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日本近代文学を代表する小説家・俳人。帝国大学英文科卒業後に英国留学。「吾輩は猫である」「坊つちやん」「こころ」など多数の傑作を残す。旧千円札の肖像。
Natsume Soseki (1867-1916) was one of Japan greatest novelists and the foremost literary figure of the Meiji and Taisho eras. Born in Edo (present-day Tokyo), he graduated from Tokyo Imperial University with a degree in English literature and later studied in London.
He debuted with I Am a Cat (Wagahai wa Neko de Aru, 1905) and went on to write beloved works including Botchan, Sanshiro, And Then, The Gate, and Kokoro. His writing probed the tensions between Japanese tradition and Western modernity, and the solitude of the individual in modern society.
The opening lines of Kusamakura (1906) — reflecting on the difficulty of living in a world torn between reason, emotion, and willpower — became some of the most quoted sentences in Japanese literature. He died in 1916 at age 49 and his portrait appeared on the 1,000 yen note.