{"id":3189,"date":"2009-10-11T13:33:05","date_gmt":"2009-10-11T20:33:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/?p=3189"},"modified":"2009-10-04T15:06:40","modified_gmt":"2009-10-04T22:06:40","slug":"i-am-a-cat-%e5%90%be%e8%bc%a9%e3%81%af%e7%8c%ab%e3%81%a7%e3%81%82%e3%82%8b","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/2009\/10\/i-am-a-cat-%e5%90%be%e8%bc%a9%e3%81%af%e7%8c%ab%e3%81%a7%e3%81%82%e3%82%8b\/","title":{"rendered":"I Am A Cat (\u543e\u8f29\u306f\u732b\u3067\u3042\u308b)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"i<\/a><\/p>\n

Before I completely forget the contents of this book, I figured I better write a little something about I Am A Cat<\/a> by Soseki Natsume. (Soseki Natsume was born just a few minutes to the east of where we currently live in Nishi-Waseda and his grave is just a few minutes to the north.) This was the last book I’m planning on reading in English while in Japan. I finished it more than a month ago so the details are a bit foggy at this point. <\/p>\n

This is one of those books that you constantly hear about and see referenced in other works so you feel a little behind the times not having read it. Now I’ll at least know what people are talking about. The version I read was only the first of three volumes. The setting is the Japan of a little more than a hundred years ago (as that is when it was written). The author takes the role of a cat, sort of a “fly on the wall” who no one is afraid to talk in front of and who can creep into any conversation without being detected.<\/p>\n

The book is occasionally hilarious, frequently witty, always observant of Japan then (and now as things don’t seem to have changed much), but sometimes dull. Even though I laughed out loud at times, I was bored at others and did not feel as inspired by the end to want to read the next two volumes.<\/p>\n

The introduction by the translators was too long and overdone if I remember correctly. I’ll leave you with one of my favorite passages. Maybe I only find it funny because I know so many teachers.<\/p>\n

“My master seldom comes face to face with me. I hear he is a schoolteacher. As soon as he comes home from school, he shuts himself up in the study for the rest of the day; and he seldom emerges. The others in the house think that he is terribly hard-working. He himself pretends to be hard-working. But actually he works less hard than any of them think. Sometimes I tiptoe to his study for a peep and find him taking a snooze. Occasionally his mouth is drooling onto some book he has begun to read…

There are times when even I, I a mere cat, can put two thoughts together. ‘Teachers have it easy. If you were born a human, it\u2019s best to become a teacher. For if it\u2019s possible to sleep this much and still to be a teacher, why, even a cat could teach.’ However, according to the master, there\u2019s nothing harder than a teacher\u2019s life and every time his friends come round to see him, he grumbles on and on.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Before I completely forget the contents of this book, I figured I better write a little something about I Am A Cat by Soseki Natsume. (Soseki Natsume was born just a few minutes to the east of where we currently live in Nishi-Waseda and his grave is just a few minutes to the north.) This […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[44,8,195],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3189"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3189"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3192,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3189\/revisions\/3192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveljapanblog.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}