「三四郎」について

抄録

1) The theme of Sanshiro by Soseki Natsume is the formation of an intellectual in the modern Japan. Sanshiro, a Tokyo University student fresh from the country, entets into a new world in which women as well as men have their own claims and functions, and feels his traditional sources of value gradually drying up. His old preconceptions are replaced by new ones, and in him arises the possibility of opening up an entirely new world before unknown to him. This is one of the typical processes how a modern intellectual was fashioned in the Japan of the Meiji Era. 2) The position of the intellectual thus shaped is not stable. Unber the level of his urban life lies a vast and deep stratum of rural life which seems almost immutable, and even his life itself is paralleled by the disquietude of death. In such circumstances we can recognize the author's method which we may call "relativization of human beings," and also we can get a glimpes of his moral ideas. 3) Soseki's moral principles can be seen more clearly through his view of women. He could not be satisfied with the feminine characters of his creation, inclined, after all, to mere utilitarianism. His ideal type was a woman of eternal chastity, retaining, more or less, traditional virtues However, as long as the modernization of Japan involves the breaking up of so called feudalistic morality, the emancipation of women cannot but be admitted. Consequently, there follows a serious conflict, which for Soseki was one of the inevitable corollaries of the problem of an intellectual. In his later works, Soseki came to seek its solution in the establishment of new morality common to both sexes through the conflict between men and women.