This is an early middle-length novel by Natsume Soseki, a literary figure of the Meiji period. It was first published in New Novel [1906]. It was first published in New Novel [1906]. If you let your emotions get the better of you, you will be swept away. If you give in to your feelings, you will be carried away; if you give in to your will, you will be cramped. The world of mankind is a hard place to live in. The world is hard to live in anyway. The protagonist, a thirty-year-old painter, dislikes civilization and travels from Tokyo to a hot spring inn in the mountains (Koten hot spring in Kumamoto), where he meets the inn's beautiful daughter, Nami. The story unfolds as Nami's paintings unfold, and along the way, a literary vision and an aesthetic of "impersonality" are developed, which suggests that poetry that allows us to be free from worldly desires is the true art. This is a work with a strong taste for loitering and haiku.
