Sanshirō

Summary

Sanshirō follows Ogawa Sanshirō, a young graduate of the higher school in Kumamoto, through his first autumn and winter as a student at Tokyo Imperial University in the late Meiji period. The novel opens on the long train journey from Kyushu. A woman traveling alone, whose husband is working in Manchuria, shares his inn room in Nagoya when no other is available; he is too timid to respond to her, and at parting she remarks on his lack of courage, a comment that stings him for days. On the train he also meets a sardonic man with a moustache who eats peaches, mocks Japan's pride in its recent victories, and remarks that the country will perish; this is later revealed to be Hirota, an unmarried English teacher at a higher school. In Tokyo Sanshirō feels lost amid streetcars, crowds and lectures. His mother's acquaintance Nonomiya Sōhachi, a quiet physicist measuring the pressure of light in a basement laboratory, introduces him to the life of research. By the campus pond he sees a young woman holding a fan, Satomi Mineko, who drops a flower near him as she passes; the moment stays with him for the rest of the book. Through the cheerful schemer Sasaki Yojirō, who lodges with Hirota, Sanshirō enters a circle that includes Hirota, Nonomiya, Nonomiya's younger sister Yoshiko, Mineko, and the painter Haraguchi. Sanshirō comes to think of his life as divided among three worlds: the old world of his mother and home in Kyushu, where a girl named Omitsu is hoped to be his bride; the calm world of learning represented by Hirota and Nonomiya; and the bright, unsettling world of fashionable society and Mineko. On an outing to see chrysanthemum dolls, Mineko and Sanshirō leave the group and sit by a stream, where she calls them stray sheep. Yojirō loses money he was to repay, Sanshirō lends him his own, and Mineko lends Sanshirō money in turn, tying them in small obligations. Yojirō anonymously publishes an essay praising Hirota in hope of winning him a university post; when the authorship is wrongly pinned on Sanshirō, the scheme collapses and Yojirō must confess to Hirota. Haraguchi paints Mineko's portrait in the pose of the day by the pond. Before Sanshirō declares himself, Mineko becomes engaged by arrangement to another man; when Sanshirō returns her money outside her church, she murmurs a verse of confession from the Psalms. He falls ill with influenza. In the last chapter, after her wedding, the friends visit the exhibition where the portrait hangs, and Sanshirō, looking at it, can only murmur the words stray sheep. The novel was serialized in the Asahi Shimbun from September to December 1908 and published as a book in 1909.

Plot or Argument

• Chapter 1: The journey to Tokyo

  Sanshirō leaves Kyushu by train, shares an inn room in Nagoya with a woman who mocks his timidity, and meets the peach-eating stranger who doubts Japan's future.

• Chapter 2: Tokyo, the laboratory and the pond

  Overwhelmed by the city, Sanshirō visits Nonomiya's laboratory and, by the university pond, sees Mineko with a fan and a white flower.

• Early chapters: Lectures and new friends

  Sanshirō attends lectures, meets Yojirō, visits Nonomiya's hospitalized sister Yoshiko, and helps Hirota move house, where he meets Mineko again.

• Middle chapters: Three worlds and stray sheep

  Letters from his mother pull him homeward; at the chrysanthemum-doll show Mineko leaves the party with him and speaks of stray sheep.

• Middle chapters: Money and the essay

  Yojirō loses borrowed money, Mineko lends Sanshirō funds, and Yojirō's anonymous essay on Hirota's behalf backfires on everyone.

• Later chapters: The portrait and the engagement

  Haraguchi paints Mineko holding her fan; Hirota tells Sanshirō a dream about a girl he once glimpsed; Mineko's arranged engagement is announced, and Sanshirō returns her money at the church door.

• Chapter 13: The exhibition

  After Mineko's wedding, Sanshirō and his friends view the finished portrait at an exhibition, and he murmurs stray sheep before it.

Characters

• Ogawa Sanshirō, protagonist

  A shy, earnest young man from rural Kyushu beginning his studies at Tokyo Imperial University.

• Satomi Mineko, young woman of Tokyo society

  Poised, educated and elusive, from a well-to-do Christian family; Sanshirō is drawn to her but never declares himself.

• Hirota, teacher

  An unmarried higher-school English teacher and skeptical thinker whom his young friends revere.

• Nonomiya Sōhachi, physicist

  A patient experimental scientist absorbed in measuring the pressure of light.

• Nonomiya Yoshiko, Nonomiya's younger sister

  A gentle young woman in hospital early in the novel, later a friend of Mineko's.

• Sasaki Yojirō, fellow student

  A talkative, irresponsible and good-natured schemer who lodges with Hirota.

• Haraguchi, painter

  A Western-style artist who paints Mineko's full-length portrait.

• Sanshirō's mother, parent in Kyushu

  Writes letters of advice and hopes he will marry Omitsu, a girl from home.

Lessons

• Leaving home is harder than it looks

  Sanshirō arrives in Tokyo believing the university will open the world to him, but finds himself bewildered by crowds, streetcars and confident people. His sense of three worlds, home, learning and society, shows a young person trying to belong to all of them and fully belonging to none.

  • What are Sanshirō's three worlds, and which does he seem most at home in?
  • Why do his mother's letters both comfort and burden him?
  • Is it possible to keep what is good from home while entering a new world?

• Hesitation has consequences

  From the inn in Nagoya to his last meeting with Mineko, Sanshirō waits, wonders and never acts. Sōseki shows that indecision is itself a choice: by the time he understands what he feels, Mineko is engaged to another man.

  • What does the woman on the train mean when she comments on his courage?
  • Could Sanshirō have changed the outcome with Mineko? What held him back?

• Learning and wisdom

  Nonomiya measures the pressure of light with patient devotion, and Hirota reads widely and gives sharp judgments while refusing to seek advancement. Yojirō, by contrast, schemes for his teacher's promotion. The novel asks what learning is for and what it can and cannot give a person.

  • Why does Nonomiya's laboratory seem so far from the rest of Tokyo?
  • Why does Yojirō's campaign for Hirota go wrong?
  • Is Hirota a wise man, or merely a clever one?

• Stray sheep

  Mineko's phrase stray sheep, spoken by the stream and repeated by Sanshirō at the end, names the drift of two young people between old customs and new freedoms. The biblical image, which Mineko knows from her Christian upbringing, gives the comedy of the novel an undertone of longing.

  • Why might Mineko call both of them stray sheep?
  • What does Sanshirō feel when he repeats the phrase before the portrait?

Context

Sanshirō is set in about 1907-1908, a few years after Japan's victory in the Russo-Japanese War, when Tokyo was rapidly adopting Western institutions, science, dress and art. Tokyo Imperial University, where Sōseki himself had studied and lectured, stood at the top of a national system that drew ambitious young men from the provinces. Hirota's skeptical remarks on the train voice a strand of Meiji thought that questioned the pace and pride of modernization.

Composition

Sōseki had left his university lectureship in 1907 to write exclusively for the Asahi Shimbun. Sanshirō was serialized in the paper from 1 September to 29 December 1908 and issued in book form by Shun'yōdō in May 1909. It is often grouped with And Then (1909) and The Gate (1910) as a loose trilogy. The university pond beside which Sanshirō first sees Mineko is now popularly called Sanshirō Pond.

Reception

The novel became one of the best-loved Japanese stories of student life and first love and is widely read in Japanese schools. Jay Rubin's English translation (University of Washington Press, 1977) introduced it to English readers and was later reissued in a revised edition. No public-domain English translation has been identified, so the library does not include the full text or quote from the novel.

Comparisons

• botchan

  Sōseki's two young men travel in opposite directions: Botchan goes from Tokyo to a provincial school and returns in disgust, while Sanshirō comes from Kyushu to the capital and is bewildered by it.

• kokoro

  Kokoro also centers on a Tokyo student and an older teacher-figure, but its Sensei carries a hidden guilt, while Hirota's skepticism stays wry and open.

• this-side-of-paradise

  Fitzgerald's Amory Blaine at Princeton and Sōseki's Sanshirō in Tokyo are university newcomers drifting among friends, ideas and an unattainable young woman.

• great-expectations

  Both follow a provincial youth into a great city and a world of refined women and society, and both measure that new world against the home left behind.

• fathers-and-sons

  Turgenev's students and Sōseki's young men stand at the meeting of an old order and new learning, with an older generation watching uneasily.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• The train journey in Chapter 1: the woman at the Nagoya inn and the peach-eating stranger who doubts Japan's future.
• Mineko's fan and the white flower at the university pond in Chapter 2, and how that pose returns in Haraguchi's portrait.
• Sanshirō's description of his three worlds and the moments when each pulls at him.
• Every use of the phrase stray sheep, from the stream by the chrysanthemum dolls to the final exhibition.
• The small loans of money that pass among Yojirō, Sanshirō and Mineko.

Key terms and names

Tokyo Imperial University

Japan's leading university, where Sanshirō enrolls and where Sōseki himself had studied and lectured.

Meiji era

The reign of the Emperor Meiji (1868-1912), when Japan rapidly adopted Western institutions and learning.

Higher school

The elite preparatory school before university; Sanshirō has graduated from the one in Kumamoto, and Hirota teaches English at one in Tokyo.

Chrysanthemum dolls

Life-size figures dressed in living chrysanthemums, a popular autumn display in Tokyo that the friends visit together.

Stray sheep

Mineko's biblical phrase for herself and Sanshirō, echoing the parable of the lost sheep.

Pressure of light

The tiny force light exerts on a surface, which Nonomiya tries to measure in his basement laboratory.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension What happens at the inn in Nagoya, and why does the woman's parting remark bother Sanshirō?
2. Comprehension What is Yojirō trying to achieve for Hirota, and how does the plan fail?
3. Comprehension How does the novel end for Mineko, and what does Sanshirō see at the exhibition?
4. Interpretation Why does Sōseki open the novel with a stranger saying Japan will perish, just after a national victory?
5. Interpretation Does Mineko care for Sanshirō? What evidence does the novel give on each side?
6. Interpretation Why does Sanshirō repeat stray sheep at the end instead of saying anything else?
7. Big Question How should a young person choose among the worlds of home, learning and society when each makes a claim on him?

Faith Connections

• Luke 15:3-7 (Scripture)

  The parable of the lost sheep stands behind Mineko's phrase. In the Gospel the shepherd seeks the stray; in the novel the two stray sheep are left wandering, which sharpens the ending's sadness.

• Psalm 51:3 (Scripture)

  When Sanshirō returns her money at the church, Mineko murmurs a verse of confession from the Psalms; David's psalm of repentance gives her quiet farewell a weight she never explains.

• Augustine, Confessions IV (Church Fathers)

  Augustine describes a young man from the provinces drawn by ambition, friendship and love in the cities of learning, restless until he finds his rest in God; Sanshirō's restlessness has no such resolution.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: Modern Tokyo offers Sanshirō learning, freedom and love, but he brings to it only the habits of a dutiful country boy and a waiting temper. Because he observes rather than acts, the new world passes him by: Mineko marries another, and the portrait of the moment he first saw her becomes a picture in a gallery. Therefore the novel suggests that freedom without decision leaves a person a stray sheep.

Rhetorical device: framing image. Mineko holding her fan by the pond in Chapter 2 returns as the subject of Haraguchi's portrait in Chapter 13, so the novel closes on a picture of its own beginning.

Debate: Resolved: that Sanshirō, not Mineko, is responsible for the failure of their romance.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Trace the motif of stray sheep through Sanshirō and explain what it reveals about both Mineko and Sanshirō.

Comparison with Botchan: Botchan acts too quickly and Sanshirō too slowly. Compare the two heroes and explain what Sōseki seems to value in each.

Medical Lens

Medical material is incidental. Staying overnight at Nonomiya's house on the city's edge, Sanshirō hears a cry and then sees the body of a young woman killed by a train, a death the novel presents as apparently self-inflicted and which haunts him. Nonomiya's sister Yoshiko is a hospital patient when Sanshirō first meets her, and he himself falls ill with influenza near the end, his fever coinciding with the loss of Mineko. Hirota's account of a dream in which he meets a girl he glimpsed long before, unchanged by time, is a quiet study of memory and longing.

• Early chapters (night at Nonomiya's house)

  Sanshirō hears a voice near the railway line and then sees the body of a young woman struck by a train.

  Suicide
• Later chapters (Hirota's dream)

  Hirota tells Sanshirō of dreaming that he met a girl from his youth who had not aged.

  Dreams Nightmares
• Final chapters

  Sanshirō takes to his bed with influenza after returning Mineko's money.

  Fever Infection

Creative Prompts

• Fiction

  Write the letter Sanshirō might have sent his mother after the day at the chrysanthemum-doll show, keeping back what he cannot say.

• Essay

  Describe Sanshirō's three worlds and argue which of them the novel finally favors, or whether it favors none.

• Classroom

  Make a map of Sanshirō's Tokyo, marking the university pond, Nonomiya's laboratory, Hirota's house, the chrysanthemum-doll show and the exhibition, and trace how his feelings change at each place.

• Dialogue

  Write the conversation Sanshirō and Mineko might have had by the stream if he had spoken plainly.

Further Reading

• Botchan, Natsume Sōseki

• And Then, Natsume Sōseki

  The second novel of the loose trilogy that begins with Sanshirō.

• The Gate, Natsume Sōseki

• Kokoro, Natsume Sōseki