The Gate

Nothing much happens in Natsume Soseki’s novel The Gate. At least not on the outside. But as Pico Iyer’s wonderful introduction prepares the reader, this is very often the case in Japanese novels, and one needs to learn to pay attention, to read the silences. On the surface, this is the story of an ordinary young couple Sosuke and Oyone who are living in a rented dwelling on the margins of Tokyo, in a life that is far from comfortable. Sosuke travels into the city each day for work, as a lowly clerk, and when he returns home every evening he and Oyone fall gently into a routine that rarely involves other people. Their isolation seems self-imposed, and we don’t learn the reason for this until later on in the novel. But rather than causing any resentment, they seem content in each other’s company. They say very little to each other, but understand each other perfectly. We follow them from autumn, through a dark and chilly winter, until spring comes again, the shift in the seasons impacting their mood as well as their fortunes in a way.

When the story begins, the couple is mildly fretting about the unexpected obligation of paying for the higher education of Sosuke’s younger brother Koroku, an expense they clearly cannot afford. Sosuke is a man beaten by life, and despite a flamboyant past that we get only a few hints of, he is now a man of very little action, a man who looks older than he is. This passivity is a source of some frustration for his brother, and at times to Oyone as well, although she never says anything to him directly. The story moves gently along, when an impending (and stressful) encounter with someone from his past has Sosuke retreating for ten days to a Zen monastery.

Sosuke and Oyone’s quiet domesticity is the heart of this novel, their abiding love for (and complete dependence on) each other, despite their straitened circumstances and lack of prospects.

Soseki’s delicate and excellent prose was translated in 2013 by William F. Sibley in this NYRB Classics edition.