It was amazing to find a novel written before the First World War that could sound so fresh and modern today. Kokoro is a stylistic tour de force. Soseki's interweaving of colorfully detailed exteriors and darker, psychologically twisted interiors seems effortless. The plotting maintains a deliberate tension as the reader comes to grasp what drives and ultimately torments and/or tortures the two main characters. Everything about this book is complex but all of a piece. It stays within itself and there is never a false note. One imagines Murakami having taken it to model his prose. If so, it was a good choice. I plan to read many of Soseki's other works, and Murakami's too. ( )

The themes of this book, loneliness and guilt, were interesting, but the way the story was related was not. Not sure if this was an issue with translation because I often like economical prose, but it felt like too much was left for the reader to read between the lines. I saw the ending coming from a mile away and yet it felt like it took ages to get there. I appreciated the plotline, but I think it could have been more powerful if the reader was allowed to know the character, K, better and the relationship between K and Sensei was elaborated on significantly more.

The story starts off with the narrator meeting Sensei at a beach. He is totally drawn to the guy for reasons unknown. Sensei is mysterious and seems misanthropic so perhaps that was the draw. Regardless, the crux of the book is a letter from Sensei to the narrator where his secrets are revealed. The ending has a dark, quiet power, but mostly I was bored. ( )

Hypnotic story. It knows loneliness and indecision well. Worth reading. (In reality this book is more of a “9” than a “10” for me.)

Translator: Edwin McClellan. I don’t know how lyrical Soseki’s prose was, but this translation could not be described as such (with a couple exceptions). ( )

Here's what I wrote in 2008 about this read: "MGA only vaguely recalls. Is this the novel on which Kevin Coleman commented . . . ~"but isn't that how life really is, life just keeps continuing?". Online reviews applaud this simple novel, which explores love, friendships, and responsibilities." Clearly, I was missing the major theme of the novel; people relating to each other during a time of massive societal change. A re-read is definitely in order. ( )

i've been trying to find the name of this book again for a long time, and then i just happened to see someone's review here and i knew it was it. i read this in college, in a course about faith and alternative concepts of higher powers in mostly obscure international fiction. (i wish i could remember the name of the course. sadly, that wasn't it). i remember parts of this book making me want to tear my hair out with frustration at its slowness, but that time in my life was marked by everything moving so quickly, so I probably just wasn't in the right frame of mind. i was also reading with a deadline, which is never conducive to calm. still, when i was done i remember being infused with this sense of peace when thinking about the book, like it was a completed whole that had done something to help me towards becoming a completed whole when i hadn't been paying attention. i don't think i would read it again, but at one point in my life it was revelatory. ( )