Light and Dark

A surgeon tells Tsuda, a young salaried man married only half a year, that the ailment he has been treating will not go away the way he hoped. He keeps the worst of it, and a few other things, from his wife O-Nobu, who is quick, affectionate, and sharper than she lets on. Between the two of them lie vanity, small evasions, and an allowance from a father in Kyoto that can no longer be counted on.

Around the couple Sōseki gathers a whole society: a stiff, disapproving sister; a bright and easy uncle's family with its outings to the theater; Mrs. Yoshikawa, the wife of Tsuda's patron, who knows more about his past than he would like; and Kobayashi, a ragged old schoolmate on his way to Korea, who says aloud what everyone else only thinks. The narrator follows each of them with a cool, exact eye through scene after scene of talk in which nobody quite says what they mean. In the last chapters Tsuda travels to a hot-spring inn in the mountains, where a woman from his past is staying.

Light and Dark (Meian) ran in the Asahi Shimbun from 26 May to 14 December 1916, in 188 instalments. Natsume Sōseki died on 9 December, and the last instalments appeared after his death. The novel breaks off in the middle of a scene, and this translation adds nothing to it: it ends where the Japanese ends, with the word "Unfinished."