2025-10-30 - Kusamakura (Unhuman Tour) by Natsume Soseki ======================================================== Ophelia by Kyujin Yamamoto (1926) I enjoyed reading this book. I thought the titular adjective "unhuman" might be appropriate for Halloween reading, but it was not what i might have expected. It was deeply poetic and psychological in nature. If i had to classify this book, i would call it an unusually candid slice of life. The protagonist uses poetry as a therapeutic aid to maintain his "unhumanity" or artistic detachment from worldly limitations, refraining from unnecessary action until the Right Moment for inspiration to strike. > To be a poet is to be enlightened, and I mean no disparagement, > when I say, it is the simplest and easiest. The simpler the more > beneficial it is, and should the more be respected. Suppose you > lose your temper. You make a seventeen syllable [haiku] of your > indignation. The moment seventeen get into shape, your anger > becomes something outside of you--you cannot be fuming with anger > and composing a [haiku] at the same time. You are moved to tears; > you make seventeen syllables, and they delight you. When your > tears are changed into seventeen syllables, your tearful anguish > has left you, and you have become a self only joyous of being a > [person] capable of weeping. The protagonist leaves Tokyo to get away from the "stink" of humanity, not a literal smell but the dramas and traps of mundane day-to-day life. He compares the artists perspective to living in a 3-cornered version of a 4-cornered world: the 4th corner of common sense being cut off, which i suppose could be compared to the zen concept of beginner's mind and to the tarot archetype of The Fool. This otherworldly perspective is what is meant by unhumanity. He walks a mountain path towards a remote hot springs hotel where he becomes fascinated by Nami-san, the daughter of the hotel owner. Early on he observes about her: > There was no unity of expression. I might have said, light and > darkness of mind were living under the same roof, quarreling. The > fact that there was no unity in her expression was evidence, as I > took it, that there was no unity in her mind. That there was no > unity in her mind must be the consequence of there being no unity > in the world in which she had lived. Hers was the face of one > struggling to overcome the unhappiness that was weighing down upon > her. She must be a woman standing under a star of ill-luck. I was fascinated by his commentary on how modern living is designed to crush out individuality. > The twentieth century strives to develop individuality to its > utmost, and then goes about crushing this individuality in every > conceivable way, saying you are free in this lot of so many by so > many feet, but that you must not set a foot outside the encircling > fence, as in the case of railway train prisoners. But the iron > fence is unbearably galling to all with any sense of individuality, > and they are all roaring for liberty, day and night. Civilization > gives [people] liberty and makes them strong as a tiger. It then > entraps and keeps them encaged. It calls this peace. But this is > not a real peace. It is a peace like that of the tiger in the > menagerie, which is lying quietly as [it] looks calmly over the > crowd that gathers round [its] cage. Let a single bar of the cage > be out of its place and darkness will descend on the earth. Below is a link to an excellent book review by Stephen Lumb. Kusamakura Book Review author: Natsume, Sōseki, 1867-1916 detail: source: tags: ebook,fiction title: Unhuman Tour Tags ==== ebook fiction