Paper short abstract:

In his literary work, Natsume Sōseki uses outmoded kanji, sophisticated glosses and katakana, which bring the presence of the written text itself into the foreground. This paper focuses on the visual aspect of his prose, which is grounded in his interest in calligraphy, painting and book-binding.

Paper long abstract:

Natsume Sōseki (1867-1916) decisively shaped the direction of modern prose in the Meiji period and later achieved canonical status as the hallmarks of modern Japanese literature (Ōyama, 2020). This paper focuses on Sōseki’s creative use of the graphic potential of Japanese writing and the “visual” aspects of his prose, which is grounded in his interest in calligraphy, Chinese-style painting and book-binding (Kawashima, 2020). Sōseki began his literary career at a time where many writers had abandoned traditional forms for modern vernacular prose with the rise of the novel. But he uses outmoded kanji, sophisticated glosses and katakana scripts, which bring the presence of the written text itself into the foreground (Kitagawa, 2012). For example, in his most famous novel Kokoro (1914), Sōseki explores the meanings of the “heart”, as both an organ of the body and a locus of passion, by writing the word phonetically in hiragana syllabary (こゝろ), kanji characters (心) and katakana scripts (ハート). In this paper, I will analyze the styles of writing in two of Sōseki’s fictional works in which translation is a central trope. Maboroshi no tate (The Phantom Shield, 1905) – a short story based on the Arthurian legend – is a mixture of Latin alphabet, katakana scripts and obsolete kanji which creates a sense of estrangement. In Sorekara (And Then, 1909) – a novel about a Japanese dandy with Western ideals – Sōseki often mixes a word of foreign origin with a local one, as when he writes “an original” (特殊人) and glosses it with the オリジナル furigana pronunciation. The claim of this paper is that the blur of languages and scripts in these two texts convey the way Sōseki explores the connection between the visuality of writing and the practice of translation in a unique way.

References:

Kawashima, Yūya. Natsume Sōseki: shodō bunka ni okeru kyōyō no henyō. Kyūryūdō, 2020.

Kitagawa, Fukiko. Sōseki no bunpō. Suiseisha, 2012.

Ōyama, Hideki. Sōseki to Teikoku daigaku. Kōyō shobō, 2020.