The Japan Times Online
A Japanese campus novel:
Soseki's view is a detached one, clinical, sometimes cynical, with hints of satire. His main characters illuminate and darken each other, their light and shadow — Soseki is a sublime sketcher of people — creating a three-dimensional support cast. "Sanshiro" embodies all of the doubt, excitement and paranoia of the Meiji Era. This is a campus novel 50 years ahead of its time, a coming-of-age story and a study of love in a changing world, commenting on the shifting social mores and morals of 20th-century Japan. With "Sanshiro" and the comedy of manners "I Am a Cat," Soseki may be Japan's Jane Austen.
Haruki Murakami's introduction is thoughtful and places "Sanshiro" as an early inspiration for his "Norwegian Wood." The translator's notes provide interesting background to the politics behind Lafcadio Hearn's departure from Tokyo Imperial University and Soseki's subsequent hiring. Rubin's new translation of this modern classic is fresh and invigorating, totally reworking his earlier 1977 translation and establishing him as the pre-eminent Japanese- to-English translator.
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