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(★)(Translated by Sammy I. Tsunematsu／ Titulo original : 趣味の遺伝 [Shumi no Iden, 1906]／ Written in eight days, in December 1905, and published in the January 1906 issue of the magazine ´Teikoku Bungaku [Imperial Literature]´,´Shumi no iden [The Heredity of Taste]´ is Soseki Natsume´s only anti-war work. Chronicling the mourning process of a narrator haunted by his friend´s death, the story reveals Soseki´s attitude to the atrocity of war, specifically to the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5, and to the personal tragedies and loss of individuality of young men like his hero Koo-san, and the sacrifices made by both the living and the dead.／ Although the first part of the story powerfully describes the narrator´s visions of the war dead, including the recurring vision of Koo-san who cannot climb out of a ditch and return from the war, it is the second half, in which a beautiful and mysterious woman appears before the narrator at Koo-san´s grave, with the promise of transcendence, that grips our attention.／ The story centers on finding out the identity of this woman and her relationship with Koo-san, with its implication that what should have been a love story has been shattered by the reality of war --a reminder of the magnitude of Japan´s sacrifice for its so-called victory. An Introduction by Stephen W. Kohl provides an insightful commentary on Soseki as an anti-war writer and on the book as a response to the social and political upheavals following the Russo-Japanese War.／ ◆Soseki Natsume (1867-1916) is widely considered the foremost novelist of the Meiji period (1868-1914). After graduating from Tokyo Imperial University in 1893, Soseki taught high school before spending two years in England on a Japanese government scholarship. He returned to lecture in English literature at the university. Numerous nervous disorders forced him to give up teaching in 1908 and he became a full-time writer for the Asahi newspaper. In addition to fourteen novels, Soseki wrote haiku, poems in the Chinese style, academic papers on literary theory, essays, autobiographical sketches and fairy tales.／ Sammy I. Tsunematsu is founder and curator of the Soseki Museum in London, and the translator of several of Soseki´s works. He has also researched and published widely on the Japanese artist Yoshio Markino, who was a contemporary of Soseki´s living in London at the beginning of the twentieth century. Tsunematsu has lived in Surrey, England, for thirty years.) |
BASE de DATOS, Biblioteca del Centro Cultural de la Embajada de Japon
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