Japanese Literature Summaries
日本語

I Am a Cat — Summary and Characters

Meiji society through a cat's eyes

Author
Natsume Sōseki
Published
January 1905
First appeared in
Hototogisu
Form
Novel
Genres
  • Satire
  • Social
Setting
  • Tokyo
Length
318,778 characters
Reading time
About 10 hr 38 min
Orthography
Modern script and kana

About this work

Natsume Sōseki's first novel and the work that made his name, published in the magazine Hototogisu in January 1905 and continued through the following year by popular demand. A nameless cat that has settled into the house of Kushami, a schoolteacher, observes the vanity and pretension of its owner and his friends with light, unsparing irony. Loosely built as a series of linked sketches rather than a plot, it captures Meiji intellectual society in witty conversation and aphorism, and set Sōseki on his course as a novelist.

Summary

A nameless cat strays into the house of Chinno Kushami, a schoolteacher, and settles there. With a detached and unhurried eye it observes and comments, with abundant irony, on the nervous, self-important Kushami and on the friends who come and go: Meitei, the aesthete who deals in nothing but tall tales; Mizushima Kangetsu, a physicist giddy with love; the vulgar Kaneda family of businesspeople. Through the disturbances large and small around Kushami's house — a burglary, a quarrel with the schoolboys next door, the feud with the Kanedas — the vanity and absurdity of Meiji intellectual society are drawn with a light hand. There is no great plot; the book proceeds as a series of human observations through a cat's eyes. At the end the cat happens to lap up some beer, grows drunk, falls into a water jar, and, ceasing to struggle, dies quietly.

Characters

Chapter-by-chapter synopsis

The app covers this work chapter by chapter (full text in the app).

  1. 1. About This Work
  2. 2. Main Characters
  3. 3. Main Supporting Characters
  4. 4. Introduction — A Nameless Cat Settles into a Teacher's House
  5. 5. The Kaneda Family as Enemy — The Clan of the Nose
  6. 6. Daily Life in the Chinno Household — Burglar, Mice, and Bathhouse
  7. 7. The Rakuunkan War and Three Prescriptions
  8. 8. The Love-Letter Incident and the Stone Jizō
  9. 9. The Ending — The Violin and the Water Jar
  10. 10. Key Motifs and Foreshadowing

The opening (original text)

I am a cat. As yet I have no name. I have no idea where I was born. All I remember is that I was mewing in some dim, damp place. It was there that I saw a human being for the first time.

I Am a Cat by Natsume Sōseki (Aozora Bunko)

The ending (original text)

"Enough. Let it be as it will. I have had my last of scrabbling." And so I left my forepaws and hind paws, my head and my tail to the force of nature and resisted no more. Little by little I grew easier. I could no longer tell whether it was suffering or grace. I could not tell whether I was in the water or up on the matting. It made no difference where I was or how. I was simply at ease. No — I could not even feel the ease itself. The sun and moon were struck away, heaven and earth ground to dust, and I entered an unfathomable peace. I am dying. By dying I attain this peace. Peace cannot be had but by dying. Namu Amida Butsu, Namu Amida Butsu. How grateful I am, how grateful.

I Am a Cat by Natsume Sōseki (Aozora Bunko)

Famous passages

I am a cat. I have no name yet.

One of the most famous opening lines in Japanese literature. In these two short sentences lies the whole conceit of the novel: human society observed through the eyes of a nameless cat.

Where I was born I have not the faintest idea. All I remember is that I was mewling in some dim, damp place.

The passage that follows the opening line. The history of a cat with neither origin nor name begins, told in an easy, unhurried voice.

I am going to die. In death I shall find this great peace. This peace cannot be found without dying. Namu Amida Butsu, Namu Amida Butsu. How grateful, how grateful I am.

The final scene, in which the cat, tipsy on beer, falls into a water jar and slowly loses his strength. It closes a long, easygoing novel with a quiet resignation and a Buddhist invocation.

Read the original

The original Japanese text is available at Aozora Bunko, and the app downloads the same text for its vertical-text reader.

Aozora Bunko library card

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