Description
A nameless young artist travels into the mountains, in search of the refreshments of nature. Staying at a small hot spring hotel, he soaks in the water and takes walks nearby, always with the intention of painting – though he never seems to get around to actually doing so. Instead, he finds himself transfixed by the daughter of the hotel owner, an enigmatic young beauty.
His preoccupation is neither romantic nor sexual, but aesthetic: why is he so drawn to O-Nami’s changeable face, now hostile, now serene? And what prevents him finally putting brush to paper and painting her picture? As the holiday goes on, these two circle each other, pursuing barbed yet friendly conversations about art and despair. And the more he learns about her life – a divorce, a rumoured entanglement with a local priest, a cousin in the army about to travel to the Manchurian front – the more he comes to realise that experiencing O-Nami’s beauty to the full requires not just gazing upon her, but understanding her.
One of the foundational classics of modern Japanese literature, The Three-Cornered World is a masterful exploration of the beauty of nature, the artist’s temperament and the hidden springs of human sympathy.
Reviews
Soseki is the representative modern Japanese novelist, a figure of truly national stature
Haruki Murakami
Vastly refreshing … Soseki doesn’t shrink from seeking and finding exquisite pearls of beauty
Guardian
A writer to be judged by the highest standards. His works create, after the fashion of all great writers, a new and completely individual reality
Spectator
The greatest Japanese novelist of the modern period
Telegraph
Natsume Soseki is generally acknowledged to have been one of the most important writers of the modern period. His importance to the Japanese is that of a counter-reformation figure maintaining the virtues of tradition against the rising tide of western culture. The Three-Cornered World serves a useful purpose in making one aware of the deliberate rear-guard action of a talented and influential writer at a time of intellectual chaos
TLS
An Eastern Henry Fielding… very appealing
Irish Times
A poetic translaton… affords the reader penetrating insight into the heart of Japanese sensibility
Monumenta Japonica