The Three Cornered World

The Three Cornered World is the novelistic expression of the contrast between the Western ethical view of reality & the Eastern ethical view by one of Japan's most beloved authors. Natsume Soseki tells of an artist who retreats to a country resort & becomes involved in a series of mysterious encounters with the owner's daughter. Intricately interwoven with the author's reflections on art & nature, conversations with Zen monks & writers of haiku, are a plethora of unique Japanese characters offering the reader an exquisite "word painting."
NATSUME SŌSEKI is universally recognized to be Japan’s greatest modern novelist. BornNatsume Kinnosuke in Edo in 1867, the year before the city was renamedTokyo, he survived a lonely childhood, being traded between foster & biologicalparents, was deeply schooled in both the Chinese classics & English, & at the age of 22 chose from a Chinese source the defiantly playful pen name Sōseki (“Garglestone”) to signify his sense of his own eccentricity. In 1893, Sōseki became the second graduate of (Tokyo) Imperial University’s English Department & entered the graduate program, but in 1895 he abruptly took a position teaching English in a rural middle school. Though hoping to become a writer as early as the age of 14, Sōseki chose the more respectable path of English literature scholar, was sent to London by the Ministry of Education in 1900 for two years, & taught in his alma mater until 1907, when his early success as a part-time writer of stories & novels led him to accept a position as staff novelist for the Asahi Shinbun newspaper, in which he serialized the rest of his 14 novels. Sōseki also published substantial works of literary theory & history (& contemplative essays, memoirs, lectures on the individual & society, etc.) & continued to think of himself as a scholar after his controversial resignation from the University…