Sanshiro A Novel

✦ if culture shock were a novel ✦ themes on cultural change, passively accepting life in constant motion ✦ feels like ur in a bar with intellectuals and u love the company but also ur a dvmb btch ✦ more soseki reads this year for sure

clearly very dated, as to be expected from a work of its age, but soseki’s writing drew me in for its steady, unhurried pace. i think i was also just pleased to find the main character sanshiro so relatable in the sense that i share his incessant feeling of being dreadfully unaccomplished and confused !! a lot !! and he is a newly-graduated 23 year old, (me being right on the cusp of my 23rd!!). serendipitously, murakami mentioned in the written introduction that he had also just been 22 when he first read the novel. overall a relaxed read with fantastically languid descriptions of meiji era tokyo from the perspective of a naive academic. i think it was good that i went into it with no expectations

probably a 3.5? i definitely enjoyed kokoro more. sanshiro felt a little too sterile at times, like i was looking into a window of his emotions rather than witnessing them directly. the themes were classically japanese lit though! loneliness, isolation, east/west culture conflict, and of course, かたおもい.