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Kokoro
is a novel by the Japanese author Natsume Sōseki. It was first published in 1914 in serial form in the Japanese newspaper ''Asahi Shimbun''. The title translated literally means "heart". The word contains shades of meaning—notions of the heart and also of mind—and can be translated as "affection", "spirit", "resolve", "courage", "sentiment", or "the heart of things". During the novel's initial serial run, from April 20 to August 11, 1914, it was printed under the title . When later published in novel form by Iwanami Shoten, its title was shortened to ''Kokoro''; the rendering of the word "kokoro" itself was also changed from kanji (心) to hiragana (こころ). Along with Osamu Dazai's ''No Longer Human'', ''Kokoro'' is one of the best-selling novels of all time in Japan, having sold more than seven million copies in the country as of 2016. Premise The work deals with the transition from the Japanese Meiji society to the modern era, by exploring the friendship between ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edwin McClellan
Edwin McClellan (24 October 1925 – 27 April 2009) was a British Japanologist, teacher, writer, translator, and interpreter of Japanese literature and culture. Biography McClellan was born in Kobe, Japan in 1925 to a Japanese mother, Teruko Yokobori, and a British father who worked for Lever Brothers in Japan. His mother and older brother died when he was two. Bilingual from birth and educated at the Canadian Academy in Kobe, McClellan and his father were repatriated to Britain in 1942 aboard the Tatsuta Maru, a passenger liner requisitioned by the Imperial Japanese Navy to repatriate British nationals from throughout Southeast Asia. In London, McClellan taught Japanese at the School of Oriental and African Studies as part of the war effort. At 18, he joined the Royal Air Force, hoping to become a fighter pilot, but his fluency in Japanese made him more useful to Allied intelligence. He spent the years 1944–1947 in Washington, D.C. and at Langley Air Force Base in Marylan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Natsume Sōseki
, born , was a Japanese novelist. He is best known around the world for his novels ''Kokoro'', ''Botchan'', ''I Am a Cat'', '' Kusamakura'' and his unfinished work '' Light and Darkness''. He was also a scholar of British literature and writer of haiku, '' kanshi'', and fairy tales. From 1984 until 2004, his portrait appeared on the front of the Japanese 1,000 yen note. Early years Natsume Kin'nosuke was born on 9 February 1867 in the town of Babashita, Ushigome, Edo (present Kikui, Shinjuku, Tokyo), the fifth son of village head ('' nanushi'') Natsume Kohē Naokatsu and his wife Chie. His father, a powerful and wealthy ''nanushi'', owned all land from Ushigome to Takadanobaba in Edo and handled most civil lawsuits at his doorstep. He was a descendant of Natsume Yoshinobu, a Sengoku period samurai and retainer of Tokugawa Ieyasu. Sōseki began his life as an unwanted child, born to his mother late in her life, forty years old and his father then fifty-three. When he was born ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Heart (1955 Film)
is a 1955 Japanese drama film directed by Kon Ichikawa. It is based on the 1914 novel ''Kokoro'' by Natsume Sōseki. Plot Student Hioki befriends an elder man, Nobuchi, and his wife Shizu, who live a reclusive life in their Tokyo home. A shadow of the past hangs over the couple in the shape of a long deceased friend, Kaji, whose grave Nobuchi regularly visits. Nobuchi slowly opens up to Hioki, who sees in him his tutor and addresses him as "sensei", explaining his distrust in people with his relatives' past attempt to withhold him of his share of his parents' inheritance. Hioki travels back to his hometown in the countryside, where his father is in a critical condition. Nobuchi writes a long letter to Hioki, his "testament", in which he recounts his friendship to Kaji, which he ultimately betrayed over their mutual love for Shizu, resulting in Kaji's suicide. When Hioki receives the letter, he hurries to Nobuchi's home, only to learn that Nobuchi has taken his own life. Cast * M ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Heart (1973 Film)
, also titled ''Love Betrayed'', is a 1973 Japanese drama film written and directed by Kaneto Shindō. It is based on the 1914 novel ''Kokoro'' by Natsume Sōseki. Cast * Noboru Matsuhashi as K * Kazunaga Tsuji as S * Nobuko Otowa as Mrs. M. * Anri as I-ko * Taiji Tonoyama as Father of S * Yasuo Arakawa as Boy * Sotomi Kotake as Girl Literary source Sōseki's novel has been adapted for film and television numerous times, the first time for cinema by Kon Ichikawa in 1955 as '' The Heart''. For his version, writer/director Shindō moved the story's Meiji era setting to the 1970s and put his focus only on the novel's third and final part, "Sensei to isho" ("Sensei's testament"). Reception While Louis Frédéric Louis-Frédéric Nussbaum, also known as Louis Frédéric or Louis-Frédéric (1923–1996), was a French scholar, art historian, writer and editor. He was a specialist in the cultures of Asia, especially India and Japan. Early life Louis-Fréd ... ranked ''The Heart' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kon Ichikawa
was a Japanese film director and screenwriter. His work displays a vast range in genre and style, from the anti-war films '' The Burmese Harp'' (1956) and '' Fires on the Plain'' (1959), to the documentary '' Tokyo Olympiad'' (1965), which won two BAFTA Film Awards, and the 19th-century revenge drama ''An Actor's Revenge'' (1963). His film ''Odd Obsession'' (1959) won the Jury Prize at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival. Early life and career Ichikawa was born in Ise, Mie Prefecture as Giichi Ichikawa (市川儀一). His father died when he was four years old, and the family kimono shop went bankrupt, so he went to live with his sister. He was given the name "Kon" by an uncle who thought the characters in the kanji 崑 signified good luck, because the two halves of the Chinese character look the same when it is split in half vertically. As a child he loved drawing and his ambition was to become an artist. He also loved films and was a fan of " chambara" or samurai films. In his tee ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Wayfarer (novel)
is a novel by Japanese author Natsume Sōseki. It was serialized in Asahi Shimbun newspaper from December 6, 1912 to November 5, 1913. The novel has been translated into English by Beongcheon Yu. Popular culture In the 2013 anime film written, directed and edited by Makoto Shinkai, the main character Yukari Yukino can be seen reading Kōjin (The Wayfarer). External linksThe complete text of Kojin in Japanese. 1912 novels Novels by Natsume Sōseki Novels first published in serial form Works originally published in Asahi Shimbun {{1910s-novel-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
No Longer Human
is a 1948 Japanese novel by Osamu Dazai. It is considered Dazai's masterpiece and ranks as the second-best selling novel ever in Japan, behind Natsume Sōseki's ''Kokoro''. The literal translation of the title, discussed by Donald Keene in his preface to the English translation, is "Disqualified From Being Human". The novel, narrated in first person, contains several elements which portray an autobiographical basis but is in fact categorized under the semi-autobiographical genre since the characters in the book are all fictional. The novel presents recurring themes in the author's life, including suicide, social alienation, and depression. Much like the protagonist Yōzō, Dazai attempted suicide a total of five times in his lifetime, with consorts, until ultimately succeeding in taking his own life with his lover at the time, a woman named Tomie Yamazaki. Many believe the book to have been his will, as Dazai took his own life shortly after the last part of the book (which ha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Iwanami Shoten Publishing
is a Japanese publishing company based in Tokyo.Louis Frédéric, ''Japan Encyclopedia'', Harvard University Press, 2005, p. 409. Iwanami Shoten was founded in 1913 by Iwanami Shigeo. Its first major publication was Natsume Sōseki's novel '' Kokoro'', which appeared as a book in 1914 after being serialized in the ''Asahi Shimbun''. Iwanami has since become known for scholarly publications, editions of classical Japanese literature, dictionaries, and high-quality paperbacks. Since 1955, it has published the ''Kōjien'', a single-volume dictionary of Japanese that is widely considered to be authoritative. Iwanami's head office is at Hitotsubashi 2–5–5, Chiyoda, Tokyo. Company history Iwanami Shigeo founded the publishing firm Iwanami Shoten in the Kanda district of Tokyo in 1913. In its early years, the company published authors such as Natsume Sōseki, Kurata Hyakuzō and Abe Jiro. It also published academic and literary journals in the field of philosophy, incl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Monumenta Nipponica
''Monumenta Nipponica'' is a semi-annual academic journal of Japanese studies. Published by Sophia University (Tokyo), it is one of the oldest English-language academic journals in the field of Asian studies, being founded in 1938. Although the journal originally published articles in several languages, such as French, German, Spanish, and Italian, the journal has been published solely in English since early 1963. A series of 75 monographs were also published until 1986 under the ''Monumenta Nipponica'' name. A symposium was held at Sophia University on October 6, 2018 to commemorate the 80-year anniversary of ''Monumenta Nipponica’s'' founding. Videos of the symposium are available on YouTube. In 2020, Sophia University published a special issue commemorating ''Monumenta Nipponica’s'' 80-year founding, showcasing the people who made the journal happen and noteworthy historical events. Contents Each issue contains two to three main research articles, and around twenty review ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jun Etō
was the pen name of a Japanese literary critic, active in the Shōwa and early Heisei periods of Japan. His real name was . Early life Etō was born in the Shinjuku district of Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and List of cities in Japan, largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, ...; his father was a banker, and his grandfather (originally from Saga in Kyūshū) was an admiral in the Imperial Japanese Navy. His mother died when he was four years old, and always sickly as a child, he was mostly educated at home. He had an interest in literature from an early age, ranging from the heavy works of Jun'ichirō Tanizaki and Fyodor Dostoevsky, to the comics of Suihō Tagawa. In 1942, he was sent to boarding school in Kamakura, Kanagawa, Kamakura, Kanagawa prefecture. While in Kamakura, his family's house in Tokyo was destroyed ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Meiji Emperor
, also called or , was the 122nd emperor of Japan according to the traditional order of succession. Reigning from 13 February 1867 to his death, he was the first monarch of the Empire of Japan and presided over the Meiji era. He was the figurehead of the Meiji Restoration, a series of rapid changes that witnessed Japan's transformation from an isolationist, feudal state to an industrialized world power. At the time of Emperor Meiji's birth in 1852, Japan was a feudal pre-industrial country dominated by the isolationist Tokugawa shogunate and the ''daimyō'' subject to it, who ruled over the country's 270 decentralized domains. By the time of his death, Japan had undergone an extensive political, economic, and social revolution and emerged as one of the great powers on the world stage. ''The New York Times'' summarized this transformation at the emperor's funeral in 1912: "the contrast between that which preceded the funeral car and that which followed it was striking indeed. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Meiji Era
The is an era of Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868 to July 30, 1912. The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feudal society at risk of colonization by Western powers to the new paradigm of a modern, industrialized nation state and emergent great power, influenced by Western scientific, technological, philosophical, political, legal, and aesthetic ideas. As a result of such wholesale adoption of radically different ideas, the changes to Japan were profound, and affected its social structure, internal politics, economy, military, and foreign relations. The period corresponded to the reign of Emperor Meiji. It was preceded by the Keiō era and was succeeded by the Taishō era, upon the accession of Emperor Taishō. The rapid modernization during the Meiji era was not without its opponents, as the rapid changes to society caused many disaffected traditionalists from the former samura ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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