On Natsumesoseki’s "Heart"

If we call Natumesouseki is the Japanese modern times greatest writer, fewpeople will disagree with it. The Japanese worships him by placing his picture onthe one thousand Yen bill. Up to now, his works are still widely loved among theyoung people even though there have been a lot of changes that have occurredthrough the course of time.The novel “Heart”, one of the late works of the famous Japanese writerNatsume Soseki’s, describes the collision of love and friendship, as well as theconflict between self-serving and morality under the changing times, namelythrough the whole Meiji era to the beginning of Taisho era, and presents modernJapanese intellectuals’ contradictory spiritual world, in which they are still in thehope to maintain their dignity, although their contradictions, melancholy,helplessness. This paper aims to, through Natsume Soseki’s Heart, study the burstof individualism appearing in Japan’s implementation of the “civilization” inorder to achieve Western-style modernization in Meiji period.First of all, The paper, through the detailed study of “Natsume Soseki’sindividualism”, clarifies that Natsume soseki’s literary ideas in Meiji era aretaking egotistic thinking as the center, to form independent individualism, denyblindly follow “others-centered” thinking, and advocate “I am a dignifiedJapanese, and by no means is the handmaiden of the United Kingdom” so thatindividual’s dominant position could be established. This paper focuses onNatsume Soseki promoting individuality through the concept of ethics to excludethe negative viewpoint of egoism and doing harm to others for self-serving as theresult of the burst of individualism.In the second place, this paper tries to study the relationship between K’ssuicide and the burst of individualism. K, in order to get rid of the predicamentcaused by others-centered thinking, transforms himself to a person sticking to hispersonality, and playing an active part in the life based on egotistic thinking.However, due to him not abide by individualism morality and its obligations, K’s pursuit to individualism finally gets burst, and leads to the tragedy. The burst ofindividualism is the root of K’s tragedy. Furthermore, the relationship betweenK’s death and Japanese traditional moral regression as well as “individualisticburst” is discussed in the research.Moreover, this paper deals with the causal relationship between theteacher’s suicide and the burst of individualism. The teacher is firstly deceivedby his uncle, and then falls behind his friend K in love, which throws him intodistrusting people. Since then, the teacher betrays K and marries the landlorddaughter before K’s wedding with her by playing maneuver. However, theteacher could not bear the torture of egoism guilt after marriage, and commitssuicide in the end touched by the Emperor’s death and General Nogi’s martyrdomdeath. The suspicious “he who at critical time would become a bad guy,”appearing as the result of individualism burst, illustrates how terrible the egoismis.In the end, this paper takes the conflict between individualism and the spiritof Meiji era as well as the burst of individualism resulting from it as thebreakthrough point to look at the novel Heart. In Meiji period, Europeanindividualism spreads to Japan, which is incompatible with traditional ethics andmorality in Japan, thus, severe conflicts occur. Natsume Soseki advocatesindividualism based on egolistic thinking, shows great concern about the literalintroduction of Western civilization, and sets an alarm for its risk. However,Natsume Soseki’s worry becomes a reality. Japan follows the western powers andembarks on the road of nationalism and militarism, launching invasion war toother countries, thus, personal dignity and personality are trampled. NatsumeSoseki tries to, through Heart, lament people of Meiji era suffering from personaldignity being devastated. The teacher and K in Heart are in the transitional timefrom late Meiji period under tremendous impact, therefore, they become thevictim of establishing the concept of individualism through death. In such aturbulent period of social transformation, in front of a variety impacts that havenever appeared previously, the research of Heart has a certain practicalsignificance from the perspective of how to deal with these impacts.