Natsume Sōseki and His Cat: Afternoons with a Literary Master

In 1905, the thirty-eight-year-old Natsume Sōseki sat in an old house in Hongo, Tokyo, and wrote the opening lines of I Am a Cat. The novel is narrated by a nameless feline, who mocks the pedantry of intellectuals and the absurdities of the age. The cat's prototype was a real stray who had wandered into Sōseki's home. The author, who had never been a cat lover, found the animal constantly leaping onto his desk, padding across his manuscripts, demanding to be stroked. Gradually, he began to observe it, to imitate it, and finally, to write it. 'I am a cat' — these words, penned by a man whose portrait would one day grace the thousand-yen note, became one of the sharpest mirrors ever held up to humanity.