Ho boy, here we go. A couple months back I read Kokoro also by Natsume Soseki and it was a fantastic read. [I posted about it here](https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/16th192/kokoro_by_natsume_soseki_spoilers/). Kusamakura was heavily recommended by commenters and it sounded like exactly my kind of book.
Now, all or some of this may be a product of perhaps a poor or excessively difficult translation, or a combination of both. My Japanese is not nearly at the level where I can read this book in it’s native language, but perhaps one day, years from now.
I hated it. I read it on Kindle and got to 55%. At 50% I decided to make every effort, because surely it will turn around, but that’s as far as my effort got me. Soseki just spent 3 pages describing some naked woman in a bath. It was very painful to read, but “finally” I thought, “some actual development!”. And then the chapter ended and now he’s about to describe some room for another several pages. That’s when I decided “I can either quit reading or quit this book, because if I keep forcing myself, I won’t want to read!”, and I literally said out loud “oh my god I’m so done” (which could have been awkward, since I was sitting outside at a noodle bar).
In Kokoro its short and to the point. I loved the simplicity that was still thought provoking and spoke to me. I felt like I understood the characters at least on some level and could relate to them. In Kusamakura, he writes long winded descriptions that often leave you knowing nothing actually relevant about the characters, it feels entirely pretentious, and the only thoughts it provokes bore me to death.
And… perhaps this too is lost in the translation, but I’m really struggling to figure out if the protagonist is actually a decent artist or not. The poetry is bland and not interesting, but I keep trying to give Soseki and his protagonist the benefit of the doubt, but I can only convince myself of so much. Soseki attempts to describe happenings in great detail with what appears to be an attempt at poetic prose, and perhaps that too is lost in translation because it is tedious and boring to read.
It honestly feels like your average high school student wrote it. And this review could have been written much earlier on in the book. So I doubt it will change if I keep going. I trucked on out of respect and love for Kokoro but that has its limits.
At the end of the day, we aren’t going to care about characters we know nothing about. Yet he’s writing essays about how they *look*.
One thing I did really like, is what Soseki wrote about the human realm at the start.
Note: I want to discuss it, I have abandoned books before and simply moved onto the next, I wouldn’t bother writing this just to dis a book.
by -Zoppo