Natsume Soseki

Natsume Soseki, born Natsume Kinnosuke, was a Japanese novelist, poet and scholar who lived from 1867 to 1916 and is often called the first modern novelist of Japan, his fiction exploring individualism, loneliness and the conflict between traditional Japanese values and the rapid Westernization of the Meiji era. A graduate of Tokyo Imperial University who later studied in London under difficult conditions that contributed to a severe nervous breakdown, he returned to Japan to lecture on English literature before achieving fame with the 1905 satirical novel I Am a Cat, after which he resigned his academic post in 1907 to become a full time author for the Asahi Shimbun newspaper. His major works include Botchan (1906), Sanshiro (1908), Kokoro (1914) and the unfinished final novel Light and Dark (1916), and he continued writing until his death despite chronic stomach illness and recurring mental illness.