Natsume Soseki

Kokoro

by Natsume Soseki

No collection of Japanese literature is complete without Natsume Soseki's Kokoro, his most famous novel and the last he complete before his death. Published here in the first new translation in more than fifty...

The Gate

by Natsume Soseki, William F. Sibley & Pico Iyer

An NYRB Calssics Original

A humble clerk and his loving wife scrape out a quiet existence on the margins of Tokyo. Resigned, following years of exile and misfortune, to the bitter consequences of having married...

My Individualism and the Philosophical Foundations of Literature

by Natsume Soseki, Inger Brodey & Sammy I. I. Tsunematsu

In these rare personal essays, Soseki defines the role of art in light of the isolation of the modern world. Each essay includes personal anecdotes that act as allegories about the fate of Japan.

In her introduction,...

I Am a Cat

by Natsume Soseki & Aiko Ito

Written over the course of 1904-6, Soseki's comic masterpiece, I Am a Cat, satirizes the follies of upper-middle-class Japanese society during the Meiji era. With acerbic wit and sardonic perspective, it follows...