Kusamakura

by Natsume Sōseki, Meredith McKinney (Translation)

A stunning new translation[the first in more than forty years[of a major novel by the father of modern Japanese fiction
Natsume S?seki[s Kusamakura follows its nameless young artist-narrator on a meandering walking tour of the mountains. At the inn at a hot spring resort, he has a series of mysterious encounters with Nami, the lovely young daughter of the establishment. Nami, or [beauty, [ is the center of this elegant novel, the still point around which the artist moves and the enigmatic subject of S?seki[s word painting. In the author[s words, Kusamakura is [a haiku-style novel, that lives through beauty.[ Written at a time when Japan was opening its doors to the rest of the world, Kusamakura turns inward, to the pristine mountain idyll and the taciturn lyricism of its courtship scenes, enshrining the essence of old Japan in a work of enchanting literary nostalgia.

176 pages, ebook

Published January 29, 2008

About the author

Natsume Sōseki (夏目 漱石), born Natsume Kinnosuke (夏目 金之助), was a Japanese novelist. He is best known for his novels Kokoro, Botchan, I Am a Cat and his unfinished work Light and Darkness. He was also a scholar of British literature and composer of haiku, kanshi, and fairy tales. From 1984 until 2004, his portrait appeared on the front of the Japanese 1000 yen note. In Japan, he is often considered the greatest writer in modern Japanese history. He has had a profound effect on almost all important Japanese writers since.

Reviews

[Marc Sebastian Head · Rating 1 out of 5]

This low rating is almost certainly due to the poor translation rather than reflecting poorly on the author's work in his native language.

It is poor to the point of incomprehensibility. One almost wonders if it was translated by AI. There is no flow to the prose. On many many occasions there are repeated phrases, or else the same line offered twice in slightly different translations. At one point we had 'not moving in the world' repeated for half a page, and at another point we are left to try and make sense of 'which may cause a profuse profuse bloomin' of profuse profusion'. The line breaks seem faulty, and too often we are presented with a wall of text. And there are oddities of pronoun and gender and sentence subject that just lead to confusion.

I persisted for longer than I care to admit, wondering if this was part of the style and I was just not a fan. But then I took the time to look up an excerpt of an alternative translation, and the difference is night and day. This version is an utter disservice to the writer and his work, and I have to advise any reader against it.

[Stephanie Kubik · Rating 2 out of 5]

I downloaded this ebook from Amazon rather than the older Alan Turney translation with the assumption that a more modern translation would be the better experience. It is evident within the first few pages of the ebook that this translation is weak (misspelling the name of Western poet Percy Shelley, repeating lines with slightly different translations, a failure to correctly translate the 3-kanji word for "dandelion", and an overall unnatural feeling to the text).

I checked a preview of the modern Meredith McKinney translation of this work whose description Amazon also applied to this ebook; it is definitely a much better, more accurate translation.

I've decided to download and read the Alan Turney version instead - already it feels much more natural.