And Then — Summary and Characters
Choosing love over the world's opinion
- Author
- Natsume Sōseki
- Published
- June 1909
- First appeared in
- Asahi Shimbun
- Form
- Novel
- Genres
- Romance
- Psychological
- Setting
- Tokyo
- Length
- 172,811 characters
- Reading time
- About 5 hr 46 min
- Orthography
- Modern script and kana
About this work
The second of Sōseki's early trilogy, serialized in the Tokyo and Osaka Asahi Shimbun from June to October 1909. Nagai Daisuke, an idle gentleman living on his father's money, cannot let go of his feeling for the woman he once gave up to his closest friend, and finally chooses to follow his own heart against everything society expects. Setting the awakening of a modern self against social ruin, it marks the turning point in Sōseki's work.
Summary
Nagai Daisuke, thirty years old, is a man of leisure living without work under the protection of his businessman father. One day Hiraoka, his closest friend from student days, loses his post over a mismanagement at the bank where he worked and comes back to Tokyo with his wife Michiyo. Michiyo was the woman Daisuke had once loved and had given up when he learned of Hiraoka's suit, arranging in the name of friendship that they should marry. Helping the Hiraokas in their difficulties, Daisuke comes to see that his feeling for Michiyo has never gone. Just then his father presses hard on him to marry the daughter of a wealthy house, and Daisuke is driven into a corner. Learning that Michiyo has a disease of the heart, he tells her at last what he feels, and asks Hiraoka to give her up to him. Betrayed, Hiraoka declares the friendship at an end and goes; and Daisuke, cast off as good as disowned by his father and brother when they learn what has happened, loses his means of living. Going out to look for work under a burning sun, anxious about Michiyo's illness, Daisuke falls into a derangement in which the whole world seems to turn red and revolve.
Characters
- Nagai Daisuke A man of leisure of thirty, living without work under his businessman father's protection. The protagonist
- Hiraoka Tsunejirō Daisuke's closest friend from student days, who loses his post over a mismanagement at his bank and returns to Tokyo
- Michiyo Hiraoka's wife. The woman Daisuke once loved and gave up to his friend
- Daisuke's father A businessman, who presses Daisuke hard to marry the daughter of a wealthy house
- Nagai Seigo Daisuke's elder brother, a businessman who carries on the family concern
- Umeko Seigo's wife, a sister-in-law who takes a kindly interest in Daisuke
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. Main Supporting Characters
- 4. Awakening — The Camellia's Fall and Hiraoka's Return
- 5. The Nagai House — A Father's Sermon and the Sagawa Match
- 6. The Bread Argument — A Case Against Working
- 7. Lily of the Valley and Lilies — Drawing Closer to Michiyo
- 8. Child of Nature, or Man of Will?
- 9. Confession Among the White Lilies
- 10. Estrangement and Disownment
- 11. Ending — Until His Head Burns Away
- 12. Key Motifs and Foreshadowing
The opening (original text)
When the sound of hurrying footsteps ran past the gate, a great clog like a chopping board was hanging in Daisuke's head, suspended from the sky. But as the footsteps went off into the distance the clog slipped out of his head and vanished. And then he woke.
And Then by Natsume Sōseki (Aozora Bunko)
The ending (original text)
All at once a red postbox caught his eye. And the red of it leapt into Daisuke's head and began to turn round and round. At an umbrella shop four red umbrellas were hung up high, one upon another. The colour of the umbrellas leapt into Daisuke's head too and spun there in an eddy. At a crossing someone was selling great scarlet balloons. When the tram turned the corner sharply the balloons came after him and fastened onto his head. When a red cart loaded with parcel post passed the tram, it too was sucked into Daisuke's head. The curtain of a tobacconist's was red. The flags of a sale were red. The telegraph poles were red. Signboards in red paint followed one on another. At last the whole world turned scarlet. And with Daisuke's head at the centre it revolved, round and round, breathing fire. Daisuke resolved to ride the tram until his head burned away.
And Then by Natsume Sōseki (Aozora Bunko)
Famous passages
At the sound of someone's hurried footsteps running past the gate, in Daisuke's mind a huge wooden clog hung suspended from the sky.
An opening written from the drowsy edge of waking consciousness. It begins a novel in which Daisuke, who lives without working, steps toward his feelings for a friend's wife.
Daisuke resolved to ride the streetcar until his own head burned itself to ash.
The final line. As Daisuke sets out to look for work, the whole world appears red before his eyes — a celebrated ending in the history of the modern Japanese novel.
Read the original
The original Japanese text is available at Aozora Bunko, and the app downloads the same text for its vertical-text reader.
More by this author
- I Am a Cat January 1905
- Botchan April 1906
- Kusamakura September 1906
- Gubijinsō June 1907
- Sanshirō September 1908
- The Gate March 1910
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- The Quilt September 1907
- The Wild Geese September 1911
- Tadare March 1913
- A Certain Woman March 1919
- Naomi March 1924