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Title: Light and darkness: An unfinished novel by Soseki Natsume ISBN: 0-399-50610-1 Publisher: Putnam Pub. Date: 1982 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $8.00

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Average Customer Rating: 4 (2 reviews)

Rating: 3
Summary: The Lotus of Truth Grows from the Muck of Daily Life
Comment: No doubt some novels are much more difficult to translate than others, but the problem is usually that the translator must transform the scintillating language of the original into equally attractive language in the translation. Works like "The Master and Margarita" (Bulgakov) or "The Devil to Pay in the Backlands" (Guimaraes Rosa) come to mind. What to do, though, when the original consists of purposely vague and banal conversation for hundreds of pages ? This is the problem faced by translators of LIGHT AND DARKNESS, Natsume Soseki's last work. Soseki's concern with human psychology, the minutiae of daily life, and Buddhist philosophy create a novel that is structurally deep and subtle, but boring in form. Soseki focusses on contradictions in human nature---love vs. self-centeredness, honesty vs. falsity, egoism vs. selflessness, for some examples. His five main characters show varied combinations of positions on these continuums and the novel may have been meant to show their transformation towards more enlightened states. Their progress is slow, almost imperceptible. There is a soap opera-ish quality introduced by the fact that it was serialized in a newspaper in 1916 over 188 days. They engage in endless conversations of extreme mediocrity--the dialogue is nothing if not wooden in English, but I wonder if it could be more exciting in Japanese ? Perhaps it would only seem more natural.

Tsuda goes to the hospital for a minor operation. O-Nobu, his wife, visits him, visits her relatives and gets some extra money which the couple needs because they are rather extravagant. Kobayashi, a poor, unemployed former friend, visits Tsuda and advises him to change his attitudes, vaguely threatens to reveal his (not so colorful) past to O-Nobu. Kobayashi visits O-Nobu too, but nothing happens. Tsuda's sister tries to get him to realize his obligations towards his parents. Mrs. Yoshikawa, the wife of Tsuda's boss and a meddler, tries to get Tsuda to change his ways too, sending him to a hot spring resort where at last he meets Kiyoko, a former love, of pure heart, now married to another man. That is the entire story. The reader must concentrate on attitudes and psychology because action is nearly nil, conversations banal. Soseki's ability to probe each character's psyche, both male and female, is at its brilliant height. We don't learn the conclusion because Soseki died before the novel was finished. While Buddhist philosophy and stories planned on a vast scale may appeal to some, I would have to disagree with the translator's comments in my edition. LIGHT AND DARKNESS is neither the best modern Japanese novel, nor Soseki's masterpiece. It is atypical. I am glad that I read it, but that is more because I wanted to know Soseki's work. Put it down to curiosity if you will. If your taste runs to philosophically complex and extremely insightful literature, you may find this a wonderful novel. It is certainly original. However, even though LIGHT AND DARKNESS is widely praised in Japan, I have to look at it from the point of view of potential readers in other countries. I would not recommend it to people looking for "a good novel" in a standard sense, or for an idea about Japanese literature in general.

Rating: 5
Summary: Amazing psychological analysis and composition method
Comment: This is the last and unfinished novel of his works. He died suddenly without finishing it.

It is the story of the wife, who suspects if her husband loves another woman, and him, who can't forget a past lover. Abandoning his composition style of the individual narrater so far, he represents the different world views from each viewpoint of all the characters. The world of the characters are revealed as the panorama from the point of view of the God. The composition method of each plots proceeding contemporarily is just the modern method of the novel, so I can remember that surprise as if the completion of the Japanese modern novel sprang up under my eyes, the first time I read this novel. The Japanese contemporary novel has already begun at 'Light and Darkness.'

This complicated composition method doesn't aim to lose the entertainment reading novels. Rather in reverse. It clarifies the various relationship among each people from their different viewpoints and digs out the psychology of each characters. It is psychological and historical at once. Each plots are the psychological analyses with the amazing insight and at the same time the preparation for the following ones.

Readers may pierce the Dostyevskian in this novel. However, and more, they will be surprised at the complicated psychological structure of Japanese women. I have thought even now that there are no analyses of the Japanese culture superior to it. It is why the woman keeps the depth of their own culture in many cases.