The Gate

A humble clerk & his loving wife scrape out a quiet existence on the margins of Tokyo. Resigned, following years of exile & misfortune, to the bitter consequences of having married without their families’ consent, & unable to have children of their own, Sōsuke & Oyone find the delicate equilibrium of their household upset by a new obligation to meet the educational expenses of Sōsuke’s brash younger brother. 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. 

Desperate & 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. This moving & deceptively simple story, a melancholy tale shot through with glimmers of joy, beauty, & gentle wit, is an understated masterpiece by one of Japan’s greatest writers. 

At the end of his life, Natsume Sōseki declared The Gate, originally published in 1910, to be his favorite among all his novels. This new translation captures the oblique grace of the original while correcting numerous errors & omissions that marred the first English version.

Sōseki Natsume (1867-1916) is widely considered the foremost novelist of the Meiji period (1868-1914). After graduating from Tokyo Imperial University in 1893, he taught high school before spending two years in England on a Japanese government scholarship. He returned to lecture in English literature at the university. Numerous nervous disorders forced him to give up teaching in 1908 & he became a full-time writer for the Asahi Shimbun. Sōseki's nine novels still enjoy immense popularity in Japan.