Reading post: I Am a Cat

I have finished my fifth book for the 2022 Classics Challenge: I Am a Cat by Soseki Natsume, published in 1905-06. I chose it to fulfill category #12: Wild card classic. A book supposedly written by a cat seemed like a good choice for a "wild card."

Like my last choice, this book was written during the Meiji era in Japan (1868-1912). Oddly, Soseki's life (1867-1916) encompassed the entire Meiji era. Soseki had a better beginning in life than my last author, Ichiyo, but not by much. He was born Kin'nosuke Natsume to a prosperous family in Edo (Tokyo), but his parents were older and they did not want him, giving him up for adoption a year later. When he was nine, his adoptive parents divorced, so he was returned to his biological family, who still didn't want him. However, with their support he was able to go to college and become a teacher. Later he studied in England and then returned to Japan to become a professor. He began publishing fiction in 1903. I Am a Cat began as a short story, but it was so popular that Soseki wrote more stories about the cat, which eventually were published in three volumes, and then altogether as a long novel (470 pages in the translation I read).

Translation note: I'm fascinated by the translation issues going on in the background of everything I read for this year's Challenge. At the end of their introduction to I Am a Cat, the translators note that Soseki is very hard to translate because he was such a good linguist, and could use language in such interesting ways. For example, the book's title in Japanese is wagahai wa neko de aru. "Neko" means cat, and I suppose the little words are particles of various sorts. One or more of them must equal "am." The interesting word in the title is "wagahai," which means "I," but not just any "I." According to the blog nihonshock, wagahai "is a classical way to say “I” that was used by older men of high social stature." So the cat is saying "I am a cat," but referring to himself in a way that makes him seem like an older man of high social stature. Can you think of a way to put that in English? Maybe the title should be Bow Down Before Me, You Scum, I Am a Cat?

Also, somewhere I read that when Soseki lived in England (years before writing this), he had a calico cat who he named Wagahai.That makes me smile. Interestingly, the cat in the book, I Am a Cat, does not have a name. It's not just that his name is never mentioned -- he states clearly, several times, that no one has ever named him.

I was looking forward to reading this book, but it was a bit of a disappointment. It's so long! Really, 470 pages of supposedly humorous commentary, most of whose points I didn't understand (there are no notes in back) -- it's a lot. Supposedly it's all a satirical look at the Meiji era, but that was mostly lost on me. I liked the parts where the cat did something cat-like, such as when it stalked a praying mantis in the yard. Some of the discussions which the cat reported between his master, Mr. Sneaze (the misspelling is apparently deliberate; I have no idea what it is in Japanese), and his friends were funny, but there were pages and pages and pages that were more boring than The Tale of the Heike. When I reached Volume III and realized I still had almost half the book left to read -- well, I was sad. I kept wondering whether Soseki was paid by the word.

Here is a section near the end (but not close enough to the end, I felt, when I read it) about a cushion. A student of Mr. Sneaze has come to see him about something, and Mr. Sneaze offers him a cushion.

That noble figure, shoving a cushion toward the drooping crophead, bade him sit on it, but the latter, though he managed to mumble a nervous "thank you," made no move at all. It's quaint to see a living being, even this bighead, sitting blankly with a partly faded cushion rammed up against his knees. The cushion, of course, says nothing, not even, "Sit on me." But cushions are for sitting on. Mrs. Sneaze didn't go to a market stall and buy this particular cushion in order that it should be looked at. It follows that anyone who declines to sit on the cushion is, in effect, casting a slur on its cushionly good name. Indeed, when my master has specifically offered the cushion for sitting upon, a refusal to do so extends the insult to the cushion into a slight upon my master. This crophead glaring at the cushion and thereby slighting my master does not, of course, have any personal dislike for the cushion itself. As a matter of fact, the only other occasion in his life when he sat in a civilized manner was during the memorial rites for his grandfather, so his present sally into decorum is bringing on pins and needles in his feet while his toes, excruciated by the pressures of propriety, have long been signaling blue murder. Nevertheless, the clot won't sit on the cushion. He will not do so, though the cushion, clearly embarrassed by the situation, yearns to be sat on...

This passage illustrates both the book's strengths and its weaknesses. For while I found it mildly amusing, in parts -- the parts about the cushion not being purchased in order to be looked at and being embarrassed and all that -- it also just goes on and on and on. There are five more sentences in the paragraph that I didn't bother typing out! (They weren't about the cushion.) Is it funnier in Japanese? Supposedly this is a very good translation. Was it funnier in 1905? Funnier in 1905 Japan? I just don't know.

Nothing much happens in the book. Various friends of Mr. Sneaze come to visit, say silly things, and then leave. A burglar enters the home at night and steals a lot of clothes while the cat watches, but eventually the police find the burglar and retrieve most of the items. A friend of Mr. Sneaze is possibly interested in a rich girl who lives nearby; her mother comes to ask Mr. Sneaze about the friend and feels insulted by his response, which leads to a campaign against him. But then he and she marry other people, so the whole subplot collapses. The cat tries to catch a rat and fails.

The last chapter is 70 pages long and consists mainly of one of Mr. Sneaze's friends, Avalon Coldmoon (and I don't understand that name -- I wonder what it is in Japanese), telling a very long, very boring story. It is so long and boring that most of the other characters stop listening. I wished that I could stop listening too, but I had to read it.

And yet, and yet. After the boring story, there is a very sad discourse among the characters upon what's become of the world and what will become of it in the future. It was worth reading. It was thought-provoking. And then something happens that ends the series of stories once and for all -- but I won't give it away (any more than I already have). It was quite a way to go out.

Would I recommend the book? No, unless you're embarking on a reading project that surveys all of Japanese literature. Supposedly some of Soseki's other works are better, but they don't get read as much because they aren't titled I Am a Cat, which I still think makes the book very hard to resist. Even knowing what I know now.