Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

‘Shut Up! You Can’t Even Read Latin!’ Ancient Greek and Roman Material in Natsume Sōseki’s I am a Cat

  • Article
  • Published:
International Journal of the Classical Tradition Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

This paper examines the sources and literary function of references to the ancient Greeks and Romans in the Japanese author Natsume Sōseki’s first novel, I am a Cat, written and published from 1905 to 1907. It places Sōseki and his work in the context of Meiji Japan and its renewed engagement with the West. The paper shows how Sōseki was uniquely placed to reflect on this engagement, particularly its intellectual and literary aspects. Despite his personal familiarity with Greek and Roman materials as demonstrated in his scholarly works and notes, the references in his novel are mediated, drawn primarily from other (mainly English) texts rather than ancient sources. This reflects the most common manner of encountering this material for Sōseki’s contemporary readership and therefore sheds some light on the diffusion of Greek and Roman material among the ‘educated elite’. The paper further demonstrates that Sōseki’s use of this material has literary and thematic point: it contributes to his satire of the emerging class of intellectuals in the Meiji period by critiquing the social weaponization of such knowledge, especially in instances where it is not backed by true understanding. The mediated nature of the Greek and Roman material in the novel also raises questions about the efficacy of language as a means of communication as it contributes to the destabilization of meaning. This is most noticeable in Sōseki’s discussion of Greek and Latin language.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Data availability

Not applicable.

Notes

  1. While the concepts of ‘the West’ and ‘Western’ literature and culture have more recently been recognized as problematic and nebulous, they do constitute the framework that Sōseki himself uses and so have been retained here.

  2. See J. A. Fujii, Complicit Fictions: The Subject in the Modern Japanese Prose Narrative, Berkeley-Los Angeles-Oxford, 1993, pp. 7–11 and 103–4, who wisely counsels against reading Japanese literature of this period, and Sōseki in particular, in terms of binaries such as East/West or modern/traditional and he advocates ‘abandoning a static model of binary influence’.

  3. It is often noted that I am a Cat has not received the same level of critical study as Sōseki’s later, ‘more serious’ works: see e.g. Fujii, Complicit Fictions (n. 2 above), p. 103; S. Kawana, ‘A Narrative Game of Cat and Mouse: Parody, Deception, and Fictional Whodunit in Natsume Sōseki’s Wagahai wa neko dearu’, Journal of Modern Literature 33 (4), 2010, pp. 1–20 (3); J. W. Treat, The Rise and Fall of Modern Japanese Literature, Chicago, 2018, pp. 75–6. A recent study has explored Sōseki’s use of the quasi-autobiographical ‘it-narrative’ in 18th-century British literature: C. C. Douglas, ‘“Sideways-Written Words”: Appropriations of the Eighteenth-Century British It-Narrative in Natsume Sōseki’s I Am a Cat’, Journal of Narrative Theory 50, 2020, pp. 208–31.

  4. References to the Japanese texts of Sōseki’s works are taken from Natsume Sōseki, Teihon Sōseki Zenshū, 29 vols, Tokyo, 2016–2020, published by Iwanami Shoten and abbreviated hereafter as TSZ. The text of I am a Cat is contained in volume 1, cited throughout as Neko, edited with notes by Takemori Tenyu and Andō Fumito (n. 45 below). The rest of Sōseki’s works are cited by TSZ volume and page number. Unless otherwise noted, citations and quotations in English are from Natsume Soseki, I am a Cat, transl. Shibata Katsue and Kai Motonori, Tokyo, 1961 (reissued New York, 1982), cited as Cat. This is one of two translations in English, though now out of print. The other English translation – Sōseki Natsume, I Am a Cat, transl. A. Ito and G. Wilson, 3 vols, Tokyo and Rutland ME, 1972–1986 (collected as a single volume in 2002) – is less literal and attempts to capture the literary ‘flavour’ of the original, but this makes it less useful for citation (the 2002 collected edition is cited when necessary).

  5. Though it has a long history in satire, the puncturing of such intellectual pretensions in I am a Cat likely finds its immediate model in Laurence Sterne’s treatment of learning in Tristram Shandy, for which see e.g. J. Hawley, ‘Tristram Shandy, learned wit, and Enlightenment knowledge’, in Cambridge Companion to Laurence Sterne, ed. T. Keymer, Cambridge, 2009, pp. 34–48 (38–40).

  6. She is simply referred to as ‘wife’ throughout the novel. The couple also have three daughters and a maid (O-san), but they do not participate in the episodes featuring references to Greek and Roman material.

  7. I here give names in the Japanese order (family name first). The characters are referred to in the novel (and thus in this paper) principally by their given names (Kangetsu, Tōfū, Dokusen) as a mark of their familiarity.

  8. The catalogue of the Sōseki Collection at Tōhoku University is searchable online: https://www.i-repository.net/il/meta_pub/G0000398tuldc (last accessed 4 June 2023). A printed version of the catalogue is contained in TSZ 27.17–133 which lists all the books found in Sōseki’s study at the time of his death, though some volumes were lost before Tōhoku University took control of the collection in 1944. In this paper, I have followed the numbering of the online catalogue. Sōseki’s reliance on materials in English is due in part to the fact that much of the material was not yet available in Japanese: Hirakawa Sukehiro, ‘Japan’s Turn to the West’, transl. B. T. Wakabayashi, in Cambridge History of Japan Volume 5: the Nineteenth Century, ed. M. B. Jansen, Cambridge, 1989, pp. 432–98 (492–3), citing Sōseki’s own ‘Gogaku Yōseihō’ (originally published in 1911 in the journal Gakusei, vol. 2, part 1–2) where Sōseki connects the decline in English proficiency to an increase in textbooks and instruction in Japanese (TSZ 25.412–21, with relevant text at pp. 412–13). On the emergence of Greek and Roman material in Japanese in the 20th century, see e.g. Notsu Hiroshi, ‘Etudes Gréco-Latines au Japon’, Tôzai: Orient et Occident 1, 1996, pp. 99–126 (110–12, with Table 1). A comprehensive bibliography of Japanese works on Western Classical Studies (including translations) from the arrival of the Christians to 1945 has been compiled by Watanabe Masahiro, Nihon seiyō kotengaku bunkenshi: kirishitan jidai kara shōwa nijūnen made no chosaku bunken nenpyō, 3 vols with electronic index, Kariya City, 2001–2004.

  9. While the satirical style derives to a certain extent from traditional Japanese yose variety theatre, it is also influenced by Sōseki’s deep reading of Jonathan Swift and Laurence Sterne: see D. Keene, Dawn to the West: Japanese Literature of the Modern Era, New York, 1984, pp. 306 and 312 with n. 20; J. Rubin, ‘Sōseki’, in Modern Japanese Writers, ed. J. Rubin, New York, 2001, pp. 349–84 (357); J. Nathan, Sōseki: Modern Japan’s Greatest Novelist, New York, 2018, pp. 94–6, noting that like rakugo, Sōseki’s humour can be cold and cruel. On rakugo more generally, see M. J. Yoshikawa, ‘Popular Performing Arts: Manzai and Rakugo’, in Handbook of Japanese Popular Culture, ed. R. G. Powers and H. Kato, New York, 1989, pp. 75–96 (77–8); H. Morioka and M. Sasaki, Rakugo: The Popular Narrative Art of Japan. Harvard East Asian Monographs 138, Cambridge MA, 1990; P. M. Welch, ‘Discourse Strategies and the Humor of Rakugo’, PhD diss., University of Michigan, 1998, pp. 3–27 and 31–64.

  10. M. K. Bourdaghs, A. Ueda, and J. A. Murphy, Theory of Literature and Other Critical Writings. Natsume Sōseki. Weatherhead Books on Asia. New York, 2009, p. 250. Japanese text at TSZ 16.611.

  11. In fact, it is Sōseki’s dissatisfaction with Western theories of literature and their problematic relationship to Eastern literature that prompts him to develop his own Theory of Literature.

  12. Natsume is the family name, Kinnosuke the given name. Sōseki is the self-chosen penname which it has become customary to use in scholarship when referring to the author and his work.

  13. Tokugawa Iemitsu, born 12 August 1604, assumed the regency of the shogunate in 1623 when his father, Tokugawa Hidetada, abdicated (though he maintained a high level of control from behind the scenes as ōgosho). Iemitsu became full shōgun in 1632 upon the death of his father and reigned until his own death in 1651. On the circumstances leading to Sakoku, see briefly M. B. Jansen, The Making of Modern Japan, Cambridge MA, 2000, pp. 63–80.

  14. Toyotomi Hideyoshi held the position of kanpaku, chief advisor to the emperor. On the expulsion of Christians, see briefly Jansen, Making of Modern Japan (n. 13 above), pp. 75–80. On the Jesuits and Latin in 16th-century Japan, see Taida Ichiro, ‘The earliest history of European language education in Japan: focusing on Latin education by Jesuit missionaries’, Classical Receptions Journal 9 (4), 2017, pp. 566–86. See C. Joby, ‘The Reception of Ancient Latin and Greek Authors in Japan (1550–c. 1850)’, International Journal of the Classical Tradition 26 (3), 2019, pp. 270–94, for discussion of the works of Greek and Roman authors in Japan prior to and during Sakoku.

  15. The Dutch were in fact restricted to the artificial island Deshima and were not allowed in Nagasaki itself. Nagaskai had been established by the Jesuits in 1570 but was transferred to Japanese ownership and management in 1587. On the Dutch at Deshima, see Jansen, Making of Modern Japan (n. 13 above), pp. 80–85. There was only limited trade with China and Korea through the island of Tsushima in the strait between Japan and Korea. For a brief account of Japanese international relations and trade immediately before and in the immediate aftermath of Sakoku, see L. M. Cullen, A History of Japan, 1582–1941: Internal and External Worlds, Cambridge, 2003, pp. 18–62.

  16. On rangaku, see briefly Hirakawa, ‘Japan’s Turn to the West’ (n. 8 above), pp. 435–48; Jansen, Making of Modern Japan (n. 13 above), pp. 210–15.

  17. See W. G. Beasley, ‘The foreign threat and the opening of the ports’, in Cambridge History of Japan Volume 5: the Nineteenth Century, ed. M. B. Jansen, Cambridge, 1989, pp. 259–307 (268–84), for an historical survey of this period and process; Jansen, Making of Modern Japan (n. 13 above), pp. 257–93, esp. 274–9 on Perry’s ‘negotiations’.

  18. See e.g. C. Goto-Jones, Modern Japan: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford, 2019, pp. 16–17; Cullen, History of Japan (n. 15 above), pp. 4–5 and 205–7; Beasley, ‘The foreign threat’ (n. 17 above), pp. 304–7.

  19. For survey and discussion, see Hirakawa, ‘Japan’s Turn to the West’ (n. 8 above).

  20. See e.g. Goto-Jones, Modern Japan (n. 18 above), pp. 43 and 48–51; Hirakawa, ‘Japan’s Turn to the West’ (n. 8 above), pp. 495–7; Jansen, Making of Modern Japan (n. 13 above), pp. 337–41 and 355–61.

  21. Keene, Dawn to the West (n. 9 above), p. 306; Rubin, ‘Sōseki’ (n. 9 above), p. 349; Bourdaghs et al. (n. 10 above), p. 3. Nishō Gakusha gained ‘university status’ in 1949.

  22. See S.-J. Ren, ‘Some English Influences on Natsume Sōseki’s Criticism and Novels’, PhD diss., University of Minnesota, 1979, pp. 1–5 with citations, on Sōseki’s pre-university education. Among his instructors at the First Higher School was the Scottish scholar James Murdoch, subsequently author of a three-volume History of Japan, to volume 1 of which Sōseki responded in a two-part piece in the Tokyo Asahi Shinbun newspaper on 17–18 March 1911: ‘Professor Murdoch’s History of Japan’ (‘Mādokku sensei no “Nihon Rekishi”’, TSZ 16.360–65). Sōseki also discusses Murdoch in a three-part essay explaining his own decision to decline an honorary doctorate published in the same newspaper on 6–8 March 1911: ‘The Doctorate Question and Professor Murdoch and I’ (‘Hakase mondai to Mādokku sensei to yo’, TSZ 16.352–9). For Murdoch’s life and relationship (personal and intellectual) with Sōseki, see S. Hirakawa, Japan’s Love-Hate Relationship with the West, Folkestone, 2005, pp. 249–72.

  23. He was only the second person to graduate with an English major. He initially planned to study architecture: Keene, Dawn to the West (n. 9 above), p. 307; Ren, ‘Some English Influences’ (n. 22 above), p. 4; Nathan, Sōseki (n. 9 above), pp. 16–17.

  24. Rubin, ‘Sōseki’ (n. 9 above), p. 354; see also Keene, Dawn to the West (n. 9 above), p. 307. Cf. Sōseki’s own remarks in the preface of Theory of Literature at Bourdaghs et al. (n. 10 above), p. 43 = TSZ 14.7.

  25. Latin instruction was mostly carried out by foreign professors, the one exception being Kanda Naibu who had studied Greek and Latin at Amherst College in the USA and taught at Tokyo Imperial University until 1893: Notsu, ‘Etudes Gréco-Latines’ (n. 8 above), p. 108; Taida Ichiro, ‘History and Reception of Greek and Latin Studies in Japan’, in Receptions of Greek and Roman Antiquity in East Asia. Metaforms: Studies in the Reception of Classical Antiquity 13, ed. A.-B. Renger and X. Fan, Leiden and Boston, 2018, pp. 73–87 (81); Ren, ‘Some English Influences’ (n. 22 above), pp. 12–13, observing that the purpose of the English program was to train language teachers rather than literary scholars.

  26. Bourdaghs et al. (n. 10 above), p. 43; Japanese text at TSZ 14.7. Bungakuron, published in 1907, was initially delivered as a series of lectures during Sōseki’s time as Professor of English at Tokyo Imperial University (1903–1907).

  27. For a brief account of von Koeber’s life, career, and influence in Japan as remembered by one of his students, see Watsuji Tetsurō, ‘Kēberu Sensei’, in Watsuji Tetsurō Zenshū vol. 6. Tokyo, 1962, pp. 1–39, translation at K. M. J. Shuttleworth and S. Shuttleworth, ‘Professor Koeber Watsuji Tetsurō’, Journal of East Asian Philosophy 1, 2021, pp. 75–99. The influence and impact of von Koeber on his students and associates in Japan are perhaps best demonstrated by the special memorial issue of the magazine Shisō: Kēberu sensei tsuitōgō, published in August 1923 following von Koeber’s death.

  28. On the importance of von Koeber to Classical Studies in Japan, see e.g. Notsu, ‘Etudes Gréco-Latines’ (n. 8 above), pp. 108–10; Takada Yasunari, ‘Translatio and Difference: Western Classics in Modern Japan’, in Classics and National Cultures, ed. S. A. Stephens and P. Vasunia, Oxford, 2010, pp. 285–301 (292–9); Taida ‘History and Reception’ (n. 25 above), pp. 82–3.

  29. Nishida Kitarō, ‘Kēberu sensei no tsuikai’, in Shisō: Kēberu sensei tsuitōgō, 1923, pp. 32–3 (33). This detail is reported also by Watsuji, ‘Kēberu Sensei’ (n. 27 above), p. 25, translation at Shuttleworth-Shuttleworth, ‘Professor Koeber Watsuji Tetsurō’ (n. 27 above), pp. 78 and 90.

  30. Shuttleworth-Shuttleworth, ‘Professor Koeber Watsuji Tetsurō’ (n. 27 above), p. 91, with Japanese at Watsuji, ‘Kēberu Sensei’ (n. 27 above), p. 25.

  31. In addition to his diary entries (TSZ 19.14–103), Sōseki provides a brief retrospective on his time in the UK in the preface of Theory of Literature (Bourdaghs et al. [n. 10 above], pp. 39–43 and 48; Japanese text at TSZ 14.3–7 and 12–13). See also Nathan, Sōseki (n. 9 above), pp. 48–73, for an account of this period of Sōseki’s life and career.

  32. For example, Sōseki’s notes contain citations from A. J. Grant, Greece in the Age of Pericles, London, 1897 (Sōseki Collection 817): TSZ 21.30, 66, 76–7, 115, 154–5, 471, 485, 544, 561, 588–90, 613, 665, 686. His notes also contain references to discussion of ancient texts in W. J. Courthope, Life in Poetry: Law in Taste. Two Series of Lectures delivered in Oxford 1895–1900, London, 1901 (Sōseki Collection 6), and in vol. 1 of G. Saintsbury, History of Criticism and Literary Taste in Europe ‘Classical and Mediaeval Criticism’, Edinburgh, 1900 (Sōseki Collection 458): see TSZ 27.72–6 and 288.

  33. For the place of ‘Classics’ in Victorian England, see, e.g. C. Stray, Classics Transformed: Schools, Universities, and Society in England, 1830–1960, Oxford, 1998, esp. 117–232, on educational developments in the second half of the 19th century; N. Vance, ‘Victorian’, in A Companion to the Classical Tradition, ed. C. W. Kallendorf, Malden MA, 2007, pp. 87–100.

  34. Sōseki left to become the head of the literary department at the Asahi Shinbun newspaper. During his time at the university, he also taught English at the First Higher School and later took a third position at Meiji University lecturing in English.

  35. See e.g. Rubin, ‘Sōseki’ (n. 9 above), p. 356; Kawana, ‘A Narrative Game’ (n. 3 above), p. 14.

  36. The essays are collected at TSZ 12.461–6 and 511–13, respectively. ‘Professor Koeber’ was published in the Asahi Shinbun, 16–17 July 1911. ‘Professor Koeber’s Farewell’ was published in the Tokyo Asahi Shinbun on 12 August 1914, though as it happens, von Koeber was never able to depart due to World War One and ultimately died in Japan in 1923. Von Koeber’s personal library (nearly 2000 volumes, including many works of and on Greek and Latin) is now part of the Special Collections at Tōhoku University in Sendai. On Sōseki’s relationship with von Koeber, see esp. M. Marcus, Reflections in a Glass Door: Memory and Melancholy in the Personal Writings of Natsume Sōseki, Honolulu, 2009, pp. 163–6, and Nathan, Sōseki (n. 9 above), p. 18.

  37. Beyond his own work, Sōseki also contributed the ‘Introduction’ to Nogami Yaeko’s translation of Thomas Bulfinch’s The Age of Fable, originally published as Densetsu no jidai: kamigami to eiyū monogatari, Tokyo, 1913, though it was subsequently reissued many times. Sōseki’s introduction is now collected at TSZ 16.562–5.

  38. The eleven chapters were published in Hototogisu, then collected into two volumes published in October 1905 and May 1907. On the Yamakai salon, see also Treat, Rise and Fall (n. 3 above), p. 79.

  39. On the ‘talkativeness’ (jōzetsu) of the novel, see e.g. Maeda Ai, ‘Neko no kotoba, neko no ron’, in Kindai Nihon no Bungaku Kūkan, Tokyo, 1983, pp. 337–358.

  40. See e.g. Okitsu Kaname, ‘Natsume Sōseki, En’yū ni miryōsaru’, in Rakugo: warai no nenrin, Tokyo, 1968, pp. 140–45, and Okitsu Kaname, Nihon bungaku to rakugo, Tokyo, 1970, pp. 101–16 (esp. 108–12 for discussion of Neko) who argues that the influence of rakugo marks Sōseki’s strong engagement with Japanese culture, particularly popular culture of the Edo period, even as he draws on Western material; Mizukawa Takao, Sōseki to Rakugo: Edo Shomin Geinō no Eikyō, Tokyo, 1986, pp. 83–127; Fujii, Complicit Fictions (n. 2 above), pp. 112–13 and 115–16; Treat, Rise and Fall (n. 3 above), pp. 76–84 and 91–2, though Treat uses the term enzetsu (‘speechmaking’ or ‘public speaking’), thereby including political speech as well yose performance.

  41. Fujii, Complicit Fictions (n. 2 above), pp. 103–25.

  42. Treat, Rise and Fall (n. 3 above), pp. 75–98 (esp. 88 and 95–6). See also S. Jacobowitz, Writing Technology in Meiji Japan: A Media History of Modern Japanese Literature and Visual Culture, Cambridge MA, 2015, pp. 253–5, for a sympathetic critique of Fujii’s claims that seeks greater balance between the oral and the written in I am a Cat. For discussion of the importance of oral performance and recitation in the development of literary fiction in this period, see Maeda Ai, ‘From Communal Performance to Solitary Reading: The Rise of the Modern Japanese Reader’, in Maeda Ai, Text and the City: Essays on Japanese Modernity, ed. J. A. Fujii, 2004, pp. 223–54, and A. Swale, ‘Public Speaking and Serialized Novels: Kōdan and Social Movements in Early Meiji Tokyo’, Japanese Studies 41 (3), 2021, pp. 343–60.

  43. Thackeray’s nose had been badly broken at school. On Goldsmith’s appearance, see James Boswell in chapter thirteen of his Life of Johnson (Sōseki Collection 79 and 80) who puts it thus: ‘his countenance coarse and vulgar’. In chapter eighteen of Thackerayana, a comic vignette of Goldsmith and Johnson at the tailor has Goldsmith admiring himself: ‘Beside him simpers the clumsy and inspired Oliver, in his new plum-coloured coat; his eyes bent down in an ecstasy of delight, for is he not far prouder of his visage – and such a visage! – and of his coat than of his artless genius?’: W. M. Thackeray, Thackeryana: Notes and Anecdotes, London, 1901 (Sōseki Collection 580), p. 438. Sōseki’s whole passage on noses is modelled after vol. 3, chh. 31–42 of Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, which is itself mentioned when the topic returns in chapter four (Neko 175–6; Cat 144), though see Matsui Sakuko, Natsume Sōseki as a Critic of English Literature, Tokyo, 1975, pp. 60–61 for some doubts about the inspiration. On the likely influence of the rakugo of San’yūtei En’yū III, see Okitsu, ‘Natsume Sōseki’ (n. 40 above), p. 145, and Okitsu, ‘Nihon bungaku’ (n. 40 above), pp. 110–11. On noses in I am a Cat, see Jacobowitz, Writing Technology (n. 42 above), pp. 261–71 and D. Musgrave, Grotesque Anatomies: Menippean Satire since the Renaissance, Newcastle upon Tyne, 2014, pp. 45–7.

  44. Sōseki Collection 609 for Webster; Sōseki Collection 486–90 and 495–6 for Shakespeare. For the noses of Socrates and Julius Caesar together, cf. Byron’s unfinished drama The Deformed Transformed, part 1, scene 1, lines 186–90 and 218–21. Sōseki was familiar with Byron’s poetry and possessed The Poetical Works of Lord Byron, ed. W. Scott et al., London, 1863, which included the drama, though the volume was lost before the collection was transferred to Tōhoku University (see TSZ 27.25 for the listing).

  45. ‘Fragment 25’ TSZ 19.170: Matsumura Tatsuo and Saitō Keiko, Natsume Sōseki Shū I. Nihon Kindai Bungaku Taikei 24, Tokyo, 1968, p. 277 n. 14; Takemori Tenyu and Andō Fumito, Teihon Sōseki Zenshū Daiikkan, Wagahai wa Neko Dearu, Tokyo, 2016, p. 629.

  46. J. Swift, The Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., ed. D. L. Purves, Edinburgh, 1897 (Sōseki Collection 552), p. 180; Takemori-Andō, Teihon Sōseki Zenshū Daiikkan (n. 45 above), p. 629. On Sōseki and Swift, see also Ren, ‘Some English Influences’ (n. 22 above), pp. 51–8; Matsui, Natsume Sōseki as a Critic (n. 43 above), pp. 182–220.

  47. T. Browne, The Works of Sir Thomas Browne, ed. S. Wilkin, 3 vols, London, 1888–1894 (Sōseki Collection 90), pp. 2.277–8. Sōseki later references Browne’s Hydriotaphia (pp. 3.1–59) in chapter 10 of his novel Sanshirō, first published in 1908, now collected in TSZ vol. 5. Cf. Gonoji Masahiro, ‘“Wagahai wa neko dearu” no futatsu no itsuwa no zaigen nitsuite: Aisukyurosu no shi to Agunodike’, Seiyōkotenronshū 24, 2016, pp. 47–65 (52–4), who suggests that the story cannot come from Browne since Browne does not mention the application of fire. That detail is included, however, in the notes.

  48. Browne, Works (n. 47 above), pp. 2.279–80.

  49. W. Smith, Classical Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography, Mythology, and Geography, revised by G. E. Marindin, London, 1899 (Sōseki Collection 778), pp. 27–8; Tsukamoto Toshiaki, ‘Shokuzai toshite no kujaku: Sōseki ni okeru sōzōryoku no ichimen’, Jinbunkagakunenpō 39, 2009, pp. 1–26 (6–7), relying in particular on the presence of an illustration; Gonoji, ‘Wagahai wa neko dearu’ (n. 47 above), pp. 56–9, who surveys other possibilities (including Browne) at pp. 47–56, but holds that Sōseki’s copy of Browne was insufficiently annotated, thus suggesting a lack of close reading that would mark it as the source.

  50. The essay was unpublished in Browne’s own lifetime.

  51. T. Browne, The Works of Sir Thomas Browne, Including his Unpublished Correspondence, and a Memoir, ed. S. Wilkin, 4 vols, London, 1846, pp. 4.302–3.

  52. The story from Athenaeus is included with an illustration in Henry-René d’Allemagne, Sports et Jeux d’Adresse, Paris, 1904, pp. 368–70, though there is no way to know if Sōseki had encountered this volume.

  53. Selections from Plato, from the Translation of Sydenham and Taylor, rev. and ed. T. W. Rolleston, London, 1892 (Sōseki Collection 889).

  54. Charles Mills Gayley and Fred Newton Scott, An Introduction to the Methods and Materials of Literary Criticism, the Bases in Aesthetics and Poetics, Boston, 1899 (Sōseki Collection 13), pp. 142–4 with citations.

  55. See Nakano Kii, ‘Sōseki no seigi: eigobungakukashita Puratonizumu ni kanrenshite’, Hikaku bungaku 20, 1977, pp. 1–13, for discussion of Sōseki’s more general engagement in his early novels I am a Cat, Botchan and Kusamakura with Platonic ideas of ‘Justice’ as mediated through English literature.

  56. TSZ 15.213–17, where he mentions both poems (see also ‘Fragment 32E’ TSZ 19.211–2). Literary Criticism began as lectures given at Tokyo Imperial University from September 1905 to March 1907 and was published in 1909, now collected as TSZ vol. 15. On Sōseki as a reader of Addison, see Matsui, Natsume Sōseki as a Critic (n. 43 above), pp. 164–81.

  57. It is possible that he read some Homer in Greek with von Koeber, but there is no solid evidence for this other than the inclusion in Sōseki’s library of a Greek edition of the Iliad (Sōseki Collection 713), discussed at n. 142 below. It is worth reporting here Sōseki’s first encounter with ancient Greek as recited by James Murdoch (see n. 22 above), who was trained as a classicist and had been a professor of Greek at Aberdeen before coming to Japan via Australia: because of the Scotsman’s strong accent Sōseki had difficulty understanding him even in English, so when Murdoch recited an ancient Greek poem and asked Sōseki how it was, Sōseki asked if it was English, causing Murdoch to laugh (TSZ 16.355).

  58. Sōseki Collection 155, 436, 437, 439, 440, 714, 715, 716, 717. He was particularly familiar with Alexander Pope’s translation of the Iliad which he mentions in his discussion of Pope in Literary Criticism (TSZ 15.343–5).

  59. Theory of Literature: TSZ 14.55, 173, 237, 258, 287, 357, 359, 530; Literary Criticism: TSZ 15.397–8. He explicitly alludes to G. E. Lessing’s discussion of Homer and Virgil from Laocoon in chapter six of the novel Kusamakura, published in September 1906 (now collected in TSZ vol. 3) while he was still writing I am a Cat. It is clear from his notes (see TSZ 27.184–9) that he had read closely the Scott Library edition: G. E. Lessing, The Laocoon, and Other Prose Writings of Lessing, transl. and ed. W. B. Rönnfeldt, London, 1895 (Sōseki Collection 734).

  60. On Sōseki and Epictetus and the influence of the Japanese Shin-Buddhism of Kiyozawa Manshi, see E. Porcu, Pure Land Buddhism in Modern Japanese Culture, Numen Book Series: Studies in the History of Religions 121, Leiden and Boston, 2008, pp. 104–5 and 110–11 with bibliography.

  61. The Teaching of Epictetus, Being the Encheiridion of Epictetus; with Selections from the ‘Dissertations’ and ‘Fragments’, transl. T. W. Rolleston, London, 1888 (Sōseki Collection 848).

  62. The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, transl. J. Collier and rev. A. Zimmern, London, 1887 (Sōseki Collection 831); Matsumura-Saitō, Natsume Sōseki Shū I (n. 45 above), pp. 68 and 494; Takemori-Andō, Teihon Sōseki Zenshū Daiikkan (n. 45 above), p. 579, who also note that by the time Sōseki was composing I am a Cat, Japanese translations of Epictetus by Saiki Sensui and Inaba Masamaru were available.

  63. References to (Kushami’s reading of) Epictetus occur at Neko 31–2 = Cat 23–4; Neko 81 = Cat 67; Neko 123 = Cat 105; Neko 368 = Cat 297–8.

  64. The word is found at Aristophanes Wasps 220, where it denotes the old honey-sweet songs of Phrynicus. Sōseki’s collection does include the Bohn’s Classical Library translation of Aristophanes: The Comedies of Aristophanes, transl. W. J. Hickie, 2 vols, London, 1860–1877 (Sōseki Collection 642). That edition does not include the Greek word.

  65. Takemori-Andō, Teihon Sōseki Zenshū Daiikkan (n. 45 above), p. 630. The word appears at V. Hugo, William Shakespeare, transl. M. B. Anderson, London, 1905 (Sōseki Collection 283), p. 90.

  66. There is a very brief note ‘Chrysippus – novel’ that appears in ‘Fragment 26’ TSZ 19.174, though it says nothing about Chrysippus’s death. Takemori-Andō, Teihon Sōseki Zenshū Daiikkan (n. 45 above), p. 638 suggest that the story comes from Smith’s Classical Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography, Mythology, and Geography (n. 49 above, pp. 225–6). However, the entry in that volume does not include an account of his death.

  67. Cf. Matsumura-Saitō, Natsume Sōseki Shū I (n. 45 above), p. 315 nn. 6–7.

  68. Hugo, William Shakespeare (n. 65 above), p. 87. I have found this combination of details in two other 19th-century texts, but neither appears in the Sōseki catalogue: A. G. L’Estrange, History of English Humour with an Introduction upon Ancient Humour, 2 vols, London, 1878, p. 1.91; John Hosking, The Elements of Christian Theology, Philosophy, Morals, & History; Or, Christianity Stated and Defended, Christchurch, 1894, p. 328.

  69. Gonoji, ‘Wagahai wa neko dearu’ (n. 47 above), p. 61. The full details of the source are: C. Wordsworth, Social Life at English Universities in the Eighteenth Century, Cambridge, 1874, pp. 328–9. Wordsworth cites the original source, Hyginus Fabulae 274. I discuss Agnodice further below.

  70. The fragment is noted without identification of the source by Matsumura-Saitō, Natsume Sōseki Shū I (n. 45 above), p. 242 n. 9, and Takemori-Andō, Teihon Sōseki Zenshū Daiikkan (n. 45 above), p. 618.

  71. Matsumura-Saitō, Natsume Sōseki Shū I (n. 45 above), p. 476 n. 4; Takemori-Andō, Teihon Sōseki Zenshū Daiikkan (n. 45 above), p. 669. The passage is unattributed in the fragment, but Nashe is later named in ‘Fragment 32D’ TSZ 19.204. No edition of Nashe’s works is listed in the Sōseki catalogue. The date of the fragment (1904) may suggest that Sōseki had access to volume 1 of The Works of Thomas Nashe, ed. R. B. McKerrow, 4 vols, London, 1904–1910 (so too Matsumura-Saitō, Natsume Sōseki Shū I [n. 45 above], p. 478 n. 16, and the notes at TSZ 19.488), though he may have relied on volume 1 of the older The Complete Works of Thomas Nashe, ed. A. B. Grosart, 6 vols, London, 1883–1884.

  72. There are some minor edits, e.g. omission of Democritus and Plutarch between Demosthenes and Seneca. I discuss this passage further below.

  73. The most obvious source for classicists, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, can perhaps be ruled out since there is no edition or translation of that work in Sōseki’s library.

  74. R. de Bury, The Love of Books: The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury, transl. E. C. Thomas, London, 1903 (Sōseki Collection 102); Suzuki Takashi, ‘Kushami-sensei to 640nenmae no shomotsu’, Kanagawa daigaku hyōron 2, 1987, p. 122, and Suzuki Takashi, ‘Zuisō “Wagahai wa nekodearu” to “Phirobiburon”: gūzen to hitsuzen’, Kanagawa daigaku hyōron 47, 2004, pp. 106–8.

  75. De Bury, Love of Books (n. 74 above), pp. 20–21 and 67. In the archived volume of the Sōseki collection, there is even a marginal note in Sōseki’s hand at chapter nine ‘old men’s writings’ (rōjin no choso).

  76. Suzuki ‘Zuisō’ (n. 74 above); Takemori-Andō, Teihon Sōseki Zenshū Daiikkan (n. 45 above), p. 609; de Bury, Love of Books (n. 74 above), p. 15. The original source is Aristotle Problems 30.11.

  77. E. C. Brewer, Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, London, 1896 (Sōseki Collection 995), p. 308; de Bury, Love of Books (n. 74 above), p. 4. Other possibilities include the work of Sir Thomas Browne, e.g. his remark at Pseudoxia Epidemica 4.4 that according to Athenaeus (Deipnosophistae 6.20, uncited), the oracle of Apollo at Delphi told the Lacedaemonians to acquire gold from Croesus if they wished to gild the face of the god’s statue (Browne, Works [n. 47 above], pp. 1.387–8). Much of Croesus’s story is retold by Browne in his ‘Of the answers of the Oracle of Apollo at Delphos to Croesus, King of Lydia’ (Browne, Works [n. 47 above], pp. 3.251–9).

  78. Takemori-Andō, Teihon Sōseki Zenshū Daiikkan (n. 45 above), p. 609 note that in 1898, Sōseki published an essay in Hototogisu called ‘Unspoken Word’ (‘Fugennogen’) in which he describes Aristotle wandering around his garden lecturing to the students, thus the later adherents called it the Peripatetic School (see now TSZ 16.17–23, relevant text at p. 21).

  79. Smith, Classical Dictionary (n. 49 above).

  80. Smith is identified correctly by Takemori-Andō, Teihon Sōseki Zenshū Daiikkan (n. 45 above), p. 586, and Gonoji, ‘Wagahai wa neko dearu’ (n. 47 above), pp. 57–8. Cf. Matsumura-Saitō, Natsume Sōseki Shū I (n. 45 above), p. 91 n. 10, who identify ‘Smith’ as the British historian and politician ‘Goldwin Smith’, an identification adopted in the translation by Ito and Wilson (n. 4 above), p. 49.

  81. In their notes on this passage, both Matsumura-Saitō, Natsume Sōseki Shū I (n. 45 above), p. 91 n. 9, and Takemori-Andō, Teihon Sōseki Zenshū Daiikkan (n. 45 above), p. 586, explain who Mommsen is, while Gibbon’s name is explained when he is first mentioned by Meitei at the end of chapter one (on which, see further below): see Matsumura-Saitō, Natsume Sōseki Shū I (n. 45 above), p. 58 n. 8, and Takemori-Andō, Teihon Sōseki Zenshū Daiikkan (n. 45 above), p. 575. Mommsen is also cited in Smith’s Classical Dictionary.

  82. Tsukamoto, ‘Shokuzai toshite no kujaku’ (n. 49 above), pp. 6–7; Gonoji, ‘Wagahai wa neko dearu’ (n. 47 above), pp. 56–9.

  83. But see Okitsu, ‘Nihon bungaku’ (n. 40 above), pp. 111–12, and Mizukawa, Sōseki to Rakugo (n. 40 above), p. 115, for the suggestion of inspiration from a rakugo story called ‘Umaya kaji’ (‘Stable Fire’) or ‘Umaya shōshitsu’ (‘Burning Down the Stable’).

  84. Both volumes are in Sōseki’s collection. H. Steuding, Greek and Roman Mythology and Heroic Legend, transl. L. D. Barnett, London, 1903 (Sōseki Collection 780); Charles Mills Gayley, The Classic Myths in English Literature, Based Chiefly on Bulfinch's ‘Age of Fable’ (1855) Accompanied by an Interpretative and Illustrative Commentary, Boston, 1903 (Sōseki Collection 225).

  85. J. Dryden, The Works of Virgil. The Works of the English Poets, ed. S. Johnson, vols 22–24, London, 1790 (Sōseki Collection 185); The Works of Virgil, transl. J. Davidson and rev. T. A. Buckley, London, 1869 (Sōseki Collection 795). Neither of the other ancient sources, Livy 1.7 and Ovid Fasti 1.543–84, appear in Sōseki’s collection. Takemori-Andō, Teihon Sōseki Zenshū Daiikkan (n. 45 above), p. 615, mention only Virgil in their note.

  86. S. Haughton ‘IV. On hanging, considered from a mechanical and physiological point of view’, The London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science 32, 1866, pp. 23–34 (23–9); the second half of the essay (omitted by Sōseki) addresses the scientific basis for the ‘ideal’ way to hang a criminal. Sōseki’s source (noted by Matsumura-Saitō, Natsume Sōseki Shū I [n. 45 above], pp. 122–3 and 497–8) was first identified by Nakaya Ukichirō, ‘Kangetsu no “kubiori no rikigaku” sonota’, in Sōseki Zenshū Daiikkan Geppō Daishigō, Tokyo, 1936 (= Nakaya Ukichirō, Fuyu no Hana, Tokyo, 1949 [first published 1938], pp. 203–11); see also Tsutsui Izumi, ‘Sōseki no “Neko” to Hōton’, Tosho 764, 2012, pp. 6–12.

  87. G. Trobridge, ‘The Nude in Art and Semi-Nude in Society’, Westminster Review 164 (3), 1905, pp. 303–10 (303–4). Takemori-Andō, Teihon Sōseki Zenshū Daiikkan (n. 45 above), p. 625–6.

  88. As Trobridge remarks in the original essay, these lines of Dante’s Purgatory in fact concern the women of Florence and compare them to the women of Barbagia in Sardinia. Sōseki ‘Fragment 26’ also adds an intriguing citation of ‘Valerius Maximus p 131’ after an observation that European clothing was ‘decent’ (in English) until the 14th century – an assertion not in Trobridge’s essay. I have been unable to identify Sōseki’s source for this reference to Valerius Maximus.

  89. Cf. Maeda, ‘Neko no kotoba’ (n. 39 above), p. 343, who sees Kushami’s acknowledgement of the serious style as an attempt to situate the letter within the shared educational context of both characters. Sōseki briefly revisits this joke near the end of chapter 4 (Neko 173–4; Cat 142–3): Kushami recalls his student days with Meitei and how Meitei bet him a Western-style dinner that with his great willpower he would complete his thesis by the time the blossoms had died, but in fact Meitei did no such thing. Kushami never got his meal, however, because Meitei avoided the debt by claiming that it was not his willpower but his memory that failed him: he had forgotten all about his thesis. Meitei responds that he attempted to make up for it by trying to find peacock tongues!

  90. Tsukamoto, ‘Shokuzai toshite no kujaku’ (n. 49 above), pp. 2–13, noting that reference to the emperor Elagabalus’s consumption of peacocks is missing from Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography, Mythology, and Geography (n. 49 above) contained in the Sōseki collection, but the detail is included in the older, larger edition: W. Smith, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, 3 vols, London, 1844–1849, at p. 2.7. It is possible that Sōseki may have had access to this, even though it is not in his personal collection.

  91. See also Maeda, ‘Neko no kotoba’ (n. 39 above), pp. 341–3; Tsukamoto, ‘Shokuzai toshite no kujaku’ (n. 49 above), pp. 21–3, who does acknowledge that the whole thing may be a joke built on discordant elements as a reflection of Sōseki’s own creative impulses.

  92. Tsukamoto, ‘Shokuzai toshite no kujaku’ (n. 49 above), pp. 14–21, also discusses the ‘sources’ for the Roman bathe-and-disgorge technique for dining, suggesting Henryk Sienkiewicz, Quo Vadis, transl. S. A. Binion and S. Malevsky, London, 1901 (Sōseki Collection 776).

  93. Maeda, ‘Neko no kotoba’ (n. 39 above), p. 343.

  94. See also Jacobowitz, Writing Technology (n. 42 above), pp. 264–5, who notes that Meitei’s prank is an act of ‘resistance against standardization and passive homogeneity’, suggesting a further implication that the story may in turn have received the Japanese Literary Society’s imprimatur and thus become ‘fact’. The joke – whether Meitei’s or Sōseki’s – also owes something to the story that Gibbon had showed an early composition on the history of the Swiss Republics to David Hume who chided him for writing it in French and encouraged him to write in English. The title of Gibbon’s project in Meitei’s story, The History of the French Revolution (Futukokukakumeishi), is a nod to Thomas Carlyle whose work Sōseki admired greatly: see e.g. Matsumura-Saitō, Natsume Sōseki Shū I (n. 45 above), pp. 58–9 nn. 9–10, detecting also the influence of Tristram Shandy; Takemori-Andō, Teihon Sōseki Zenshū Daiikkan (n. 45 above), p. 575; see Marcus, Reflections (n. 36 above), pp. 23–4, for Sōseki’s pilgrimage to Carlyle’s house while in London.

  95. The poet is Andō Tochimenbō, who lived from 1869 to 1914: Takemori-Andō, Teihon Sōseki Zenshū Daiikkan (n. 45 above), p. 583–4; Maeda, ‘Neko no kotoba’ (n. 39 above), p. 342, who suggests that the wordplay is a far cry from the witty lightness of Edo-period gesaku (‘playful writing’: humorous popular literature). See also Fujii, Complicit Fictions (n. 2 above), pp. 105–6, for Sōseki and gesaku.

  96. Maeda, ‘Neko no kotoba’ (n. 39 above), p. 342, arguing that Meitei’s free manipulation of the duality between the word both as a name and as an echo of ‘meatball’ results in the elimination of the connection between word and thing.

  97. Mizukawa, Sōseki to Rakugo (n. 40 above), pp. 96–7 and 100–101, noting the presence of a punchline (ochi) and Kushami’s frequent comments as he reads.

  98. On this episode, see also Ochi Haruo, ‘Neko no warai, neko no kyōki’, in Sōseki shiron, Tokyo, 1971, pp. 4–28 (10–11); Maeda, ‘Neko no kotoba’ (n. 39 above), pp. 343–4, who suggests that the bathetic end to Meitei’s story (Meitei plans to try the Greek technique but finds upon his return that someone else has already hanged himself, so Meitei misses his opportunity by the slimmest of margins), in combination with a reference Meitei makes to William James’s discussion of the suicide impulse and the subconscious, nullifies the patterns of humanistic education in which the story is clothed.

  99. As an aside, one notes that Cacus’s association with Vulcan, god of fire, is thematically appropriate to the idea of ‘heat’ which serves as the basis for Meitei’s narration.

  100. On manzai, see e.g. Yoshikawa, ‘Popular Performing Arts’ (n. 9 above), pp. 76–83; Morioka-Sasaki, Rakugo (n. 9 above), pp. 6–8; J. F. Stocker, ‘Manzai: Team Comedy in Japan’s Entertainment Industry’, in Understanding Humor in Japan, ed. J. M. Davis, Detroit, 2006, pp. 51–74 (see esp. 51–7 with bibliography). The more modern terminology for the ‘wit’ (tsukkomi) and ‘fool’ (boke) emerges in the years after the publication of I am a Cat.

  101. Meitei specifically names Ushikaiya Iroha, a famous and very popular chain of beef restaurants in Tokyo at the time: Matsumura-Saitō, Natsume Sōseki Shū I (n. 45 above), p. 225 n. 7; Takemori-Andō, Teihon Sōseki Zenshū Daiikkan (n. 45 above), p. 615.

  102. Meitei does not quite answer Mrs Kushami’s question, especially when one recognizes that ‘Hercules’ is the hero’s Latin name, not his Greek name, and this episode takes place in Italy.

  103. The exchange about Hercules follows some ridiculous banter about Meitei attempting to fry an egg on the roof. In their translation, Shibata and Kai in fact reduce the number of animals to a single bull, although the Japanese ushi can be plural.

  104. Neither English translation mentions snoring, but the Japanese gūgū can imply this in addition to deep sleep. The idea of snoring would further explain the offence taken by Mrs Kushami.

  105. See Neko 65 = Cat 54 (Tōfū explaining the pronunciation of his name); Neko 199 = Cat 162 (a police officer not needing all the details about a stolen coat); Neko 258 = Cat 208 (Kangetsu’s ‘explanation’ of his new haiku-play); Neko 377 = Cat 305 (deliberate obfuscation for profundity in scholarly lectures); Neko 379 = Cat 307 (a lecture about seating arrangements for guests).

  106. The more modern term is kōdan: for discussion, see M. Mastrangelo, ‘Japanese storytelling: a view on the art of kōdan. The performances and the experience of a woman storyteller’, Rivista degli studi orientali 69, 1995, pp. 207–17 (207–8); Morioka-Sasaki, Rakugo (n. 9 above), pp. 5–6; Treat, Rise and Fall (n. 3 above), pp. 90–91. On the relationship between this style of public speaking performance and fiction writing (especially serialized works) in the political and historical context of the Meiji period before Sōseki, see Swale, ‘Public Speaking and Serialized Novels’ (n. 42 above).

  107. The translation of Shibata and Kai essentially omits the term: ‘Let me tell you about it then’ (Cat 186).

  108. Cf. Neko 100 = Cat 85, where Meitei advises the more scholarly Kangetsu against using the word benjiru, characterized as ‘vulgar’ (gehin) as it belongs to the diction of a kōshakushi – a professional storyteller – whereas Kangetsu is (aiming to be) an orator or public speaker (enzetsuka). The observation is turned back on Meitei by Kangestu at Neko 135 = Cat 117. On benjiru, see also Okitsu, ‘Nihon bungaku’ (n. 40 above), p. 110.

  109. Noted also by Mizukawa, Sōseki to Rakugo (n. 40 above), pp. 116, as contributing to the element of ‘performance’ in the novel.

  110. This is not without real-world precedent: see Morioka-Sasaki, Rakugo (n. 9 above), p. 251, who record an incident from January 1882 in which the performer Bakabayashi Don’ō I used the story ‘Brutus, a Hero of Ancient Rome’ as a thinly veiled attack on Japan’s lack of democracy.

  111. She also has an enormous nose which earns her the nickname Hanako ‘Nosegirl’ and prompts the various disquisitions on noses throughout the novel.

  112. See also Maeda, ‘Neko no kotoba’ (n. 39 above), pp. 341–2, for the antipathy of Meitei towards the Kaneda family.

  113. Shibata and Kai’s ‘What do you think, Kushami?’ is perhaps better rendered as ‘Isn’t that so, Kushami?’ On this episode, see also Jacobowitz, Writing Technology (n. 42 above), pp. 265–6.

  114. Treat, Rise and Fall (n. 3 above), p. 90 suggests that this exchange owes something to rakugo.

  115. Shibata and Kai leave out the last phrase, hito no warui ‘you bad person’.

  116. Shibata and Kai have added the specific reference to her being a woman; that is absent from the Japanese, except perhaps in her speech patterns (note the use of nya and ne).

  117. On Kushami and money, see e.g. Ueda Masayuki, ‘“Wagahai wa neko dearu” shiron’, Shimane daigaku kyōiku gakubu kiyō. Jinbun shakai kagaku 10, 1976, pp. 1–18 (10–12).

  118. See also Matsui, Natsume Sōseki as a Critic (n. 43 above), pp. 59–60, for the back and forth between Kushami and his wife.

  119. See details at nn. 64–5 above. This caveat potentially applies to Sōseki himself (see also below).

  120. As noted above, these citations derive from Haughton, ‘On hanging’ (n. 86 above), pp. 23–9, which Kangetsu’s lecture translates.

  121. The references to the Old Testament and Herodotus occur in Haughton’s original essay. The essay gives specific citations to the Old Testament. While no specific citation is given to Herodotus, it is clear that Haughton refers to the story of the theft of Rhampsinitos’s treasure (Histories 2.12), though Haughton assumes (because they are builders?) that the thieves are ‘Hebrews’ and that the story therefore demonstrates a particular abhorrence of the Jews towards exposure of the dead. There is perhaps reason to think that some inspiration and a few of the details (especially concerning Jewish practices) may come from Thomas Browne’s Pseudoxia Epidemica 5.21, ‘Of the picture of Haman Hanged’, which contains a long discussion of capital punishment practices, including reference to ‘Ulysses’ who ‘in a fury hanged the strumpets of those who courted Penelope’.

  122. The Japanese word jijo translated by Shibata and Kai as ‘maid servants’ reflects Haughton’s ‘handmaids’ but does not necessarily capture their enslaved status.

  123. There may be some additional humour for the reader in the idea that listening to Kangetsu recite otherwise unintelligible Greek would be tiresome. The phrase of Kushami that Shibata and Kai translate as ‘It would sound too elegant’ is fuller in Japanese: sonna mono hoshi sōna koto wa iwan hō ga okuyukashikute ii ‘That sort of eagerness – it is more elegant if you don’t say it’.

  124. Kangetsu’s diligence is reflected in the lecture itself, especially its thoroughness which the internal audience finds overwhelming.

  125. The specific citation comes from the original essay where the Greek lines and William Cowper’s translation are both quoted: Haughton, ‘On hanging’ (n. 86 above), pp. 24–5.

  126. Again, the Japanese here contains no word for ‘reading’: moshi sore ga itsumo no tōri wakaru nara ‘If he could understand it in the usual way...’.

  127. Matsumura-Saitō, Natsume Sōseki Shū I (n. 45 above), p. 258 n. 9.

  128. See also Ueda, ‘“Wagahai wa neko dearu” shiron’ (n. 117 above), pp. 8–10; Matsui, Natsume Sōseki as a Critic (n. 43 above), pp. 58–9; Nathan, Sōseki (n. 9 above), p. 98, who detects in this passage specifically and more generally throughout the novel a tangible strain of misogyny. Cf. chapter six where Meitei explains his bachelor status to Kushami and his wife and tells a story about a man named Rōbai who now lives broken-hearted, concluding that upon consideration, women are sinful creatures (tsuminamono); Kushami agrees, quoting the French playwright Alfred de Musset: ‘In a drama by Musset I was reading the other day, a character referred to a Roman poet who once wrote: “What is lighter than a feather is dust; what is lighter than dust is the wind; what is lighter than the wind is a woman; and what is lighter than a woman is nothing at all.” Isn’t that profound?’ (sendatte musse no kyakuhon wo yondara sono uchi no jinbutsu ga rōma no shijin wo inyōshite konna koto wo yutte ita. – hane yori karuimono wa chiri dearu. chiri yori karuimono wa kaze dearu. kaze yori karuimono wa onna dearu. onna yori karuimono wa mu dearu. – yoku ugatteru darō, Neko 249; Cat 200–201). Mrs Kushami then intervenes by observing how heavy men are. Again, the source for this quote (from act 2 of Barberine) is not a French edition of Musset but the English translation: Comedies by Alfred de Musset, transl. S. L. Gwynn, London, 1890 (Sōseki Collection 761), p. 23. Sōseki had noted the English quote in 1904/1905 (‘Fragment 25’ TSZ 19.170).

  129. Sōseki omits Democritus and Plutarch from Nashe’s original list as included in ‘Fragment 29’ (TSZ 19.183–4). Valerius is not in fact an ancient author: the reference in Nashe is to the Dissuasio Valerii ad Rufinum by the 12th-century writer Walter Map (so too TSZ 19.489). It is possible, however, that Sōseki confused him with Valerius Maximus, whose name appears in ‘Fragment 26’ TSZ 19.174. Some readers of Sōseki have assumed that Valerius Maximus is meant (e.g. the translators Ito and Wilson [n. 4 above], p. 460).

  130. For Kushami’s suspect skills in English, see e.g. Neko 8–9 = Cat 5; Neko 413 = Cat 330–31.

  131. Compare again his comments on his mastery of Latin, German, and French in the preface to Theory of Literature, cited at n. 26 above, and the anecdote about James Murdoch’s recitation of Greek cited at n. 57 above.

  132. Not to mention the practical difficulty of including Greek in the Japanese edition. One cannot rule out the possibility that Kangetsu’s gesture is itself a feint to conceal that he himself cannot read the Greek, but that would require reading more ‘into’ the text than is there since the cat only comments on Kushami’s and Meitei’s (lack of) ability, without remarking on Kangetsu.

  133. For the surrogacy of Kushami for Sōseki, see also Kawana, ‘A Narrative Game’ (n. 3 above), pp. 8 and 13–14, who notes that the cat is an ‘opiniated correspondent full of “personality”’ and observes the problematic nature of automatic conflation between author and character (so too Fujii [n. 2 above], pp. 107–8); Nathan, Sōseki (n. 9 above), pp. 97–8. Cf. Maeda, ‘Neko no kotoba’ (n. 39 above), p. 343, who suggests that Kushami is a caricature of Sōseki’s cultural snobbery (bunkateki zokubutsusei), but Meitei is a further alter ego – one who in overthrowing Kushami’s educational refinement represents the author’s awakened self-consciousness (sameta jiishiki). See also Mizukawa, Sōseki to Rakugo (n. 40 above), pp. 103–4.

  134. See also Itahana Junji, ‘Wagahai wa neko de aru ron: sono tagengo sekai wo meguri’, Nihon Bungaku 31 (11), 1982, pp. 1–12 (2–3); Izu Toshihiko, ‘“Neko” no tanjō: Sōseki no katarite’, Nihon Bungaku 37 (1), 1988, pp. 57–68 (63–4); M. Melanowicz, ‘Wagahai wa neko de aru: narrator’s eyes and ears’, Silva Iaponicarum 7, 2006, pp. 22–9 (25 and 27–8); Komori Yōichi, Sōseki wo yominaosu, Tokyo, 2016, pp. 6–7 and 10–11, remarking also on certain overlaps between the cat and Kushami; Yamamoto Ryōsuke, ‘“Katarite” toiudōbutsu: Shōsetsu no gengokōi wo meguru shiron’, Eco-Philosophy 8, 2014, pp. 21–33 (21–7), who explicitly applies John Searle’s theory of authorial ‘pretending’ in fiction as signalled by the fiction of a ‘talking cat’. Sōseki’s ventriloquism through the cat was matched in reality by the fact that he did not read aloud his own text at the Yamakai salon; it was instead read by Takahama Kyoshi, the editor of Hototogisu.

  135. On the reliability of the cat as narrator, see e.g. Fujii, Complicit Fictions (n. 2 above), pp. 113–14; Kawana, ‘A Narrative Game’ (n. 3 above), p. 4. The cat did have a real-life model: see Inside the Glass Doors chh. 5 and 28 (TSZ 12.528 and 585) and ‘The Cat’s Grave’ (‘Neko no Haka’) of 1909, one of the short stories in the collection Eternal Pieces (Eijitsu Shōhin) now in TSZ 12.158–62. For a ‘strong’ biographical reading, see e.g. Izu, ‘“Neko” no tanjō’ (n. 134 above), esp. pp. 66–7; Komori, Sōseki (n. 134 above), pp. 12–15.

  136. Wagahai, on which see e.g. Ren, ‘Some English Influences’ (n. 22 above), pp. 56–7; Melanowicz, ‘Wagahai wa neko de aru’ (n. 134 above), pp. 22–4; Treat, Rise and Fall (n. 3 above), p. 76. Cf. Maeda, ‘Neko no kotoba’ (n. 39 above), pp. 348–9, who suggests that wagahai implies that the subject is human, while the predicate neko dearu proves that is not the case – a contradiction which the reader must accept to enter the world of the narrative; on this human-cat duality in the first sentence, see also Komori, Sōseki (n. 134 above), pp. 2–5; see Izu, ‘“Neko” no tanjō’ (n. 134 above), pp. 57–9, for the duality as a source of humour.

  137. Rubin, ‘Sōseki’ (n. 9 above), p. 359. The vivid description of Kushami’s pock-marked face recalls Sōseki’s own features.

  138. For the necessity of inward self-reflection in Epictetus’s philosophy, see e.g. Epict. Diss. 2.18, adapted by T. W. Rolleston as ‘Of Adornment of the Person’ (Book 5, Chapter 12) at pp. 170–74 of The Teaching of Epictetus (cited above, n. 61).

  139. The cat uses the English ‘inspiration’ in katakana, ‘a word that sounds to me like the name of some drug’ (yahari insupirēshon to iu shinhatsumei no baiyaku no yō na).

  140. The recollection of Achilles and Hector is paired with an example from the 14th-century classical Chinese novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms, chapter 42: see Takemori-Andō, Teihon Sōseki Zenshū Daiikkan (n. 45 above), p. 636. The combination of Western and Eastern examples demonstrates the breadth of Sōseki’s (and the cat’s) learning, though the reference to the Romance of the Three Kingdoms might be more readily accessible to Sōseki’s general readership given that work’s standing in East Asia.

  141. This is the one place where the cat suggests that Kushami may actually read (yonde) Epictetus.

  142. T. K. Arnold, Homer’s Iliad, with English Notes and Grammatical References, London, 1864 (Sōseki Collection 713); J. W. Donaldson, A Complete Greek Grammar, Cambridge, 1862 (Sōseki Collection 1016); H. G. Liddell and R. Scott, A Lexicon, Abridged from Liddell & Scott’s Greek-English Lexicon, Oxford 1892 (Sōseki Collection 1038).

  143. Inside the Glass Doors was first serialized in the Asahi Shinbun in 1915, now collected at TSZ 12.517–616.

  144. Sōseki notes in chapter three that his children were confused by his choice of name and that it came to lose its ‘classical ring’ (kurashikaruna hibiki) even for him (TSZ 12.522–3).

  145. This is not, however, to suggest that the cat is immune from satiric treatment or ironizing humour. See e.g. Izu, ‘“Neko” no tanjō’ (n. 134 above), p. 62; Yamamoto, ‘Katarite’ (n. 134 above), p. 21.

  146. See e.g. Fujii, Complicit Fictions (n. 2 above), pp. 107–8, who surveys and rejects attempts to identify the author with the cat or Kushami as being too heavily influenced by conventions of the contemporary realist or naturalist movement and the emerging ‘I-novel’ (shishōsetsu) in Japanese literature which did seek such identification.

  147. For the cat’s inability to communicate, see also the beginning of chapter ten, where he meows repeatedly to convey his hunger to the family’s maid to no avail; he is left to conclude that she cannot hear him (Neko 410–12; Cat 328–9).

  148. See also Maeda, ‘Neko no kotoba’ (n. 39 above), pp. 337–41, who argues that the flood of words in the novel is evidence of the absence of communication exacerbated by fundamentally different worldviews.

  149. See e.g. Itahana, ‘Wagahai wa neko de aru ron’ (n. 134 above), pp. 4–7, on multivocality and how the language of each character interacts with others; Karatani Kōjin, Origins of Modern Japanese Literature, translation edited by Brett de Bary, Durham NC and London, 1993, p. 179.

  150. See e.g. Maeda, ‘Neko no kotoba’ (n. 39 above), pp. 337–8; Ochi, ‘Neko no warai’ (n. 98 above), pp. 24–5.

  151. One could argue that Yukie reconfigures the story as a form of manzai since she is assisted in her performance by Mrs Kushami and her young children who interrupt at points with humorous misunderstandings. Her retelling of the Jizō and Baka-Take story is given a prelude in which the youngest Kushami child tells her own story.

  152. See also Fujii, Complicit Fictions (n. 2 above), pp. 121–2, who argues that when Kushami and his wife are questioned by the police after their house is burgled (Neko 196–8; Cat 160–61), the exchange is presented as performance rather than information so that the cat’s narration becomes less obvious as the characters engage in dialogue. Yet the scene remains mediated for the reader by the cat.

  153. See e.g. Neko 121–2 = Cat 104; Neko 146–7 = Cat 125.

  154. The word shōsetsu can mean a ‘story’ or ‘work of fiction’; it is often translated as ‘novel’, though the idea of the novel was still in the process of development in Japan at the time Sōseki was composing I am a Cat, and Sōseki would not apply the term shōsetsu to this text (see e.g. Maeda, ‘Communal Performance’ [n. 42 above]). For Sōseki’s place in and response to such developments, see e.g. Karatani, Origins (n. 149 above), esp. pp. 175–84; Karatani Kōjin, ‘Henbutsutoshite no Sōsekisakuhin’, in Sōseki wo yomu, ed. Karatani Kōjin et al., Tokyo, 1994, pp. 12–16; Karatani Kōjin, ‘Death and Poetry: From Shiki to Sōseki (1992)’, transl. R. Tuck, Review of Japanese Culture and Society 29, 2017, pp. 175–206; D. Poch, Licentious Fictions: Ninjō and the Nineteenth-Century Japanese Novel, New York, 2019, pp. 179–208.

  155. Cf. Maeda, ‘Neko no kotoba’ (n. 39 above), pp. 344–6, who claims that Meitei’s ‘nonsense’ (daben), made through wild associative leaps, undermines the premise that there is a comprehensible order underlying the world.

  156. See Itahana, ‘Wagahai wa neko de aru ron’ (n. 134 above), pp. 10–11, for the suggestion that this sort of interaction gives the cat meaning; Jacobowitz, Writing Technology (n. 42 above), pp. 266–7, for discussion of this episode in terms of the means of recording language.

  157. This is not, however, to deny that the cat is capable of misapprehension. Not everything he relates is learned by electrical mind-reading. See e.g. Maeda, ‘Neko no kotoba’ (n. 39 above), who has argued that the cat’s perception of Kushami’s world is slightly distorted precisely because it is a cat’s perception; therefore the humour of the novel results in part from the way that the everyday life and activities of Kushami and his circle are mediated through the language and logic of the cat.

  158. Jacobowitz, Writing Technology (n. 42 above), pp. 250–61, noting also certain paratextual markers of writing in the original edition.

  159. For the materiality of the text, see also the cat’s characterization of his account of Kushami’s battle against the students of the Descending Cloud as ‘text’ (bun) to be handled with some respect as he encourages his readers to buy their own copies rather than borrowing one from a friend (Neko 340–41; Cat 277): Jacobowitz, Writing Technology (n. 42 above), pp. 270–71.

  160. Maeda, ‘Neko no kotoba’ (n. 39 above), pp. 338–9 and 358, drawing explicitly on the theories of Martin Buber. Cf. Ochi, ‘Neko no warai’ (n. 98 above), pp. 7–8, who stresses the importance of the cat’s anonymity to his remaining outside of the novel’s community.

  161. Tōfū cites as an example a short story called ‘One Night’ (‘Ichiya’) by one Sōseki (though spelled with different kanji) which everyone found vague and incoherent; when Tōfū asked the author about it, he said he had no idea himself.

  162. See also Maeda, ‘Neko no kotoba’ (n. 39 above), pp. 346 and 354–5, who compares this letter to Meitei’s lecture on noses and the cat’s own use of ‘bogus’ (nise) logic and inference.

  163. As it happens, Kushami is correct that the letter writer is steeped in philosophy: Meitei shares that it was studying with the philosopher Dokusen that drove Tendō/Tachimachi insane.

  164. Fujii, Complicit Fictions (n. 2 above), pp. 118–19; Jacobowitz, Writing Technology (n. 42 above), pp. 267–70, who sees this ultimately as an unflattering self-portrait of Kushami.

  165. The essay ‘Tristram Shandy’ was first published in Kōko Bungaku, vol. 4, now collected at TSZ 13.61–77, quote on p. 63. On this essay and Sōseki as a reader of Sterne, see e.g. Matsui, Natsume Sōseki as a Critic (n. 43 above), pp. 44–64, touching also on Sterne’s influence on Sōseki; Kazuki Ochiai, ‘Soseki Natsume: or Sterne and the Japanese “Rise of the Novel”’, The Shandean 24, 2013, pp. 127–34, who also discusses some generic and stylistic similarities between Tristram Shandy and I am a Cat.

  166. The introduction is reproduced at TSZ 16.29–30.

  167. Elsewhere in the foreword, Sōseki suggests that because there is no plotline, the reader could start anywhere without affecting their interest; he also does not think it the author’s place to say whether a book is worth reading or not.

  168. See e.g. Ochi, ‘Neko no warai’ (n. 98 above); Maeda, ‘Neko no kotoba’ (n. 39 above); Izu, ‘“Neko” no tanjō’ (n. 134 above); Kawana, ‘A Narrative Game’ (n. 3 above); Yamamoto, ‘Katarite’ (n. 134 above).

  169. The essay ‘Shaseibun’ is collected at TSZ 16.49–57. For discussions, see Karatani, Origins (n. 149 above), pp. 179–82; Karatani, ‘Henbutsutoshite’ (n. 154 above); Karatani, ‘Death and Poetry’ (n. 154 above); Karatani Kōjin, ‘Shaeseibun no isō’, in Sōseki wo yomu, ed. Karatani Kōjin et al., Tokyo, 1994, pp. 16–21; Kazuki, ‘Soseki Natsume’ (n. 165 above), pp. 131–2; Poch, Licentious Fictions (n. 154 above), pp. 179–208.

  170. See the preface to Theory of Literature and ‘My Individualism’ in Bourdaghs et al. (n. 10 above), pp. 43–4, 249–51.

Acknowledgements

A version of this paper was delivered as part of the ‘Global Receptions’ panel at the 151st Annual Meeting of the Society for Classical Studies on 4 January 2020. My thanks to Cynthia Damon (the panel chair), the other panellists and the audience for their feedback. My thanks also to Emily Austin, Bill Beck, Leanna Boychenko, Kenny Draper, Richard Hutchins, Notsu Hiroshi, Shingu Ikue, Konrad Weeda and Jennifer Weintritt, who all offered valuable advice on the paper. I also wish to thank the anonymous reviewers for their generous suggestions. Any remaining defects in the paper are my sole responsibility.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Classical Studies, Loyola University Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

    James R. Townshend

Authors
  1. James R. Townshend
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to James R. Townshend.

Ethics declarations

Ethical Statement

I did not receive support from any organization for completing this research and have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose. I certify that I have no affiliations with or involvement in any organization or entity with any financial interest or non-financial interest in the subject matter or materials discussed in this manuscript.

Research Involving Human and Animal Rights

Research for this paper did not include any human or animal participants.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Townshend, J.R. ‘Shut Up! You Can’t Even Read Latin!’ Ancient Greek and Roman Material in Natsume Sōseki’s I am a Cat. Int class trad 31, 174–217 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12138-023-00648-8

Download citation

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12138-023-00648-8

Search

Navigation