Kokoro
Penguin Classics · first published 1914 · 256 pages
A student befriends an older man he calls Sensei, who lives quietly and keeps a secret from his youth.
Spare, inward prose that moves slowly and lets small silences carry most of the weight.
For a night spent thinking about an old friend.
About this book
A university student meets an older man on a summer beach and begins visiting him in Tokyo, calling him Sensei. The man lives quietly with his wife, visits a grave each month, and seems to hold himself apart from the world. As the student's own father falls ill in the countryside, the question of what Sensei carries grows harder to set aside. What lingers is the weight of loneliness, and of how much one person can owe another.