Rethinking Sōseki's theory

Abstract

This paper builds on the discussion of Bungakuron in Origins of Modern Japanese Literature (1993). It focuses on Sōseki's collaboration with Masaoka Shiki to revive haiku and the links that Sōseki found between the haiku-related genre of shaseibun (literary sketches) and the grotesque, loosely plotted realism of Laurence Sterne. Like Bakhtin, Sōseki recognizes something in early novelistic forms that would later be disciplined out. Furthermore, this paper argues that in the preface to Bungakuron Sōseki provides both an encomium to his dead friend Masaoka and a prescient announcement of the ‘end of literature’, perceived 100 years early from his vantage point as a non-Western subject witnessing the ‘end of empire’ in London.