I Am a Cat by Sōseki Natsume

First published:Wagahai wa Neko de aru, 1905-1906, 2 volumes (English translation, 1906, 1909)

Type of work: Satiric novel

Time of work: 1905-1906

Locale: The house and immediate neighborhood of a Japanese schoolteacher

Principal Characters:

• The Narrator, an unnamed cat
• Kushami Sensei, the cat’s owner, a teacher of English
• Meitei, a friend of Kushami
• Kangetsu, Kushami’s former pupil, a graduate student in science
• Kaneda, a neighbor and businessman

The Novel

I Am a Cat satirizes the life of Japanese intellectuals at the turn of the century. The episodic novel, narrated in the first person by a cat, proceeds as a series of discussions on a variety of historical, artistic, and philosophical topics, such as the history of peacocks as food, the mechanics of hanging, the decline of traditional Japanese attitudes. These discussions are often sparked by the personal experiences and memories of the main human characters or the cat-narrator.

The novel begins with the cat finding himself a home in the household of a teacher. The first two chapters make the most use of the idiosyncratic point of view of a cat. Thus, the first part of the narrative refers to the other cats in the neighborhood, in particular his romantic interest in a female cat and his strategy in dealing with a bully cat. The narrator, nimbly able to slip in un-noticed anywhere he wishes, observes the peculiar habits of human beings,leading to some sly, witty conclusions about the superiority of cats. At one point, for example, the narrator ponders the possibility of organizing a cat revolt against humanity.

The third chapter, which starts with the announcement of the death of the female cat, marks a shift, as if the author needed the stimulus of fresh characters to continue. The narrator states outright that he is inclined to forget that he is a cat, a hint from the author that the focus will change. A slender plot line is introduced when Mrs. Kaneda, also referred to as Mrs. Nose, comes to the Kushami household to garner information about Kangetsu as a possible husband for her daughter. Her husband, a wealthy businessman, will allow the marriage if Kangetsu finishes his thesis and earns his Ph.D. This proposal sets off another series of discussions, half serious, half comical, on the functions of noses, the wisdom of marrying, the questionable ethics of businessmen, and the subject of Kangetsu’s thesis.

The novel ambles along, alternating stretches of human conversations, which get longer, with the narrator’s feline observations and antics. The seventh chapter, for example, starts with the cat’s thoughts about sports and games and continues with a description of his favorite activities, such as jumping suddenly on a child’s back, hunting praying mantises or cicadas, peering at naked bodies in public baths. The basic method of the novel, beginning with a specific act or thought which by association leads to more abstract and philosophical discussions, is maintained. When in chapter 8 neighborhood tensions rise between the passive intellectuals who gather at the teacher’s house and the rambunctious students who cut through his property, the narrator observes that teasing monkeys and schoolteachers is a human way of showing superiority. He then falls into a meditation on frenzy, insanity, and thus back to the students’ battle with authority.

Finally, in the eleventh chapter, the neighborhood battle ends when Kangetsu announces that he has married a hometown girl. A minor character, a former houseboy of the Kushami household, enters to announce his engagement to the businessman’s daughter. The people who have gathered drink beer in celebration, an act which precipitates the abrupt ending. The cat sips the remaining beer; his intoxication makes him want to walk. He falls into a rain barrel and, unable to claw his way to the rim, he stops struggling and drowns. The novel ends with his dying prayer to Buddha.

The Characters

The title of the novel in Japanese, Wagahai wa Neko de aru, uses the formal first person pronoun to refer to a cat, bestowing on the animal narrator an ironically elevated status. Sōseki is evidently poking fun at himself and human beings in general on several levels, through the dual perspective of a cat who lives in the home of an English teacher.

First, the cat behaves and thinks like a cat. Some hilarious passages arise from the clash between the worlds of cats and humans, as when the narrator decides to try some leftover rice cakes and gets completely entangled in the sticky mess, or when he remarks on the superiority of cats who wear no clothes and yet are never naked.

Second, the cat has the characteristics not only of a human but also of a widely read, literate, and perceptive one, much like the author, who is able to read diaries and refer breezily to great historical figures in both Western and Eastern civilization. At the same time, the cat’s master is an English teacher, as Sōseki himself was; the cat mercilessly mocks the habits of his master, who locks himself in his study after coming home from school, ostensibly to read and study, but who more often than not falls asleep over his book. The cat perceives his master as an ineffectual, introverted man who tries in vain to improve himself, trying the art of writing poetry or painting watercolors, but constantly subject to his physical ailments.

Third, the cat, a homeless orphan who must attach himself to a household, shares a similarity of background with the author, who himself had an unstable childhood. Sōseki was the youngest in a family of eight children; he was actually brought up by foster parents until he was nine, when he was returned to his parents. Other experiences influenced his independent outlook. After studying and teaching for several years, Sōseki went to England for two years to study English literature; though he studied hard, he made no friends and left England with a distinctly soured attitude toward the English. Even this miserable experience had a positive effect on his writing, an effect manifested in his choice of a cat, one of the more independent household pets, as a narrator. Unlike many of his Japanese contemporaries, Sōseki dared to form his own opinions of English literature and to view the influence of Western civilization in Japan with foreboding, a characteristic evident in the detached, mocking tone he gives to his cat narrator.

The other male characters in the novel serve primarily as mouthpieces for different points of view in the many conversations which are the main delight of the book. Women are minor characters, their function subservient to the comforts of the men. When they appear for any length of time, they are the objects of derision, from the point of view of both the cat and the male characters.

Critical Context

Though I Am a Cat was one of Sōseki’s first publications, it is considered by some to be his masterpiece. The unusual point of view gives it a unique status not only in Japanese but also in world literature. The startling novelty of the narrative voice made the first chapter and its author an immediate success. Some critics find, however, that the looseness of the structure, inevitable given Sōseki’s original intention of writing only one chapter but continuing to eleven because of popular demand, detracts from its appeal as a serious work.

Born a year before the Meiji Restoration of 1868, Sōseki grew up and wrote at a time when Japanese literature started flourishing again after a sterile period. The emperor Meiji’s avowed intention was to open Japan to the knowledge of the rest of the world for the good of the nation. Japanese translations of works from all over the world were bountiful, giving the Japanese easy access to Western literature. Trained as a scholar in both the classical Chinese literature, which had dominated in Japan, and English literature, especially of the eighteenth century, Sōseki was also rare among Japanese scholars of his day in forming his own theories of literature in his classroom. Two of his lectures, Bungakuron (1907; a study of literature) and Bungaku Hyoron (1909; literary criticism), were published. As is apparent in the final chapter of I Am a Cat, Sōseki felt the tension between the traditional Japanese loyalty to the family, to the nation, to the larger group outside the self and the new sense of individualism. As is apparent from the title and the exploration of his personal opinions in the novel, he believed to some extent in the importance of the individual.

As he was finishing I Am a Cat, Sōseki was also writing what proved to be his most popular work, Botchan (1906; English translation, 1918). Sōseki’s later and much more serious novels develop themes introduced in these two early works. His style varies considerably from book to book, making it impossible to classify his work as a whole; Sōseki himself did not belong to the schools of Romanticism or naturalism which dominated the literary scene. Yet the comic tone of his early work, especially I Am a Cat, his colloquial style, and his amusing philosophical discussions continue to attract a wide readership in Japan. Sōseki remains one of the most admired and influential writers in Japan.

Bibliography

Doi, Takeo. The Psychological World of Natsume Sōseki, 1976.

Kato, Shuichi. “The Age of Meiji,” in The History of Japanese Literature. Vol. 3, The Modern Years, 1983.

Keene, Donald. “Natsume Sōseki,” in Dawn to the West: Japanese Literature in the Modern Era, 1984.

McClellan, Edwin. Two Japanese Novelists: Sōseki and Toson, 1969.

Yamanouchi, Hisaaki. “The Agonies of Individualism: Natsume Sōseki,” in The Search for Authenticity in Modern Japanese Literature, 1978.

Yu, Beongcheon. Natsume Sōseki, 1969.