It is well known that Soseki Natsume admired George Meredith's novels. So much had he enjoyed Meredith's The Shaving of Shagpat (1855) that he quoted part of the poem from that work in his own novel called Kusamakura (1906). But it is little known that there is a translation of The Shaving of Shagpat and the translator is one of Soseki's students, Masaki Minakawa. Masaki Minakawa is known among the Soseki scholars as the editor of The General Conception of Literature (1924). I have tried to trace his life until he published the translation of The Shaving of Shagpat. As a result, I have found several interesting facts about his life.
1) Minakawa was one of the first students when Soseki was employed as a lecturer at Tokyo Imperial University.
2) After leaving the university, Minakawa taught at Meiji Gakuin High School. While teaching there, he read Soseki's novels, wrote his comments to Soseki, and encouraged him to go on writing.
3) While he was teaching at the Seventh Higher School of Kagoshima, he translated The Shaving of Shagpat. What inspired him to translate it was a lecture given by Lafcadio Hearn, Soseki's immediate predecessor, at Tokyo Imperial University.
4) Minakawa asked Soseki to publish the translation but Soseki died before he could find a publisher for him.
5) After Soseki's death, Toyoichiro Nogami, Soseki's another student helped Minakawa to publish the work as one of the Collected Works of World Literature called “Sekai Meisaku Taikan”.

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