Vintage, RARE, Japanese Literature…

Sōseki Natsume

‘I Am a Cat’

Translated by Aiko Itō & Graeme Wilson

Published by Charles E. Tuttle Company

Hardcover w/ Dust Jacket

1987 16th Printing

First printing was in 1972, this is the sixteenth printing from 1987.

218 pages.

Measures 7 1/2” x 5”.

FROM WIKIPEDIA: Natsume Soseki (February 9, 1867 - December 9, 1916), born Natsume Kinnosuke was a Japanese novelist of the Meiji period (1868-1912). He is best known for his novels Kokoro, Botchan, I Am a Cat and his unfinished work Light and Darkness. He was also a scholar of British literature and composer of haiku, kanshi, and fairy tales. From 1984 until 2004, his portrait appeared on the front of the Japanese 1000 yen note. In Japan, he is often considered the greatest writer in modern Japanese history. He has had a profound effect on almost all important Japanese writers since.I Am a Cat is a satirical novel written in 1905-1906 by Natsume Soseki, about Japanese society during the Meiji Period (1868-1912); particularly, the uneasy mix of Western culture and Japanese traditions, and the aping of Western customs. Soseki's original title, Wagahai wa neko de aru, uses very high-register phrasing more appropriate to a nobleman, conveying a grandiloquence and self-importance intended to sound ironic, since the speaker, an anthropomorphised domestic cat, is a house cat, not feral. The book was first published in ten installments in the literary journal Hototogisu. At first, Soseki intended only to write the short story that constitutes the first chapter of I Am a Cat. However, Takahama Kyoshi, one of the editors of Hototogisu, persuaded Soseki to serialize the work, which evolved stylistically as the installments progressed. Nearly all the chapters can stand alone as discrete works.In the mid-1970s, the prolific screenwriter Toshio Yasumi adapted Soseki's novel into a screenplay. Kon Ichikawa directed the film, which premiered in Japanese cinemas in 1975. The novel was also adapted into a film released in 1936, and an anime television special aired in 1982.In I Am a Cat, a supercilious, feline narrator describes the lives of an assortment of middle-class Japanese people: Mr. Sneaze, ("sneeze" is misspelled on purpose, but literally translated from Chinno Kushami, in the original Japanese) and family (the cat's owners), Sneaze's garrulous and irritating friend Waverhouse, and the young scholar Avalon Coldmoon with his will-he-won't-he courtship of the businessman's spoiled daughter, Opula Goldfield.

CONDITION:

Excellent, vintage pre-owned condition. See photos for details.

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