Botchan

Botchan is surrounded by idiots in a backwater fishing village, but he fights back with style. A humorous take on the teaching profession. Though published in 1906, this hasn't dated a bit and is one of the great novels of the 20th century.

Soseki was until recently the undisputed literary giant for readers in his homeland. Botchan is nevertheless a slight piece, and one imagines Soseki would have been surprised that his little novella ever received the reverence accorded by reviewers and critics since its publication. Essentially the work is to be categorised as 'young schoolmaster's journey to self awareness - failed', which is part of an extensive canon. Botchan thinks he knows everything, is full of bluster coming from his superior upbringing and his innate authoritarianism, and is a bit of a prat who doesn't engage the reader's sympathy. If nothing else, this undemanding read acts as a valuable reminder of the extraordinary range of Soseki's writing. This rather slight work would never have survived on its own without the rest of the corpus.

Great read. Not only was it comical but also gave you a glimpse of the culture and time period with nice descriptions. Recommended for those who are interested in reading English translations of Japanese writers.

I think this book is amazing, it's great for the whole family, really easy to understand as it kind of tells you straightforward rather than beating around the bush. It's quite funny if you have an imagination and shows much of Japanese life.

Good book, probably very well translation, though by very American English.

Supposedly a Japanese classic but I think that is more due to nostalgia and it seems pretty dated a more than a bit twee!

This book,despite being written over 100 years ago,is still so fresh & crisp that the joy of reading becomes a memorable experience. This was my first experience of reading Natsume Sōseki & I’m already delighted! Botchan is a rock star!!

Written in very plain language and is very accessible. Botchan’s struggle is every man’s struggle.

"Botchan" means Young Master and carries the same mix of affection and condescension as the English term. We never find out the narrator and protagonist's real name, only the moniker his family's loyal maid uses. Like Soseki himself, Botchan is the unfavored son of an old and pedigreed Tokyo family who leaves the capital for a teaching position at a middle (i.e., high) school in a castle town in the boondocks. (Though never named, the town is unmistakably Matsuyama, a Shikoku city known for its castle and hot springs.) Though Botchan describes his youthful self as a hellraiser, he is unprepared for the rural thugs he is expected to teach, some of whom are bigger than he is and all of whom are ruder. Even more problematic are his colleagues at the school, who are almost without exception a bunch of lying schemers. Will Botchan make it through the school year without falling into cynicism and despair? Doubtful, but his humor and Tokyo determination egg him on: "To give up at this point would have been a disgrace....If people were to hear that I allowed this pack of snot-nosed brats to make a fool of me...I would never live it down. I'm not made of the same stuff as those peasants were, of that you can be sure."Sometimes described as "The Catcher in the Rye" of Japan, "Botchan" predates it by half a century yet seems fresher and still modern 112 years years after its publication. It's also very funny--in fact, it reminded me of Kingsley Amis's "Lucky Jim," surely the gold standard of the academy novel. While it suffers from an abrupt and unsatisfying ending, it's worthwhile for anyone interested in Japanese literature, or modern Japan generally.

But Botchan's cantankerous predisposition is quite addictive. This is the kind of people you would hate to be on the bad side of, and do anything to have on your defense team. Angry people make the most loyal friends, although making their friendship is the challenging part of the dynamic. I guess the research coming out of the US about how people who swear more make better friends has some truth in it.Kudos to Natsume Sōseki for explaining each important character with enough depth and eccentric descriptions to help me visualize his animus for them.I was ready to give it a 3.5, but the ending gave me quite a rush of dopamine that I had to raise that to a 3.8/5.0.I also want to thank Alan Turney for the great job translating the book from the original. Makes me want to read more from NS.

It certainly isn't the most pleasurable book to read, however, the charism and idiosyncrasy of Botchan is highly entertaining. It made the book interesting and breathed a bit of life into a quite mundane storyline.I liked the pacing of the novel but just for me it seemed to move in no real direction. It finished, for me, with a lack of conclusion or clear logical understanding of what Botchan had been through. I expected more of a character journey but came up short in the end, which was kind of frustrating. Might just be the genre of the novel or what the author was trying to achieve, which might have been nothing.Still a great book!