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Description
Kusamakura—literally “grass pillow”—is a Japanese expression for being “on the road,” away from home, relying on the hospitality of others. Natsume Sōseki’s novel concerns a painter-artist on holiday at a hot springs hotel where he is the lone guest. His encounters with the locals—including a tea-shop matron, a drunken barber, a wood-gatherer, an abbot of a Zen monastery, the hotel proprietor, and, most intriguingly, his lovely enigmatic divorced daughter—prompt reflections and musings on the nature of art and its relation to real life. How can one experience life and still represent it in literature or art? Doesn’t art require separation from the immediate world, and does it really reflect that world at all or rather some emotional state of the artist who has seen it? Against the background of the ongoing Russo-Japanese War, the novel presents an idyllic interlude where the search for artistic relevance is upended by the unpredictability of human emotions.
Bunchō is a short sketch about a tiny pet bird that brings cheerfulness, pride, and memories of a beautiful woman into the dull life of a writer who ultimately fails to address his own responsibilities.
ISBN
ISBN 978-1-60962-349-4
Publication Date
7-9-2025
City
Zea Books
Keywords
Japanese literature, Japanese art, hot springs, Russo-Japanese War
Disciplines
Arts and Humanities | Asian Art and Architecture | Comparative Literature | Japanese Studies
Recommended Citation
Sōseki, Natsume; Sasaki, Umeji; Hirafuku, Hyakusui; and Royster, Paul, "Kusamakura and Bunchō" (2025). Zea E-Books Collection. 168.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/zeabook/168
Included in
Asian Art and Architecture Commons, Comparative Literature Commons, Japanese Studies Commons
Comments
This English translation of Kusamakura and Bunchō was originally published by Iwanami-Shoten in Tokyo in 1927.
Includes an Appendix with artworks mentioned in the text.