"Sideways-Written Words": Appropriations of the Eighteenth-Century British It-Narrative in Natsume Soµseki's I Am a Cat

• Published in: Journal of narrative theory Vol. 50; no. 2; pp. 208 - 286
• Main Author: Douglas, Christopher C
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Ypsilanti Eastern Michigan University, Department of English Language and Literature 01.07.2020
• Subjects: 18th century; Allusion; Animals; Asian literature; Authorship; Autobiographical literature; British & Irish literature; Childrens literature; Critics; English literature; Fiction; Genre; Interpreters; Japanese language; Japanese literature; Literary characters; Literary criticism; Literary devices; Literary influences; Literary translation; Literature; Logic; Metaphor; Modern literature; Morality; Narrative structure; Narrative techniques; Narratives; Narratology; Novels; Plot (Narrative); Public speaking; Publishing; Publishing industry; Readers; Reading; Short stories; Society; Time; Translators; Writers; United Kingdom > UK; Japan; England
• ISSN: 1549-0815; 1548-9248

The shift from animal-centered action to human-centered action aligns with expectations of earlier it-narratives, including Francis Coventry's The History of Pompey the Little (1751) and the anonymous texts The Life and Adventures of a Cat and Memoirs and Adventures of a Flea (1785), all of which feature animals as the narrative focus, but whose narratives are almost entirely given over to the actions of the humans they observe. Söseki's standing in modern Japanese literature is much more obvious, as his presence in the Japanese literary consciousness is indelible: his early novella Botchan (1906) is required reading in high school curricula across the nation (Lee); his portrait appeared on the 1000 yen bill from 1984 to 2004; and he remains artistically relevant even to avant-garde fiction writers of the early twenty-first century. Aiko Ito and Graeme Wilson, translators of I Am a Cat, claim in their introduction to the novel that "he seems to have done nothing but read an almost incredible number of books on every conceivable subject, and, at the same time, make himself an authority on eighteenth-century literature" (iv-v). Liz Bellamy sees the genre as functioning to "provide a satirical vision of the atomized and mercenary nature of society within a commercial state" ("It-Narrators and Circulation" 132), while Christopher Flint sees the it-narrative as a metaphor for the idea of authorship and circulating texts being exchanged by a reading public (162-63).4 Flint's point is elaborated by Crystal B. Lake, who views the genre as commenting on the very fictionality of fiction (187).