Light and Darkness

Review by Steve Savage

Set in Japan in the early 20th century, the action of Light and Darkness takes place while Tsuda, a recently-married man aged nearly 30, prepares for and undergoes an unpleasant operation and is persuaded to confront his lingering feelings for Kiyoko, a woman who refused to marry him and chose someone else, by arranging to meet her, supposedly by chance, at an inn in the mountains. The novel was unfinished at the death of Natsume Sōseki, its author, and so the reader can only guess at the consequences of the meeting between Tsuda and Kiyoko.

Natsume Sōseki

Japanese writer Natsume Sōseki was born in 1867. He studied English literature at Tokyo Imperial University. After teaching in schools for a time, he went to Britain for three years (including a visit to Pitlochry), and became a university lecturer on his return. He found fame in 1905 when he published Rondon tō (Tower of London) and started the serial Wagahai wa neko de aru (I Am a Cat), and in 1907 he gave up his academic career to work on Asahi, a Tokyo newspaper. He is known for two trilogies, the first comprising Sanshirō, Sorekara (And Then) (which was filmed in 1985) and Mon (The Gate), the second comprising Higan sugi made (Until After the Equinox), Kōjin (The Wayfarer) and Kokoro (Heart); as well as his last two books, Michi kusa (Grass on the Wayside) and the unfinished Mei an (Light and Darkness). Sōseki died in 1916.