The Gate concludes with a poignant diminuendo, where Soseki takes leave of his couple with a scene of quiet and bittersweet domesticity. The novel is about the marriage of Sosuke and Oyone….The Gate beautifully shows the way their relationship is suffused with both love and remorse, constantly reminding them of their pain while also acting to soothe it. He goes looking for answers but finds only more questions.” -Library Journal “A sensitive, skillfully written novel by the most widely read Japanese author of modern times.” -The Guardian"Soseki had a genius for sensitively depicting souls in torment. A man suddenly abandons his loving wife to enter a life of contemplation in a Zen temple. This new translation captures the oblique grace of the original while correcting numerous errors and omissions that marred the first English version.Review“I especially remember the strong sense of identification I felt with The Gate, the story of a young married couple living in far-from-ideal circumstances.” -Haruki Murakami“Released in 1910, The Gate is among top Japanese novelist Sōseki’s best-know works. At the end of his life, Natsume Sōseki declared The Gate, originally published in 1910, to be his favorite among all his novels. This moving and deceptively simple story, a melancholy tale shot through with glimmers of joy, beauty, and gentle wit, is an understated masterpiece by one of Japan’s greatest writers.
Desperate and torn, Sōsuke finally resolves to travel to a remote Zen mountain monastery to see if perhaps there, through meditation, he can find a way out of his predicament. While an unlikely new friendship appears to offer a way out of this bind, it also soon threatens to dredge up a past that could once again force them to flee the capital. Resigned, following years of exile and misfortune, to the bitter consequences of having married without their families’ consent, and unable to have children of their own, Sōsuke and Oyone find the delicate equilibrium of their household upset by a new obligation to meet the educational expenses of Sōsuke’s brash younger brother. An NYRB Classics OriginalA humble clerk and his loving wife scrape out a quiet existence on the margins of Tokyo.
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