Japan’s Dostoyevski

Press, 25 January 1986, Page 20

Japan’s Dostoyevski

Light and Darkness. By Natsume Soseki. Translated by K H. Viglielmo. Picador/Pan, 1985. 348 pp. $18.95 (paperback). (Reviewed by Mhairi Erber) There is something a great deal more frustrating about an unfinished novel than an unfinished symphony, but neither is without merit if it is by a master of his craft. Natsume Soseki is generally considered the greatest novelist of modern Japan, but “Light and Darkness” was still being serialised in a Tokyo newspaper, and the final sections had not been written, when he died in December, 1916. The book poses an interesting moral question to which the solution is by no means obvious. Soseki’s philosophy (Zen Buddhism) would, one assumes, have limited the choices, but exactly how he would have ended the novel we do not know — indeed it is possible that the author himself was enduring great anxiety on this score. One has therefore to read the novel for the journey itself. It is long and gloomy, and the characters one encounters on the way are, on the whole, unlikeable, but one does not have to be a complete masochist to persevere. The story is mundane. Tsuda, who seems abnormally detached and who is portrayed as a rather self-centred, materialistic young man, has married, on the rebound, O-Nobo, a determined and clever though rather insincere, young woman, who seems to have taken advantage of the situation to advance what she considered to be her own interest She has few allies and her situation engages the reader’s sympathies for it is plain that

although he indulges her, Tsuda does not love her; nor, understandably, is she particularly fond of him, though she is too proud to admit her mistake. That the subject of love in a Japanese marriage should preoccupy Soseki no doubt owes something to Western influences and may account for the appeal of the book to Japanese readers. Tsuda becomes ill, requires surgery (for which the money is not readily available because his father’s generosity has been stretched to breaking point), and submits to a period of rest and recuperation during which he is gradually forced to examine his situation and eventually, in effect, his soul. For we are expected to understand (and here I have been guided by the "afterword” of translator V. H. Viglielmo) that it is not just his body that is sick — indeed his physical illness is just a symptom of his psychological malaise. There is something rather Russian about a book of which the theme is salvation and there is in Kobayaski, the poor socialist proof reader who loves to be hated and who is fleeing to Korea, a very Dostoyevskian character. Further comparisons could be made, but are not likely to enhance the book’s appeal to those without a strong stomach for soul-searching. “Light and Darkness” is not I fancy the best Introduction to Natsume Soseki, nor is the translation a new one (it was first published in Great Britain in 1971). Nevertheless, this Picador paperback will provide an introduction for many who will, like me, be encouraged to turn to earlier, and one anticipates, less frustrating works.