Botchan [Poche]

"Soseki's lightest and funniest work." --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

Like The Catcher in the Rye or The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Botchan, a hilarious tale about a young man's rebellion against "the system" in a country school, is a classic of its kind. Among Japanese readers both young and old it has enjoyed a timeless popularity, making it, according to Donald Keene, "probably the most widely read novel in modern Japan."

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.

Much of the story seems to occur in summer, against the drone of cicadas, and in many ways this is a summer book—light, funny, never slow-moving. Here, in a lively new translation much better suited to Western tastes than any of its forebears, Botchan's homespun appeal is all the more apparent, and even those who have never been near the sunlit island on which these calamitous episodes take place should find in it uninterrupted entertainment. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

NATSUME SÔSEKI, one of Japan's most acclaimed and beloved writers, was born in Tokyo in 1867. After graduating from Tokyo Imperial University with a degree in English literature, he spent a few years teaching in secondary schools on the southern islands of Shikoku and Kyushu. In 1990 he was sent to England by the Japanese government to pursue further literary studies. He returned to Japan in 1903 and became a lecturer in English literature at Tokyo Imperial University, the first native Japanese to hold this post. For the next four years he combined his academic work with the composition of a series of fictional works including the novels I am a Cat, Botchan, and The Three-cornered World, which established him as a writer of major importance. In 1907 he resigned from the university to devote himself to full-time literary work. The lighthearted satirical spirit of some of his early writing gradually gave way to a darker, deeper quality as he probed the themes of solitude, alienation, and other social and psychological consequences of modern life in a series of celebrated novels including Sanshirô, And Then, The Gate, The Wayfarer, and Kokoro. He died in 1916.

The Translator: J. Cohn studied Japanese at Cornell and Harvard Universities, as well as in Japan, and now teaches Japanese literature at the University of Hawaii. He is the author of a study on the comic spirit in modern Japanese fiction. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

It wasn't long before the school got on my nerves too.

One evening as I was strolling through a part of the town called Omachi, I saw a sign next to the post office which said: Noodles, with the footnote, Tokyo-style. I've always been very fond of noodles, and when I was in Tokyo could flever pass a noodle shop and smell that spicy aroma without going in. Since I had come to this town I had--what with school and antiques--forgotten about noodles; but now, seeing that sign, I just could not walk past. I thought that I would have a bowl while I was there, and went in.

The interior didn't live up to the sign outside. They had announced that this was "Tokyo-style," so the place should have been clean, but either from ignorance of Tokyo, or lack of money, it was filthy. The tatami matting was discolored and, for good measure, it was gritty underfoot. The walls were grimy with soot, and the ceiling, which was also black from the smoke of an oil-lamp, was so low that you involuntarily ducked your head as you walked about. The only thing that was plainly new was the sign on the wall which gave the names and prices of the various dishes. The owner had obviously bought an old building and opened it as a restaurant two or three days before. The first thing on the menu was noodles with fried prawns.

"Hey! Noodles with fried prawns," I called in a loud voice. At this, three people sitting in a corner, who had been eating noodles with a hissing, sucking sound, all looked across at me together. The inside of the shop was dark and I hadn't noticed them before, but I now recognized them as pupils at the school. We said good evening to each other and I got on with my meal. I hadn't had noodles for a long time and they tasted good, so I polished off four bowls.

The next day I walked blithely into the classroom, only to be confronted with the words A FRIED PRAWN FOR THE TEACHER, written in enormous letters, covering the blackboard. When they saw the look on my face, everyone burst out laughing. This struck me as absurd, and I asked them what was so funny about fried prawns, to which one of the pupils replied, "But four bowls! That's a bit much, like." I told them that it was my money and that it had nothing to do with them whether I ate four bowls or five. I then went through the lesson as quickly as I could and returned to the staff room. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.