The Miner

The Miner (1908) is Natsume Soseki's least appreciated and most misunderstood novel. It's been described mistakenly as a stream-of-consciousness piece, and even an estimable and, one would hope, reverent fellow titan of Japanese literature, Haruki Murakami who introduces this fine translation by oft-times Murakami translator, Jay Rubin, throws up his hands at Soseki's coda declaration that in the end 'this book never became a novel'.The Miner is a work on the cusp of Soseki's openly humourous, sarcastic early work and his later, more melancholy, despairing and lonely philosophical commentary on society. It also occupies a unique, journalistic, documentary point of view: while many of Soseki's work has an element of autobiography, based on the wanderings of a student protagonist or provincial teacher, obviously drawn from the author's own life, Soseki, early in his new tenure as serialized novelist at Asahi Shimbun, was approached by a man, a miner, hoping to sell his story and have Soseki make it into a novel. Copious notes were taken, but in the end, it only served as source material rather than basic narrative for what eventually became The Miner.The humour we have come to expect from the writer of I Am A Cat and Botchan is entirely absentin the opening passages of The Miner. It's easy to see how one could mistake the lower colloquial speech that opens the work for stream-of-consciousness; it's utterly unmannered, crude, dispassionate. But this is writing we've come to know from another genre entirely, and it suits the futility and despair our narrator begins what seems nothing so much as a pre-suicide meditation: this is pre-noir, pure and simple. Dostoyevsky is the only other writer I can name who had this dark presage of society's underbelly so keenly evoked, but my reaction and recognition of Soseki's very particular adoption of style (every book of his has an arguably utterly unique form and style) as worthy of James M. Cain or Ken Bruen.The narrator comes from an upstanding Tokyo family, and we join him on an endless walk down a colonnade of pines, having run away from home and walking through the night. There has been some shameful romantic disengagement, one woman arranged through family connections and betrothed, but another to whom he feels a deeper connection. The hurt and failure finds him unable to face his family or society again, and his initial quest to escape society is integrally suicidal. He happens upon a purveyor for the local copper mine who offers him a job, and they are a mostly taciturn foursome making their hungry way towards the mining town high in the mountains.Soseki gives us oftentimes narrators whose interior monologues and meditations are of supremely philosophical depth, but who are largely tongue-tied when trying to express themselves. In The Miner, this mute quality borders on the catatonic, and the narrator is a reed in an ill wind, blown with no will towards a destination he can only hope will be his sought-after oblivion. Finally coming to the mine, it is nothing short of hell itself: endless dirty barracks, rice in name only, and 10,000 workers who are clearly a community of the damned. His first journey into the mine itself, with its labyrinthine passages, crawlspace caverns, endlessly descending ladders meticulously and claustrophobically described can only find their literary peer in Mark Z. Danielewski's existential abyss, House of Leaves. On his way back up topside, he falls too far behind his guide, and becomes as lost physically as he is spiritually. One sympathetic character, Yasu, is his saviour both in directing his exit and in advising him, from a similarly and permanently solitude-condemned life trajectory, to leave the mine and return to life. It is amazing that there is such a sense of deliverance and epiphany even though he may or may not choose to follow that redemptive path. The only sense we have of hopefulness at the end is not personal conviction or purpose, but a glimmer of Soseki's long-departed sarcastic sense of humour , just in the final passages.There is such unremitting darkness and despair suffusing the narrative, I was reminded of Charles Dickens' Bleak House, a novel most of my friends give up on midway: the cultivation of hopelessness is structural, and at least in Dickens' case, there is indeed a bottom from which we rise.

The Godfather of port-war Japanese Literature. A must read fro Murakami fans.

This is an unusual story which was originally written in sements for a Japanese newspaper. It's about a young man who leaves home because of a scandal involving his fiance and another woman. There's a lot of thinking and walking, but the writing is compelling."Been walking and walking through this band of pine trees. It’s so long—longer than any band of pine trees I ever saw in a picture. Can’t tell if I’m making headway with only trees around. No point walking if the trees aren’t going to do something—develop. Better to stay put and try to outstare a tree, see who laughs first."He is thinking about disappearing forever, but has no plan until he meets a man who offers him a job in the copper mines."You’ll take it for sure, right?” “I’m planning to.” This reply didn’t come as easily as the first one. I more or less had to force it out. Apparently, I was willing to do anything within reason but still wanted to leave myself an escape, which is probably why I said I was planning to take it. (I know it’s a little strange for me to be writing about myself in this tentative way, as though I were someone not myself, but humans are such inconsistent beings that we can’t say anything for certain about them—even when they’re us. And when it comes to past events, it’s even worse: there’s no distinguishing between ourselves and other people. The best we can say is “probably” or “apparently.” I may be accused of irresponsibility for this, but there’s no getting around it, because it’s true. Which is why I intend to continue with this approach whenever anything doubtful comes up.)"I could relate to the unamed young man since I moved to California when I was 18, without much thought,except to head out somewhere. The book is thought-provoking, without providing any answers.Recommended.

This book is not exactly a novel, as often pointed out by the same protagonist of the story, more than anything else is a long stream of consciousness (with punctuation, thank God) that tells the thoughts and emotions of a young Japanese man who ran away from home, in the first years of the '900. Fled for a women's issue from the family of origin, the nineteen year old finds himself with no money to be hired to work in the mines, but he has not the "physique du role". Claustrophobic and not only the part of the story that's set in the mine, it almost seems that the protagonist is forced to constantly mulling in his own thoughts, brooding, and the feeling is overwhelming.Questo libro non é propriamente un romanzo, come sottolinea spesso il protagonista stesso della storia, piú che altro é un lungo stream of consciousness (con la punteggiatura per fortuna) che racconta i pensieri e le emozioni di un giovane giapponese scappato di casa, ai primi del '900. Fuggito per una questione di donne dalla famiglia di origine, il diciannovenne si ritrova senza soldi ad essere assunto per lavorare in miniera, ma non ha proprio il physique du role, come dire. Claustrofobico e non solo la parte in miniera, sembra quasi che il protagonista sia costretto a rimuginare continuamente i suoi stessi pensieri e la sensazione è opprimente.

I read The Miner because Haruki Murakami is a favorite author of mine. I have read all his fiction. His recommendation sold me. It is a strange novel -- very unsatisfying if you want to know what happened in the end. There really is no end. It just stops. But that is very Japanese. Murakami novels tend to have the same technique of leaving one to think about things rather than explaining them. When you ask an author "What happened next?" the answer will be "I don't know any more about that than you do." What I like about Japanese novels is that they leave you thinking.

Easy 😀 language.

I loooooove Soseki's work. This book was mind opening. 🖤

In my opinion, Soseki's best work.

Interesting book if you have a historical interest in Japan and coal mines.

漱石の異色作を、村上春樹の翻訳で有名なジェイルービンが訳した傑作。