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Grass On The Wayside
is a 1915 Japanese autobiographical novel by Sōseki Natsume. It is his only autobiographical work of fiction, and his last completed work. Together with ''Kokoro'' (1914), ''Grass on the Wayside'' is often cited as Natsume's major literary effort. Plot After having returned from England, Kenzō, an egocentric, emotionally detached man in his thirties, teaches English literature at Tokyo Imperial University. His wife Osumi, with whom he constantly argues, is pregnant with their third child, and to improve their finances he starts writing articles for magazines until late in the night. While he holds neither one of his siblings in high regard, he supports his older, sickly half-sister Onatsu with a monthly income, although she is herself married (her husband Hida is rumoured to spend his money on a mistress), and he also lends money to his older brother Chōtarō. One day, Kenzō is approached by his former adoptive father Shimada, who asks him for his financial support. Kenz ...
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Edwin McClellan
Edwin McClellan (24 October 1925 – 27 April 2009) was a British Japanologist, teacher, writer, translator, and interpreter of Japanese literature and culture. Biography McClellan was born in Kobe, Japan in 1925 to a Japanese mother, Teruko Yokobori, and a British father who worked for Lever Brothers in Japan. His mother and older brother died when he was two. Bilingual from birth and educated at the Canadian Academy in Kobe, McClellan and his father were repatriated to Britain in 1942 aboard the Tatsuta Maru, a passenger liner requisitioned by the Imperial Japanese Navy to repatriate British nationals from throughout Southeast Asia. In London, McClellan taught Japanese at the School of Oriental and African Studies as part of the war effort. At 18, he joined the Royal Air Force, hoping to become a fighter pilot, but his fluency in Japanese made him more useful to Allied intelligence. He spent the years 1944–1947 in Washington, D.C. and at Langley Air Force Base in Maryland, ...
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Natsume Sōseki
, born , was a Japanese novelist. He is best known around the world for his novels ''Kokoro'', '' Botchan'', ''I Am a Cat'', '' Kusamakura'' and his unfinished work '' Light and Darkness''. He was also a scholar of British literature and writer of haiku, '' kanshi'', and fairy tales. From 1984 until 2004, his portrait appeared on the front of the Japanese 1,000 yen note. Early years Natsume Kin'nosuke was born on 9 February 1867 in the town of Babashita, Ushigome, Edo (present Kikui, Shinjuku, Tokyo), the fifth son of village head (''nanushi'') Natsume Kohē Naokatsu and his wife Chie. His father, a powerful and wealthy ''nanushi'', owned all land from Ushigome to Takadanobaba in Edo and handled most civil lawsuits at his doorstep. He was a descendant of Natsume Yoshinobu, a Sengoku period samurai and retainer of Tokugawa Ieyasu. Sōseki began his life as an unwanted child, born to his mother late in her life, forty years old and his father then fifty-three. When he was born, ...
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The Asahi Shimbun
is one of the four largest newspapers in Japan. Founded in 1879, it is also one of the oldest newspapers in Japan and Asia, and is considered a newspaper of record for Japan. Its circulation, which was 4.57 million for its morning edition and 1.33 million for its evening edition as of July 2021, was second behind that of the ''Yomiuri Shimbun''. By print circulation, it is the third largest newspaper in the world behind the ''Yomiuri'', though its digital size trails that of many global newspapers including ''The New York Times''. Its publisher, is a media conglomerate with its registered headquarters in Osaka. It is a privately held family business with ownership and control remaining with the founding Murayama and Ueno families. According to the Reuters Institute Digital Report 2018, public trust in the ''Asahi Shimbun'' is the lowest among Japan's major dailies, though confidence is declining in all the major newspapers. The ''Asahi Shimbun'' is one of the five largest ...
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Iwanami Shoten
is a Japanese publishing company based in Tokyo.Louis Frédéric, ''Japan Encyclopedia'', Harvard University Press, 2005, p. 409. Iwanami Shoten was founded in 1913 by Iwanami Shigeo. Its first major publication was Natsume Sōseki's novel ''Kokoro'', which appeared as a book in 1914 after being serialized in the ''Asahi Shimbun''. Iwanami has since become known for scholarly publications, editions of classical Japanese literature, dictionaries, and high-quality paperbacks. Since 1955, it has published the ''Kōjien'', a single-volume dictionary of Japanese that is widely considered to be authoritative. Iwanami's head office is at Hitotsubashi 2–5–5, Chiyoda, Tokyo. Company history Iwanami Shigeo founded the publishing firm Iwanami Shoten in the Kanda district of Tokyo in 1913. In its early years, the company published authors such as Natsume Sōseki, Kurata Hyakuzō and Abe Jiro. It also published academic and literary journals in the field of philosophy, includi ...
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Autobiographical Novel
An autobiographical novel is a form of novel using autofiction techniques, or the merging of autobiographical and fictive elements. The literary technique is distinguished from an autobiography or memoir by the stipulation of being fiction. Because an autobiographical novel is partially fiction, the author does not ask the reader to expect the text to fulfill the "autobiographical pact".Philippe Lejeune"Autobiographical Pact," pg. 19 Names and locations are often changed and events are recreated to make them more dramatic but the story still bears a close resemblance to that of the author's life. While the events of the author's life are recounted, there is no pretense of exact truth. Events may be exaggerated or altered for artistic or thematic purposes. Novels that portray settings and/or situations with which the author is familiar are not necessarily autobiographical. Neither are novels that include aspects drawn from the author's life as minor plot details. To be consid ...
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Kokoro
is a novel by the Japanese author Natsume Sōseki. It was first published in 1914 in serial form in the Japanese newspaper ''Asahi Shimbun''. The title translated literally means "heart". The word contains shades of meaning—notions of the heart and also of mind—and can be translated as "affection", "spirit", "resolve", "courage", "sentiment", or "the heart of things". During the novel's initial serial run, from April 20 to August 11, 1914, it was printed under the title . When later published in novel form by Iwanami Shoten, its title was shortened to ''Kokoro''; the rendering of the word "kokoro" itself was also changed from kanji (心) to hiragana (こころ). Along with Osamu Dazai's ''No Longer Human'', ''Kokoro'' is one of the best-selling novels of all time in Japan, having sold more than seven million copies in the country as of 2016. Premise The work deals with the transition from the Japanese Meiji society to the modern era, by exploring the friendship between ...
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University Of Tokyo
, abbreviated as or UTokyo, is a public research university located in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Japan. Established in 1877, the university was the first Imperial University and is currently a Top Type university of the Top Global University Project by the Japanese government. UTokyo has 10 faculties, 15 graduate schools and enrolls about 30,000 students, about 4,200 of whom are international students. In particular, the number of privately funded international students, who account for more than 80%, has increased 1.75 times in the 10 years since 2010, and the university is focusing on supporting international students. Its five campuses are in Hongō, Komaba, Kashiwa, Shirokane and Nakano. It is considered to be the most selective and prestigious university in Japan. As of 2021, University of Tokyo's alumni, faculty members and researchers include seventeen prime ministers, 18 Nobel Prize laureates, four Pritzker Prize laureates, five astronauts, and a Fields Medalist. Hist ...
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Japanese Yen
The is the official currency of Japan. It is the third-most traded currency in the foreign exchange market, after the United States dollar (US$) and the euro. It is also widely used as a third reserve currency after the US dollar and the euro. The New Currency Act of 1871 introduced Japan's modern currency system, with the yen defined as of gold, or of silver, and divided decimally into 100 ''sen'' or 1,000 ''rin''. The yen replaced the previous Tokugawa coinage as well as the various ''hansatsu'' paper currencies issued by feudal ''han'' (fiefs). The Bank of Japan was founded in 1882 and given a monopoly on controlling the money supply. Following World War II, the yen lost much of its prewar value. To stabilize the Japanese economy, the exchange rate of the yen was fixed at ¥360 per US$ as part of the Bretton Woods system. When that system was abandoned in 1971, the yen became undervalued and was allowed to float. The yen had appreciated to a peak of ¥271 per US$ ...
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Alter Ego
An alter ego (Latin for "other I", " doppelgänger") means an alternate self, which is believed to be distinct from a person's normal or true original personality. Finding one's alter ego will require finding one's other self, one with a different personality. The altered states of the ego may themselves be referred to as ''alterations''. A distinct meaning of ''alter ego'' is found in the literary analysis used when referring to fictional literature and other narrative forms, describing a key character in a story who is perceived to be intentionally representative of the work's author (or creator), by oblique similarities, in terms of psychology, behavior, speech, or thoughts, often used to convey the author's thoughts. The term is also sometimes, but less frequently, used to designate a hypothetical "twin" or "best friend" to a character in a story. Similarly, the term ''alter ego'' may be applied to the role or persona taken on by an actor or by other types of performers. Or ...
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Japanese Novels
Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspora, Japanese emigrants and their descendants around the world * Japanese citizens, nationals of Japan under Japanese nationality law ** Foreign-born Japanese, naturalized citizens of Japan * Japanese writing system, consisting of kanji and kana * Japanese cuisine, the food and food culture of Japan See also * List of Japanese people * * Japonica (other) * Japonicum * Japonicus * Japanese studies Japanese studies (Japanese: ) or Japan studies (sometimes Japanology in Europe), is a sub-field of area studies or East Asian studies involved in social sciences and humanities research on Japan. It incorporates fields such as the study of Japanese ... {{disambiguation Language and nationality disambiguation pages ...
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Japanese Autobiographical Novels
Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspora, Japanese emigrants and their descendants around the world * Japanese citizens, nationals of Japan under Japanese nationality law ** Foreign-born Japanese, naturalized citizens of Japan * Japanese writing system, consisting of kanji and kana * Japanese cuisine, the food and food culture of Japan See also * List of Japanese people * * Japonica (other) * Japonicum * Japonicus * Japanese studies Japanese studies (Japanese: ) or Japan studies (sometimes Japanology in Europe), is a sub-field of area studies or East Asian studies involved in social sciences and humanities research on Japan. It incorporates fields such as the study of Japanese ... {{disambiguation Language and nationality disambiguation pages ...
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