose between being intrigued or increasingly bored by what I found to be self-important, posturing, and increasingly tiresome thoughts. I have no doubt that this may well be a book others will adore. Just not me.

[squeakychu · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is an interesting book. As I was reading it, I wasn't sure if I was enjoying it or not. It's the story of a young Japanese artist who is in search of serenity and an emotional state from which he could paint a picture. He travels to an inn on a mountainside to paint as well as write poetry. He meets a few people, but he is mostly trying to avoid becoming entangled with anyone else. His encounters with others have to do with them ensnaring him into their lives rather than vice versa.

The flow of this book is so gentle that the presence of people when they do come by is startling. However, this book without interactions from others would have been disturbing to me. The few people with whom our artist interacted showed what a deep contrast there was in the way he lived his life and others did.

[xuebi-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Kusamakura (original title: 草枕) by Natsume Sōseki follows a nameless protagonist on his journey through a tour of the mountains to a hot spring resort, where he meets the daughter of the establishment and has a series of mysterious encounters. In the protagonist's quest to paint the scenery at the resort, Natsume expounds on art and the artist's position in society in a series of dense essay-like meditations. Scattered throughout the story are haikus and poems not only quoted from famous Chinese and Japanese poets but also by Natsume himself.

Kusamakura is a delightful exploration of the nature of art set during the time of Japan's opening-up to the rest of the world during the early Meiji Era, and thus the novel turns inwards to the pristine mountain scenery and silent courtship scenes, invoking the essence of Old Japan on the cusp of modernity.

As Natsume described the novel himself, Kusamakura is "a haiku-style novel, that lives through beauty".

[drfp_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

A rather dull and turgid novel by the usually excellent Sōseki. After the dashing nature of both Botchan and I Am A Cat, The Three Cornered World marks an abrupt change of direction. Gone is the zip and lightness of touch of his previous works and instead we have a glacial and quite Romantic (note the capital letter) book.

I can't shake the feeling that this is novel that ought to be a piece of non-fiction. So much attention (a vast majority of the book) is devoted to ruminations on nature and art, be it painting, poetry or music, that it gets in the way of the minor story within the novel. It reminded me of the many asides that Dostoevsky inserts into his novels, which likewise neglect the plot and cast of characters. I have no problem with this type of discourse but in any instance where such pondering takes up a significant amount of space I do wish the author had stuck it in a separate essay.

I sympathise a little with Sōseki for all this. I do like how this novel is different from the other few of his I have read. Its meditative focus on art and nature is initially beguiling; but it goes on too long and gets in the way of the characters and their tale. Call me old fashioned but I think that's the heart of any novel. I also understand that this way of thinking is the nature of the main character but I still believe Sōseki gets the balance wrong. I don't mind the fact that very little takes place during this story - Sanshirō is similar in that respect but that novel, even if not my favourite Sōseki story, still had the author's deft prose to keep everything moving along.

I simply found this novel hard to like. I appreciate what it tries to do but I think that gets in the way of what could have been a decent story. It seems like a rare misstep from Sōseki who wrote much better things both before and after this. A failed experiment?

[rmckeown_9 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The author note tells us this is an intriguing Japanese novel by "one of Japan's most influential modern writers, [who] is considered the foremost novelist of the Meiji period (1868-1914)." He died in 1916.

Intriguing to say the least! This tale is 60% meditation on the philosophy of art, particularly poetry, 30% travelogue, and 10% pure poetry. It took me a long time to read this novel, and I loved every single, slow swallow of wonderful passages, ideas, and thoughts. Sometimes, I would read a single sentence or part of a paragraph and work it over and over in my mind. For example: "As I get back to my feet, my eyes take in the distant scene. To the left of the path soars a mountain peak, in shape rather like an inverted bucket. From foot to summit it is entirely covered in what could be either cypress or cedar, whose blue-black mass is striped and stippled with the pale pink of swaths of blossoming wild cherry. The distance is so hazy that all appears as a single wash of blurred shapes and colors" (5).

This sounds like he is describing an impressionist painting. Soseki was educated in England after graduating from the University of Tokyo. References to Western art and literature are sprinkled throughout the book.

His style resembles an ordered stream of consciousness. The novel is the story of a journey around Japan, and it is obvious the experience the narrator has far outweighs the actual walk. Soseki frequently pauses to drink in the surroundings, only to be interrupted by a fellow traveler. “I return to my thoughts,” is a frequent refrain.

One of many of my favorite passages is his musing after becoming soaked in a cloudburst. “If I picture myself, a sodden figure moving in this vast ink-wash world of cloud and rain shot through diagonally with a thousand silver arrows, not as myself but as some other person, there’s poetry in this moment” (13).

A shipment has already arrived from Amazon with five more of his novels. So many, many books; so little time. Five stars.
--Chiron, 3/6/08