A Short Review of Kusamakura by Natsume Sōseki

Sōseki himself said that Kusamakura didn't have a plot in the traditional sense. It's true, the rising action and falling action all blend together, and there isn't an easily identifiable climax, but the novel doesn't need a plot. The nameless narrator attempts to view life from a strictly aesthetic point of view, and if the reader attempts to view the novel in the same way, Sōseki's goal becomes clear.

There is inherent beauty in life, and Kusamakura follows the narrator's journey to find it. Interestingly, the narrator doesn't have a specific destination; there is no X on a map that denotes beauty. Because nature is everywhere, finding beauty is about training the eyes to see it. Climbing up a mountain to get away from the city is very helpful, though, so the narrator heads up the mountain trail.

Throughout his interactions with the landscape and local people, the narrator consistently zooms out, placing what he sees within a frame or within lines of a haiku. His arduous climb through the rain becomes easier when viewed from an outside perspective. He is no longer a weary traveler, but part of a work of art, symbolizing steadfastness and humility.

Eventually, the narrator reaches a hotel, where he meets the owner's daughter, Nami. Mysterious but unafraid to converse with the narrator, she finds his quest slightly humorous. Although the narrator feels that Nami is a great candidate for his painting, there is something missing that prevents him from putting brush to canvas.

The more time that the narrator spends exploring the mountain village and talking to its people, the closer he gets to capturing the aestheticism he models his life after. As the novel draws to a close, two impactful ideas are brought to the reader's attention. First is the reach of modern society. Even in this peaceful village in the remote Japanese mountains, the effects of the Russo-Japanese war are felt. No matter how hard one tries to escape society and embrace nature, there is no way to rid oneself of the human. We are imperfect, after all, and we simply cannot become nature, for it is intrinsically inhuman.

Finally, Sōseki addresses the "human" more directly. He accepts that we cannot escape the human world, but he claims that modern society fences us in. By the time this book was published, the early 20th century, Sōseki believed that society had "expended all its means to develop the individual," and that now civilization "proceeds to crush it by all possible means." Everyone is given their own patch of earth, but are forced to stay within the "iron railing" thrown up around it. The peace that comes with life in the modern age isn't true peace, but "the peace of the zoo, where the tiger lies in his cage glaring out at the gaping sightseers."

As with Sōseki's other novels, the narrator struggles with the balance between obligation and desire, nature and society, and freedom and security. What makes Kusamakura unique is that Sōseki does manage to strip away most of the bother that city life imposes on the individual. The narrator does in fact manage to find the perfect subject for his painting, and appreciates the time he spent in the wonderfully inhuman world of the mountains.