Who is Soseki Natsume?
Soseki Natsume is one of the most highly regarded novelists of the Meiji Period in Japan. Born in Edo, now called Tokyo, in 1867, Soseki Natsume died in 1916 at the age of 49. Soseki Natsume became infatuated with Chinese literature and poetry in his school years, and these influences show in his writing, which has many uniquely Chinese qualities. Natsume Soseki spent most of his life as a scholar, studying the English language to proficiency and British literature. He did not begin writing full time until 1907. Soseki Natsume was born Kinnosuke Natsume and began life as an unwanted child, the sixth of a minor and declining samurai family. His parents were older and not interested in raising a child, and they foisted the boy off on a household servant until the age of nine. When he returned to his family, his mother was eager to see him, but his father was relatively uninterested, and parent-child relationships were a theme Soseki Natsume explored in much of his later writing. His moth
