47 pages • 1 hour read
Natsume SōsekiKokoro
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1914A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The City and the Countryside
Kokoro explores the contrast between the rural and the urban communities in Japan during the last days of the Meiji Restoration. Characters transition between contrasting rural and urban environments to the point where the city and the countryside exist almost as separate countries. The countryside depicted in the novel is slow-paced, isolated, and centered around small communities. Contrastingly, the city (primarily Tokyo) is a bustling, energetic place occupied by students and iconoclasts. Everything in the city is connected and available, while the crowds are so populous that characters can lose themselves in a way that they never could in a small rural town. For the narrator, this contrast evidently favors the city. The city represents an education, a social world, and an ambition to be more than just a person from a small town. To the narrator, the city is a symbol of everything that he cannot have in his hometown, and the contrast between the city and the countryside constantly occupies his mind and motivates his actions.
A key element of the thematic contrast between the city and the countryside is the transition from one world to another. This action is repeated numerous times in various directions, but always with Tokyo as a nexus. From Tokyo, characters can go to small rural towns or seaside communities. They do not transition between those rural places outside of Tokyo; everything passes through the major city, demonstrating why it is such an important part of modern life in a physical, logistical, and practical way.
The path from the rural to the urban is well-worn, but it is not permanent. Both Sensei and the narrator move back and forth between the city and the rural areas, though they show an obvious preference for the city, which continually pulls them back. Each time they return, they are shocked by how much the city fascinates and entertains them. In contrast, they quickly become bored in rural environments and soon begin thinking again about returning to the city. The range of intellectual delights available to the students in the city means that the rural communities feel boring and dull. The narrator tires of his family’s familiar habits, and almost as soon as he returns to his hometown, he is communicating with friends from the city and plotting his return.
The contrast between the city and the countryside represents the changing face of Japan during the Meiji Restoration. During this period, Japan went through a process of modernization, and many traditional practices were abandoned to the past. In this respect, the countryside represents old, parochial ideas, while the city represents the future. Tokyo is where students discuss their philosophies and where men like Sensei defy traditional views of the world in a captivating way. The urban environment’s swirling ideas are captivating for young men like the narrator but off-putting for traditionalists like his parents. This generational change is significant, coming at a time when Emperor Meiji’s death resulted in a significant shift in Japanese culture. The rural past is being forgotten, falling ill and fading from the world like the narrator’s father and the Emperor himself. In its place is the urban future; the future belongs to the young and the radical as the past belongs to the old and the traditional. As the country changes socially, the physical environment reflects this thematically.
Cynicism and Apathy
When he first meets Sensei, the narrator is struck by the older man’s cynicism. Sensei radically rejects the world, happy to criticize everything around him in such a way that he opens the narrator’s eyes to the reality of the world. To Sensei, nothing is sacred. Everything is open to criticism, even the habits, rituals, and institutions that the narrator has taken for granted as part of his life. This cynicism can be construed as rudeness; in a polite society, highly dependent on habit and etiquette, Sensei’s refusal to conform is a captivating display of conviction. Sensei is a cynical iconoclast, to the point where he undermines the narrator’s university education by presenting him with such an enthralling perspective that it makes schoolwork seem inconsequential. This cynicism appeals to the narrator because it is new and unexplained. Like a mystery or a secret, the narrator is desperate to understand how a man can view the world in such a way.
The narrator’s attempts to define Sensei’s apathy help characterize the younger man. Frequently, the narrator is portrayed as naïve and inexperienced in terms of human interaction. He struggles to understand human behavior because he simply lacks the experience that comes with age and maturity. When he meets Sensei and is introduced to a radically-cynical view of the world that rejects anything sacred, the narrator tries to comprehend this point of view. He settles on apathy as an explanation and believes that Sensei simply does not care about the world, anyone, or any repercussions for his actions. This apathy, he reasons, comes from Sensei’s careful study of society; having examined society, he has chosen to withdraw because he feels that there is nothing worth his investment.
Sensei’s letter challenges the narrator’s explanation. Rather than apathy, Sensei’s cynicism is motivated by compassion. Rather than not caring at all, Sensei cares too much. He is deeply affected by the pain of his past, and this emotional turmoil has driven him into cynical alienation as a way to protect himself and those around him. While young, Sensei was betrayed by his family and then betrayed his friend. His betrayal of K was followed by K’s suicide, and feeling grief and responsibility for his best friend’s death, Sensei believes that he has seen the truth about humanity. Rather than being separate from society as an apathetic critic, Sensei believes that he is as much to blame for the state of the world as anyone else. He is prone to those very same tendencies that he criticizes, so much so that his cynicism comes from a place of genuine experience rather than distant study.
By completely switching the reasoning for Sensei’s cynicism, the novel reiterates the narrator’s youthful naivety. The narrator cannot be trusted to provide insight, because his interpretation is proven to be so wrong. Furthermore, this switch in perspective embellishes Sensei’s credentials and validates his criticisms of society, demonstrating how his cynicism is not swayed by hypocrisy or detachment. Sensei is not an apathetic man, though he is a cynic. The misreading of his apathy by the narrator is a thematic validation of Sensei’s criticisms and a reminder of the narrator’s inexperience.
Unspoken Words
Kokoro is a novel about words left unsaid and the pain that these unspoken words can cause. Sensei is the novel’s central figure, seen from two perspectives. From the narrator’s perspective, Sensei has deliberately withdrawn from the world and refuses to explain why. From Sensei’s perspective, the reasons for his withdrawal are so painful and haunting that he cannot bring himself to share them with anyone until his final days. These unspoken words—the story of his life—become the novel’s plot as the narrator meets and becomes captivated by a man he cannot explain.
In speaking with Sensei and his wife, Shizu, the narrator realizes that he is not alone in attempting to understand Sensei’s seemingly unexplainable life. Shizu is cut off during a conversation when Sensei senses that she is about to overshare something with the narrator, causing the narrator to focus on the potential of the words she may have spoken and guess what Shizu may have been about to say. As she tells him later, however, she does not know the full extent of Sensei’s past. She does not understand everything, and she is as much a victim of her husband’s unspoken words as anyone else. When words are left unspoken, the other characters are forced to create explanations to fill in the void.
Sensei’s letter provides the words he has never been able to share with his wife. Central to this story is K, Sensei’s best friend, who provides a clear contrast to the young Sensei and the narrator. Unlike these characters, K is open, frank, and honest. He knows how to discuss his feelings, and he refuses to deny himself what he wants due to social etiquette or familial expectations. He defies his parents, his adoptive family, and others to study his favored subject rather than become a doctor. While Sensei keeps his love for Ojosan private, K shares his feelings with his friend. Sensei keeps his words unspoken, and K does not. K is then betrayed by Sensei, who talks with Okusan and secures Ojosan’s hand in marriage before K can act. Sensei believes that this betrayal motivates K to attempt suicide. Though K’s suicide note says otherwise, Sensei is certain of his guilt and that these words will now be left forever unsaid. K’s decision to omit his real reasoning is a damning demonstration of Sensei’s refusal to speak. He hands Sensei the responsibility of telling the truth, giving him the option of sharing the unspoken words with the world as K himself might have done. Sensei accepts this lesson but chooses to leave the words unspoken until his final days. He may be outspoken and cynical, but he chooses to keep his biggest secret hidden for many years.
Sensei’s letter is an attempt at atonement. He has borne the burden of the unspoken words for many years, but now he has chosen to put them out into the world. All the reflective self-criticisms that he has directed at himself for decades are now committed to paper. What was done cannot be undone, but Sensei still feels the grief and the pain of his unspoken words as though they were a debt to settle. Ironically, Sensei passes the same burden K left to him to the narrator. While K left Sensei with the option of telling the truth to the world, Sensei leaves the narrator with the decision of when and how his story can be shared. The words are left unspoken during Sensei’s lifetime because some burdens are too heavy to bear, as the narrator himself discovers when pondering what to do with Sensei’s story. Ultimately, Kokoro’s existence implies the narrator chose to share the story, making this a book in favor of speaking out and not leaving things unsaid.
