Soseki’s prose is opalescent, just like he cumulus of clouds which appear so often in ‘Sanshiro’, there is something ethereal and captivating about the atmosphere which Soseki is able to create in ‘Sanshiro’, a kind of wistfulness hovers over the characters as the reader is caught up in the wan beauty of Soseki’s prose style. One can easily distinguish the influence on (especially early) Murukami not only with the prose style (although Soseki is more poetic, but also with their preoccupation with the isolating effect of city life and the disaffected and diffident protagonists. Out of all the great Japanese novelists of the early and mid 20th century;  Akutagawa, Kawabata, Mishima and Tanizaki, Soseki is probably the one whose themes and concerns most resonate with modern readers, whilst retaining a quintessentially Japanese sense of aesthetics.

The story follows Sanshiro, a young student who moves to Tokyo from the country-side. The novel captures the disorientating nature of this change to Sanshiro, the sense of torpor which over-takes him as he tries to accustom himself to the fast-pace of city life, its endless dissonance and the duplicitous nature of its inhabitants.

“The sun, now sinking in the West, illuminated the broad slope at an angle. The windows of the Engineering buildings flanking the top slop were sparkling as if on fire. Pale red flames of burning sun swept back from the horizon into the sky’s deep clarity, and their fever seemed to rush down upon him”

In contrast to this, is the sense of beauty awakened in Sanshiro’s heart by two female characters, the vivacious Mineko and the pallid yet beautiful Yoshiko. The image most often associated with Mineko is her kimono and kaleidoscope of colours which blaze forth from it, it is as if her kimono-which the painter Haraguchi finds so difficult to capture in his portrait of her, is symbolic of the brightness which emanates from Mineko is the eyes of her narrator, her febricity contrasting with Sanshiro’s own feebleness and lighting up his own colourless inner life. By contrast, the sad and somnolent Yoshiko is more similar in terms of personality with Sanshiro, and although she is beautiful, her beauty is too familiar, too similar when contrasted with the enigmatic Mineko. In many ways, in addition to being a coming of age novel, the story is about Sanshiros choice between these two types of beauty.

Other central themes of the novel include societal dynamics in late Meiji era Japan under the increasing sense of Westernization, the incipient blooming of Japanese literature under Western influences and the changing role of women in Japanese society-in many ways Sanshiro captures Japan just as it is on the cusp of modernisation, as the old traditions of Japan are being over-taken and over-whelmed by the modern world, just as Sanshiro is over-whelmed by Tokyo. Yet beneath this, a sense of beauty blooms and blazes forth from the pages of the novel, from the white rose in Mineko’s hair, to the reflections of a setting sun on the windows of a building, Soseki is able to imbue the world with a brilliant beauty;

“The morning sunlight streamed in form the eastern window behind her, and where the sunlight touched she wore a violet-flame, living halo. The face and forehead were in deep shadow, pale in darkness. The eyes had a far off look. A high cloud never moves in the depths of the sky, yet it must.”