This plot concerning ‘junshi’ is generally interpreted as a eulogy for the noble masculine ethos of the feudal Edo period, but this chapter’s close examination reveals it to be mediated by some elements of Christianity. He confessed in it his inner suffering concerning about his betrayal of his friend, which is supposed to lead the latter to commit suicide, and his resolution to atone for his reverence for the ‘spirit of Meiji’, imitating the General Nogi’s self-immolation. The protagonist, called ‘Master’ by a narrator, left a “testament” to the young student/narrator. It is because the climax of this novel describes a protagonist’s decision to commit suicide, following a real event committed by a veteran member of Japan’s military, General Nogi who took his life in a feudal act known as ‘junshi’-meaning ‘following one’s load in death-as atonement for losing in battle some thirty year ago, when the Emperor Meiji died in 1912. This masterpiece is supposed to be the last respects and nostalgic praise of a noble masculinity, more in tune with the feudal Edo period (1603-1867) than the capitalist and westernized nation born after the Meiji restoration. Praising Samurai Masculinity by way of the biblical language - The Influence of Christianity and Oscar Wilde on Soseki Natsume’s Kokoro - Kasumi MIYAZAKI This essay is motivated by the author’s perception that the most important novel in modern Japanese literature, Kokoro(1914), written by Soseki Natsume, has the narrative structure of the Bible, and has got inspiration in particular from Oscar Wilde’s religious thinking in the essay, De Profundis(1905).

Kokoro by soseki