Nami-ko — Summary and Characters
A marriage torn by the family system
- Author
- Tokutomi Roka
- Published
- November 1898
- First appeared in
- Kokumin Shimbun
- Form
- Novel
- Genres
- Romance
- Family
- Setting
- Gunma
- Kanagawa
- Tokyo
- Length
- 129,550 characters
- Reading time
- About 4 hr 19 min
- Orthography
- Modern script and kana
About this work
A novel serialized in the Kokumin Shimbun from 1898 into the following year. The young and unspoiled love between Takeo, a naval officer, and his wife Namiko is torn apart without mercy by her tuberculosis and by a mother-in-law who cares only for the family's standing. Namiko's cry — that it is hard, so hard, and that she will never be born a woman again — drew tears from readers across the country, and edition followed edition until it became the greatest bestseller of the Meiji era. A landmark of the modern Japanese domestic novel, indicting the cruelty of the family system and the failure to understand the sick.
Summary
Namiko, the only daughter of Lieutenant General Kataoka of the army, marries Kawashima Takeo, a naval sub-lieutenant, and passing the days of their marriage at Ikaho and Zushi the two become a devoted couple who think deeply of each other. But Namiko begins to fall ill with consumption. While Takeo is away at the war with China, his mother O-Kei, who fears for the ending of the family line, comes to detest a daughter-in-law with a wasting disease; and holding her unfit for the Kawashima house, she forces through a divorce against her son's will and sends Namiko back to her parents. Takeo resists his mother fiercely and goes on loving his wife, but before the law of the house he can do nothing. Torn away, Namiko grows worse, longing only for her husband and grieving over the misfortune of having been born a woman. One day the two meet by chance on a train and exchange a few words for a brief moment — and that is their parting in this life. Before long Namiko dies with her love for her husband still in her breast. When all is over, as Takeo bows before her grave, General Kataoka comes to him, full of remorse for his daughter's death, and the two take each other's hands and weep in their common sorrow.
Characters
- Namiko The only daughter of General Kataoka. The ill-fated heroine, who marries Kawashima Takeo, falls ill with consumption and is divorced as a sacrifice to the house
- Kawashima Takeo Namiko's husband, a naval officer, who loves her deeply and resists his mother's cruelty but is stopped by the law of the house
- O-Kei Takeo's mother, who holds the honor and the line of the house above all and forces the divorce out of loathing for her consumptive daughter-in-law
- General Kataoka Namiko's father, a lieutenant general of the army, who dotes on his daughter and grieves at her misfortune and early death
- Chijiwa Yasuhiko Takeo's cousin, refused when he pressed his suit on Namiko, who out of spite eggs on the divorce
Chapter-by-chapter synopsis
The app covers this work chapter by chapter (full text in the app).
- 1. About This Work
- 2. Main Characters
- 3. Supporting Characters
- 4. The Ikaho Honeymoon — A Woman Like an Evening Primrose
- 5. Mother-in-Law and Cousin — Days in the Kawashima House
- 6. The Vow at Zushi, and the Divorce in His Absence
- 7. The Battle of the Yalu River and Port Arthur
- 8. Autumn at Zushi — The Rock Below the Fudō Shrine
- 9. A Moment at Yamashina
- 10. The Ending — “I Shall Never Be Born a Woman Again”
- 11. Key Motifs and Foreshadowing
The opening (original text)
The paper doors of the third floor of the Chigira inn at Ikaho in Jōshū stand open, and a young woman is gazing at the evening scene. She is eighteen or nineteen. Her hair is dressed in a becoming marumage, and she wears a hifu of fine-patterned crepe with a grass-green cord. She has a slender, fair face; the space between her brows is a little narrow, and the flesh about her cheeks looks cold, which is a flaw if one must call it a flaw; but hers is a slim, gentle, delicate figure. She is not the plum blossom that boasts of its single hardy flower in the north wind, nor the cherry that turns to a butterfly and flies in the hazy spring; rather one might set her down as an evening primrose, faintly scenting the dusk of a summer evening.
Nami-ko by Tokutomi Roka (Aozora Bunko)
The ending (original text)
All at once Takeo felt his hand seized, and looking up he met the eyes of General Kataoka, brimming with tears. "Takeo, it was hard for me too!" Holding each other's hands, the tears of the two fell drop by drop at the foot of the gravestone. After a while the general wiped his tears away. Clapping Takeo on the shoulder, he said: "Takeo, my boy, Nami may be dead, but I am still your father, you know. I count on you. — There is a long road ahead of us. — Ah, it has been a long time; come along with me, Takeo, and tell me about Taiwan at your leisure!"
Nami-ko by Tokutomi Roka (Aozora Bunko)
Famous passages
Oh, it's hard! It's so hard! Never — never again will I be born a woman!
The anguished cry of Namiko, torn apart by an incurable illness, near the moment of her death. This celebrated scene from a bestseller moved all of Meiji Japan to tears.
Read the original
The original Japanese text is available at Aozora Bunko, and the app downloads the same text for its vertical-text reader.
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- The Dancing Girl January 1890
- The Grave of the Wild Chrysanthemum January 1906