Reading Natsume Sōseki as a Japanese Learner: Botchan, Ten Nights of Dreams or Kokoro?
Hiroki Obara · Developer
Natsume Sōseki (夏目漱石) was born in Edo, now Tokyo, in 1867 and died on December 9, 1916. Aozora Bunko’s author page notes that he worked as a teacher, went to study in England in 1900, published 吾輩は猫である (I Am a Cat) in 1905, and joined the Asahi newspaper in 1907. His work is in the public domain in Japan, and you can read it in the original, free, on Aozora Bunko.
Sōseki is one of the writers Japanese learners hope to read in the original one day. His works, though, vary a great deal in length and difficulty. This post compares three of them, 夢十夜 (Ten Nights of Dreams), 坊っちゃん (Botchan) and こころ (Kokoro), and looks at which to read first.
How long the three works are
I counted the modern-spelling (新字新仮名) editions on Aozora Bunko, the same way as in Which Japanese Classics Can You Read at Each JLPT Level?, leaving out furigana, editorial notes and spaces. The figures are rounded.
| Work | Published | Characters | Kanji ratio | Divisions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 夢十夜 Ten Nights of Dreams | 1908 | about 16,000 | 31% | ten dreams |
| 坊っちゃん Botchan | 1906 | about 88,000 | 28% | 11 chapters |
| こころ Kokoro | 1914 | about 160,000 | 28% | 3 parts, 110 chapters |
The kanji ratio is nearly the same for all three. What differs is the length, and how short each division is.
First: the first night of Ten Nights of Dreams
The work I would start with is 夢十夜. It ran in the Asahi newspaper in the summer of 1908, and as the title says it is made of ten dreams. Each night is roughly 1,400 to 1,800 characters, and each dream stands on its own.
The first, second, third and fifth nights all open with the same sentence: 「こんな夢を見た。」 (“I dreamed this dream.”) It is short, and the scene appears at once.
The first night has the clearest story, I think. A dying woman asks the narrator to wait a hundred years for her. He sits by her grave and counts the sun rising and setting. The shape is simple and it repeats, so you are unlikely to lose the thread even when you meet words you don’t know.
There is one catch with dreams. What happens in a dream doesn’t always make sense to begin with. When you are confused, it is hard to tell whether the cause is your Japanese or the dream. I think it is enough if, after each night, you can say in a sentence what happened. Beyond that, you may blame Sōseki.
First novel: Botchan
坊っちゃん appeared in the magazine ホトトギス (Hototogisu) in 1906. A reckless young man raised in Tokyo goes to teach mathematics at a middle school in Shikoku.
At about 88,000 characters it is more than five times the length of Ten Nights of Dreams. I still recommend it as a first novel because the narration moves fast. The narrator, おれ, says whatever he thinks, the sentences are short, and the story keeps going. It opens with 「親譲りの無鉄砲で小供の時から損ばかりしている。」 (“A recklessness I got from my parents has cost me ever since I was a child.”) That one sentence tells you what kind of person you are reading about.
It has 11 chapters, so at a chapter a day you finish in under two weeks.
Note that Aozora Bunko has two editions. Besides the modern-spelling one, there is 坊っちやん in old kana spelling (新字旧仮名). For learners, I recommend the modern-spelling edition.
Third: Kokoro
こころ was serialized in the Asahi newspaper from April 20 to August 11, 1914, according to its Aozora Bunko card. It is about a student, 私 (“I”), and a man he calls 先生 (“Sensei”).
It runs to about 160,000 characters, but it is divided into 110 chapters: 36 in 上 先生と私 (“Sensei and I”), 18 in 中 両親と私 (“My Parents and I”) and 56 in 下 先生と遺書 (“Sensei’s Testament”). A chapter averages about 1,500 characters. Each was one day’s newspaper instalment, so a single sitting is not much longer than one night of Ten Nights of Dreams.
The difficulty is less the length than the content. The story moves by following people’s inner lives more than by events. The final part is a long letter from Sensei to the narrator. I would pick it up after you have finished Botchan.
What tends to trip learners up
Sōseki wrote more than a hundred years ago, and some of his spelling differs from today’s. A few examples from these three works:
Kanji spellings that differ from today. In the opening line of Botchan, 小供 is today’s 子供 (child). むやみ (recklessly) is written both 無闇 and 無暗, and both appear in the same book. ごまかす (to cheat, to fudge) is written 胡魔化す, and よせばいい (“should have stopped”) is written 廃せばいい. In Kokoro, 単簡 means the same as today’s 簡単 (simple).
Words whose reading is set by furigana. In the first night of Ten Nights of Dreams, 判然 carries the furigana はっきり (clearly), 首肯いた carries うなずいた (nodded), and 色沢 carries つや (sheen). Sōseki pairs the kanji with a native Japanese word that matches their meaning. If you look up 判然 in a dictionary, you find a different word read はんぜん, and 色沢 is listed with the reading しきたく. When the furigana and the dictionary disagree, look up the furigana reading instead. That usually gives you the meaning.
云う and 私. 言う (to say) is almost always written 云う. In Kokoro, 私 carries the furigana わたくし.
How much furigana you get depends on the source edition Aozora Bunko used. In the three editions I counted, the difficult characters all had furigana.
If you want to try I Am a Cat
Sōseki’s most famous work may be 吾輩は猫である (I Am a Cat). The modern-spelling edition on Aozora Bunko, though, is about 318,000 characters, twice the length of Kokoro. A cat watches the humans around it, and long conversations in which the characters show off their learning come up again and again.
According to the Aozora Bunko card, the work first appeared in Hototogisu in January 1905, and the serial continued in the same magazine after that. It was first published as the first chapter alone. So I think it is fine to read chapter one as a work of its own and stop there. You can decide about the rest later.
Reading Sōseki in Niho
I make Niho, a free reader for iPhone and iPad that holds the Aozora Bunko catalogue of more than 17,000 works.
On the Discover screen you can search for 夏目漱石 or a title without a connection. A work’s detail screen shows its spelling (such as 新字新仮名) and its length in characters. Old-kana editions are not placed on the shelves. They appear only in search, and Niho tells you before you download one.
A chapter of Kokoro is shown with its part, like 上 先生と私 · 一.
Furigana is shown only where the source edition has it, and you can turn it off. Select a word and tap Look up to see its meaning and JLPT level. Unusual kanji spellings like the ones above are sometimes missing from the dictionary, or listed with a different reading. In that case, the Jisho item in the selection menu lets you check a web dictionary too.
Niho shows text horizontally only, not vertically. Reading Ten Nights of Dreams one night at a time before the test is covered in JLPT Reading Practice Before the December Test, and Getting Started with Niho walks through your first book.
