Name: Botchan
Rating: 3.342105263157895 (19 reviews)

Natsume S?seki

The present novel 'Botchan' was written by famous Japanese writer Natsume Sōseki. It was first published in the year 1906 and got a lot of appreciation. It was also taught in schools in japan for a long time.

Botchan

Natsume Sōseki

Among the classics of modern Japanese literature, Botchan is probably the most frequently read novel and the most often anthologized work in Japan. Its action is set in the 1890's, during the Meiji Restoration, when Japan was making its cataclysmic metamorphosis from a cloistered feudal state to a major modern world power. The novel focuses on a few months in the experience of a neophyte teacher nicknamed Botchan (young master). Born and educated in Tokyo, he has accepted a job teaching mathematics at a middle school in provincial Shikoku. Botchan's personality, values, and Tokyo manners clash with those of his new environment, and out of this conflict Sseki spins a comic tale that satirizes contemporary Japanese mores. The novel is narrated in the first person, and a substantial portion of its humor stems from Botchan's verbose and vigorous Tokyo dialect, which, by all accounts, Sseki has brilliantly captured.From his earliest childhood days, Botchan has been an impulsive and reckless scapegrace. He leaps from the upstairs window of his elementary school on a dare, fights with a neighbor boy in the middle of a vegetable garden, thus devastating it, and blocks up another neighbor's irrigation source out of sheer curiosity. Botchan's father dislikes him. Botchan's elder brother blames him for hastening their mother's death by his rowdiness. Through it all, Botchan grows into an unabashed and defiant individualist. Indeed, stubbornness, recklessness, and candor become marks of Botchan's character.

(Annotated Edition)

Stef

"The world seemed to be composed solely of impostors and schemers who were ever trying to scheme against, and impose upon, one another. Disgusted at this, I got tired of the world; I began to curse life itself."

Another best read this month. Bener-bener suka sama karakter nya Botchan, meski bukan karakter utama yang sempurna tapi kepribadian dan prinsip hidup nya benar-benar panutan. Ah, sedikit menyesal baru membaca buku ini sekarang. Semua karakter dan cerita meski di ceritakan dgn setting Jepang jaman dahulu, tapi masih saja related dengan permasalahan dan karakter manusia jaman sekarang.

Natsume Sōseki

Publisher description: The setting is Japan's deep south, where the author himself spent some time teaching English in a boys' school. Into this conservative world, with its social proprieties and established pecking order, breezes Botchan, down from the big city, with scant respect for either his elders or his noisy young charges; and the result is a chain of collisions large and small.

Botchan

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