47 pages • 1 hour read
Natsume SōsekiKokoro
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1914A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2: “My Parents and I”
Part 2, Chapters 37-42 Summary
The narrator returns to his parents’ house. To his surprise, his father’s health seems “remarkably unchanged.” His parents want to organize a “special celebratory meal” (102) to celebrate the narrator’s graduation from university, but the narrator is reluctant. The importance of his degree is made apparent when the narrator’s father confesses that he was scared he would die before his son graduated. Furthermore, the narrator’s mother suspects that her husband is mistaken about the speed and extent of his recovery. The plans for a party are abandoned following news of Emperor Meiji’s poor health. With the Emperor sick, a party seems to be in poor taste.
Stuck in the countryside during the “very boring summer” (106) and missing Tokyo, the narrator writes many letters. As well as writing to his younger friends, he writes a letter to Sensei. While he waits for a reply, he watches his father’s condition deteriorate. At the same time, the Emperor’s life seems to be at an end. The narrator’s father studies the newspapers for any information about Emperor Meiji and becomes obsessed with their shared plight. The obsession concerns the narrator and his mother. During this time, the narrator is still unsure about his future. He has no prominent career prospects, but his mother encourages him to write to Sensei, saying that Sensei will “surely find [him] a position” (109). She says that finding a job will help his father’s health.
Part 2, Chapters 43-48 Summary
The narrator writes to Sensei, but he receives no reply. Bored in the countryside and believing that it would be better to speak to Sensei in person, the narrator makes plans to “escape back to Tokyo early” (111). His mother selects an “auspicious day” for his trip, but his father collapses in the garden just before he is set to depart. The narrator stays with his parents so that he can care for his father. When it’s clear his father’s condition is worsening, he writes to his older brother and sister and tells them to return home.
The narrator spends the summer taking care of his dying father. Though he plans to read many books and study, he is distracted and cannot focus. He receives no reply from Sensei, and his mother encourages him to write again, hoping that positive news about a job might improve his father’s health. The news of the Emperor’s death pains the narrator’s father. He reads the newspapers obsessively and talks about the “ritual suicide” of General Nogi, an important figure in the military who lost an important battle during the Russo-Japanese War. Nogi died by suicide as a way to redeem his honor following the Emperor’s death.
Part 2, Chapters 49-54 Summary
The narrator receives a confusing series of telegrams from Sensei. The first telegram causes a stir in the small country town; Sensei asks the narrator to return to Tokyo, as he has something to tell him. Confused as to what this might be, the narrator responds. He explains that his father is sick and that he cannot return right now, promising to go into additional detail in a letter. Before this reply can be delivered, however, Sensei sends a second telegram. This time, he tells the narrator that he should not return to Tokyo. The narrator is confused, but his father’s faltering health is his primary concern.
With the family gathered around the dying man’s bed, the narrator’s mother mentions Sensei’s series of telegrams. She does not know what was written in the telegrams, so she talks about Sensei “as if a position had already been found” (125). The narrator is too embarrassed to tell her the truth, not wanting to make his father worry. Remembering Sensei’s advice, the narrator talks to his brother about their inheritance. The brothers are not “terribly close,” nor have they received guidance from their father as to what they should do when he passes. Before they can ask him, he slips into unconsciousness.
The narrator receives a letter from Sensei. The letter is “considerably heavier than the usual letter” (132); the narrator does not have time to read it, especially while sitting beside his father’s bed. The tone of the letter’s opening page unsettles him. Sensei admits that now, at last, he is ready to go into detail about the events in his past. The narrator is called away before he can read on. The doctor arrives to administer palliative care to the narrator’s father. With so much happening, the narrator tries to parse the information in Sensei’s letter but he feels “sudden anxiety.” Certain portions of the letter suggest that Sensei also believes that he will be “long dead” by the time the narrator returns to Tokyo. Panicked, the narrator leaves his family home. He catches a train to Tokyo in the vague hope that he can see his friend and then return to the countryside before his father dies.
Part 2 Analysis
Part 2 of Kokoro shifts the setting from a largely urban to a largely rural context, establishing the theme of The City and the Countryside. The contrast between the urbanized Japanese city of Tokyo and the rural town in which the narrator’s parents live portrays the sweeping changes that are occurring in Japanese society. In the rural setting, the narrator feels isolated. He misses the immediacy of city life and tries writing to his friends, desperate for some form of social interaction, which is denied to him in the less-populated rural town. He craves social interactions and intellectual stimulation, which manifests chiefly in his feelings of absence from Sensei. He does not just miss Sensei as a friend but as the intellectually-stimulating platonic ideal of life in the city. To the narrator, Sensei represents everything that he enjoys about life in Tokyo, which only adds to the tragedy of Sensei’s infrequent responses. When the letter finally does come for the narrator, Sensei’s ominous tone prompts the narrator to rush back to the city.
After graduating from university and returning to his parents’ house, the narrator is immediately prompted to focus on his career. His mother and father tell him to find a job; beyond this, the narrator feels a certain sense of social pressure that he should immediately begin thinking practically about his future. After graduation, the expectation is that he will get a job. However, the narrator has already met people who defy this social expectation. As in many things, Sensei seems to operate outside the boundaries of social expectations. His alienation and misanthropy define him, illustrated by his steadfast refusal to have a career of any sort. While at home, the narrator is reintroduced to the expectations and traditions that define Japanese society, while Sensei and his defiance remind the narrator that society is a changing, malleable construction.
In a novel of deliberate contrasts, the narrator’s father’s health is a demonstration of the lack of agency that motivates men like Sensei to attempt suicide. Throughout the novel, suicide is portrayed as an honorable act. Suicide in Japanese society has become ritualized to the extent that it carries a greater sense of honor and responsibility than in contemporary Western cultures, many of which position suicide as a sin. Rather than a sinful, shameful act, suicide to these characters is a demonstration of agency. It is a way to arrest control over a life that has become dishonorable or shameful in some sense. Here, suicide is an act of atonement, rather than an act of abandonment.
Sensei, K, and Nogi are examples of men who seek to redefine their relationship with the world by choosing the moment of their death. By contrast, the narrator’s father (and, to some extent, the Emperor) lack this sense of agency. Their failing health is distressing and tragic; the narrator’s father gradually loses control of his bodily functions, and the figure of the man who existed so strongly in the narrator’s mind is replaced by the impression of a weak and fragile one. The narrator’s father does not dictate the terms of his death, and for this, he is pitied. The men who decide to die by suicide are in dialogue with the failing health of the narrator’s father, setting their own terms for their departure from the world and using a ritualized act as a means of redressing a social imbalance.
