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Kusamakura

Downloads: 100+
First published: 1906
Pages: 110

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About this book

A painter flees the noise of modern life for a quiet hot-spring inn deep in the mountains, hoping to work in a state of pure aesthetic detachment, free of ordinary human feeling. Instead of finishing a picture, he drifts through poetry, reverie, and long meditations on beauty, art, and the artist's place in the world. His calm is unsettled by O-Nami, the innkeeper's beautiful and unreadable daughter, whose presence keeps pulling him back toward the emotions he wants to leave behind. Sōseki called it a haiku in the form of a novel, and it reads less as a plot than as a sustained argument about how art and life work against each other.

About the author

Soseki Natsume

Natsume Soseki (1867-1916) is widely regarded as Japan's greatest modern novelist. Trained in English literature and sent to London on a government scholarship, he came home miserable, left teaching for journalism, and wrote I Am a Cat, Botchan, and Kokoro. His portrait appeared on the 1000 yen note.