Kokoro

Natsume SōsekiShanghai Translation Publishing House1983

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Word count
155K words
Chapters
3

Tags

Literature Foreign Literature Natsume SosekiHuman NaturePsychological InsightGuiltMoral DilemmaI-NovelFull-Length NovelJapanese LiteratureMeiji Era

Summary

Kokoro is a novel by Natsume Sōseki, one of Japan's national writers, published in 1914. It was first serialized in the Asahi Shimbun under the title "Kokoro: Sensei's Testament" and published in book form by Iwanami Shoten the same year. It is regarded as the representative work of Sōseki's late-period "psychological novels." The book consists of three parts that stand independently in form yet build on one another in content. In Part One, "Sensei and I," a young student chance-meets a quiet, aloof "Sensei" on the beach at Kamakura. He visits him repeatedly thereafter and gradually becomes drawn to Sensei's world-weary outlook and cold judgments of the world. Sensei and his wife treat each other with respect, yet he remains forever evasive about a certain old friend who lies buried in Zōshigaya. Part Two, "My Parents and I," recounts how "I" return home after graduation to care for my seriously ill father, witnessing the calculating ways of the family while receiving a long letter from Sensei in Tokyo. Part Three, "Sensei and His Testament," is the heart of the book. In a letter, Sensei lays bare his past: as a young man lodging at his landlady's house, he and his friend K both fell in love with the landlady's daughter. Fearing he would lose her, he proposed to the landlady first and concealed a crucial fact; K ultimately killed himself. Although Sensei afterward married as he wished, he was imprisoned for life by his guilt, and finally, after the death of the Meiji Emperor and the ritual suicide of Nogi Maresuke, he chose to end his own life, entrusting this story to "me" as a warning to the world. Through three layers of first-person narration, the novel poses riddles one after another and then solves them one after another, rendering the collision of love and friendship and the conflict between self-interest and moral conscience with a slow, quiet force that shakes the heart. It is an essential text for understanding the spiritual predicament of intellectuals in the late Meiji era. Zhou Dayong's translation, based on volume 13 of Nihon no Bungaku published by Chūō Kōronsha, was issued by Shanghai Translation Publishing House in 1983 and is one of the earlier complete Chinese translations on the mainland.

Editor's review

夏目漱石四十七岁写成《心》，写完两年便去世了。这部小说几乎没有情节上的花样：一个学生认识了一位沉默的中年人，后来读到那人留下的长信。可正是这样一本书，被日本人一代代读下来，常年进入教科书，成为“国民级”作品。 它的力量来自漱石对“人心”的凝视。先生并非恶人，他甚至比多数人更清楚何为善；他犯下的错事，放在日常尺度里也不过是抢先一步、少说了几句实话。但就是这几句没说出口的话，把他余下的一生变成了对自己的审判。漱石不替人物开脱，也不作道德宣判，只让先生自己的声音在信纸上一寸寸展开，读者会被迫在判断之前先理解。 周大勇这个译本译自中央公论社《日本の文学》，文字朴素克制，与原著徐缓沉静的语调相称；1983年上海译文版印量可观，是老一辈读者接触漱石的重要入口。今天重读，依然能感到那种被时代与自我同时困住的窒息感：明治精神随天皇之死而终结，而个人的孤独与自欺，从来没有随之结束。想认识日本近代文学的心理深度，这本薄薄的小书是极好的起点。

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Reading tips

  1. 全书三部分可依次读完，也可先读上篇感受“设谜”，再带着疑问进入遗书部分“解谜”。
  2. 读到先生的自白时，不妨停下来想想：若是自己处在同样境地，会不会做出更诚实的选择。
  3. 建议搭配漱石生平与明治末年的历史背景（天皇去世、乃木殉死）一起理解，人物处境会更清楚。
  4. 这本书适合慢读，一次不宜贪多；先生的信尤其值得重读一遍，第二遍才能看清许多伏笔。

About the publisher

Shanghai Translation Publishing House China · Founded in 1978

Shanghai Translation Publishing House is a Chinese publisher oriented mainly toward translation and publishing. Its publications cover foreign literature, world classics and classic works, as well as social culture, folk literature and classical poetry. The database contains 2,618 titles, including Never Let Me Go, Les Misérables (2 volumes), Don Quixote (illustrated collector's edition), The Complete Comedies of Molière (4 volumes), The Complete Novels of Kafka (3 volumes), The Collected Works of Dostoevsky (9-volume set), Reason and Persons, and Oedipus Rex (Translation Classics). Its author resources include foreign writers such as Kazuo Ishiguro, Victor Hugo, Cervantes and Molière, as well as translators such as Zheng Kelu, Sun Jiameng, Li Jianwu and Zhang Kun. The publisher has brands such as "Translation Classics Selections" and "Translation Documentary," and emphasizes translated works in foreign literature and the humanities and social sciences, while also publishing bilingual dictionaries and foreign-language educational books. Public information is limited; the above is based on the book information in the database.

Contents

  1. Part One: Sensei and I
  2. Part Two: My Parents and I
  3. Part Three: Sensei and His Testament (Sensei's Testament)

FAQ

《心》是夏目漱石的哪一时期作品？ 《心》发表于1914年，是夏目漱石晚期作品，与《春分之后》《行人》等一同被视为他转向心理描写的后期代表作；写完两年后，漱石于1916年去世。
这本书的三个部分分别讲什么？ 上篇《先生和我》写学生与先生的相识交往，中篇《双亲和我》写“我”回乡照料病重父亲，下篇《先生和遗书》则以书信形式揭开先生与友人K的往事，是全书核心。
上海译文1983年周大勇译本是全译本吗？ 该译本据日本中央公论社《日本の文学》第13卷译出，包含上、中、下三部分，是大陆较早的完整中译本之一，版权页标注字数约15.5万字。
为什么这本书没有ISBN？ 中国大陆的ISBN制度自1980年代末才逐步推行，1983年出版的中文图书多使用“书号”（如统一书号10188·359），因此该书没有现代意义上的ISBN。
读完《心》还可以读漱石的哪些作品？ 可接着读《我是猫》《少爷》看其早期讽刺笔法，或读《三四郎》《后来的事》《门》三部曲，了解漱石对知识分子处境的持续关注。

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About the author

Natsume Sōseki Author · Japan · 1867–1916

Natsume Sōseki, whose real name was Natsume Kinnosuke, is a representative author of modern Japanese literature. Born in Edo, he graduated from the English Department of Tokyo Imperial University and later studied in Britain. He rose to fame with I Am a Cat in 1905 and went on to write works such as Botchan, The Three-Cornered World, Sanshirō, and Kokoro, earning recognition as Japan's "national writer." He died of a stomach ulcer in 1916. His works often take the daily lives and inner worlds of intellectuals as their subject, with a humorous yet restrained style that combines satire of social manners with careful exploration of loneliness, selfhood, and moral dilemma. His writing spans novels, essays, and other forms, and his style gradually shifted from early light satire to deeper psychological portrayal, exerting a profound influence on the development of modern Japanese literature.