Time, Death and the Empire: Natsume So¯seki's Omoidasu koto nado (Remembrances)

Abstract

This article enters the current debate about So¯seki's attitude towards the Japanese government's imperialistic project through a new reading of his autobiographical piece Omoidasu koto nado (1910–1911). Julia Adeney Thomas's work on the transformations of the conceptions of nature, the body, and society in Japan from late Meiji to early Showa is applied to So¯seki's treatment of these subjects. It is evident from the powerful depictions of So¯seki's personal experience of a life-threatening illness that he finds the three major ‘configurations’ of nature in late Meiji identified by Thomas incompatible with the realities of his experience. Omoidasu koto nado pleads with the politically influential elite to whom it is addressed for a recognition of the centrality of human consciousness, personal experience and memory in the human condition. The absence of any reference to these basic features of the human being, particularly in the new ideologies whose meta-narratives scorned the personal, made them anti-human and cruel. I contend that given the socio-political context and its readership, Omoidasu koto nado is primarily an expression of So¯seki's deep apprehension of, and antagonism towards, the emerging fascism of officialdom in Japan.