Drawing a Line Between the Sympathetic and the Insufferable

Natsume Sōseki’s I am a Cat follows the life of an arrogant, nameless cat as he navigates life with humans and other cats in his neighborhood. The nameless cat, with the first line of the story alone, is established as pretentious and egotistical, although this is lost slightly in the translation to English. In the translation, the first line of the novel is:

“I am a cat. I’ve yet to be given a name.”

Sōseki 1

This seems plain enough. It’s simple, it seems to just set the stage for the reader that this main character is not a person and that they are perhaps young or are not a cared for pet, and providing a possible reason for why he remains nameless. However, when examining the original Japanese, the cat’s personality immediately seeps through:

吾輩は猫である。名前はまだ無い。/Wagahai wa neko de aru. Namae wa mada nai.

Sōseki 1

The pronoun used for “I” here in the Japanese, 吾輩/wagahai, is not commonly used—in fact, it’s only used in reference to Sōseki’s work—but when it is used, it implies a sense of self-importance and arrogance. This plainly seeps through in every line the nameless cat utters. But strangely, he does not employ formal Japanese language, his verb and adjective conjugations are more casual, since he uses short form instead of masu (ます) form, otherwise known as polite form. This sort of makes sense and further leans into the idea that this cat is rude since short form can be seen as not only casual and familiar, but also rude. I think even without this knowledge of Japanese, you can quickly understand this about the character, but this subtlety, I feel, really adds something to who the cat is, and I wish there was a way to transfer that subtlety into the English version of the text.  

Moving back to the idea of character, when discussing the nameless cat with other people who have read this book, the first word that always comes to my mind to describe the cat is “dick-ish.” I am tempted to say the cat is insufferable, but I don’t think that’s true. He is absolutely obnoxiously proper, but he’s not insufferable. He is almost like a person who you know is right, but will disagree with on principle because you hate the way they act. He looks upon the rest of the world with this pompous air that is ingrained deeply into who he is. As a result of this, even when the cat is showing the reader other characters, he is actually showcasing who he is through his perception of them. For example, this is how he describes the hobbies of the teacher that owns him—or more accurately, lets him stay in his house because he refuses to leave:

“Speaking of egoism brings to mind a story of my master and the perils of vanity. This master of mine is quick to try his hand at things, but when all’s said and done he excels at nothing. He writes haiku and submits them to Hototogisu. He writes new-form poetry and sends it to Myōjō. He churns out error- riddled English. At times he’ll immerse himself in the practice of archery, then take up noh recital, then wring some sounds from a violin. Regrettably, all comes to nought.”

Sōseki 3

This is almost a matter-of-fact description for the cat, but the use of larger vocabulary and words with negative connotations to describe the actions of the professor, such as “wring some sounds,” lets the reader know that the cat looks upon the world with a critical eye. This is consistently showcased throughout the story, as the cat goes on to describe the cat Kuro in a similar manner later on in the first chapter. This time, however, he does so as he is in conversation with Kuro, and the whole paragraph oozes condescension:

“One day, Kuro and I were chatting idly while lazing in the warm tea grove. After repeating his standard boasts, as if they were something new, he turned and asked me the following. “Tell me, how many rats have you caught?” While I believe myself much better learned than Kuro, I don’t presume to match him in strength or valor. Nevertheless, this question made me uncomfortable. Then again, there was no use hiding the truth, so I answered. “Actually, I was thinking to catch some but haven’t yet.” Kuro laughed so hard that his nose whiskers shook. The purpose of Kuro’s bravado though, when all’s said and done, is to obscure his own deficiencies. If one listens attentively to his aggrandizements and purrs along appreciatively, then he’s easily placated. I learned this trick as soon as I’d made his acquaintance. In this instance, it would be folly to make matters worse with defense of my own shortcomings. Much better, I decided, to stand down and let him brag on himself.”

Sōseki 6

There is this consistent pattern with the nameless cat of feeling superior even though Kuro lives a much better life despite his poverty. The nameless cat is not well fed, nor is he loved enough to be pet or given a name. Meanwhile, Kuro explains that he follows his owner around and gets to eat handsomely. He, also, has a name. However, with all of the other cats in this novel, their names are just color descriptions, Kuro (黒) is “black,” Shiro (白) is “white,” and Miké (三毛) is “calico.” Kuro is also given a full name, Kurumaya no Kuro (車屋の黒), which just means cart shop’s Kuro, or Kuro of the car shop. I feel there is a general lack of love for these cats, but the nameless cat is certainly least loved, and yet, he feels superior. He even felt superior prior to joining this less than idealistic living situation.

Additionally, through his own narration of his actions, we get this same pompous feel that is not quite Shakespearean, but more so modernly regal:

“Having no other recourse, I resolved to seek out food. Wearily, I began to round the pond to my left. The going was terribly hard. Persevering, I forced myself to crawl on until, finally, I sensed the presence of humans. Thinking I’d better just give it a go, I breached the grounds through a hole in the bamboo fence. Fate is a curious thing. Had that fence not been broken, I might well have perished from hunger out there on the road. The shade of a common tree, they say, brings strangers together.”

Sōseki 1

The vocabulary used in the translation, aside from not being able to properly translate the tone of some words, really encapsulates who this character is. He is smart, knowledgeable despite his young age, and well-spoken. He’s so well-spoken that it makes him seem rude. And he is. A lot. This is clearly seen in the above examples of how the cat views his owner and Kuro.

I think it is interesting to examine the nameless cat next to a character who lacks as much substance and vanity as he does. For me, that character is Takeshi Kimura, one of the only reasons I could provide my little Japanese lesson in the earlier paragraphs. Takeshi is one of the many characters in the Genki Japanese language textbooks, and unlike with the cat from I am a Cat, Takeshi’s character is built slowly and by filling in the gaps. But my god, is he a sympathetic character. His character is discovered by action—or inaction—and any development he experiences comes as the result of him going through life and experiencing key events and hardships.

In the first textbook, he meets the American foreign exchange student Mary, and asks her on a date. However, when they make plans, Takeshi doesn’t show up. We later find out that this is because of his lack of proper communication, leading him and Mary to end up waiting in front of different burger restaurants.

Takeshi is ashamed and apologetic about having let this happen, and he doesn’t tell his friend Robert what happened with his date as a result of this—but don’t worry, he and Mary end up dating in the second textbook.

This pattern of not really thinking things through or checking information follows Takeshi throughout his life. After college, he ends up getting a job at a travel agency, but he complains that the working conditions are poor: low salary, few holidays. When he is asked by his friend Sue why he took the job then, he responds: “I thought that I could travel around when I got in a travel agency” (Genki II 118). Takeshi also has to suffer through a whole lesson of bad things happening to him, including, but not limited to: getting a mosquito bite, being robbed, getting punched in the face by his friend, and being groped by a man on a train (Genki II 219-20). Poor guy.

Finally, when he says goodbye to Mary at the end of the lessons in the textbook—this was genuinely sad for me and my classmates to read, by the way—he reminisces over all of their misfortunes and happy moments:

Takeshi: Many things happened in this one year.

Mary: You are right. You often made me wait when we had a date.

Takeshi: When I misunderstood where to meet, I was scolded badly later.

Mary: You made me eat that dish you cooked and I got a stomachache, and . . .

Takeshi: When we danced together for the first time, I was laughed at and you were saying “like a Bon-odoru.”

Mary: You stepped on my foot then and it hurt.

Takeshi: Because we think differently, we also fought a lot. But they are all good memories . . .

Genki II 253

This helps to characterize Takeshi as someone who is trying his best, but doesn’t always do the right thing. He’s a bit forgetful and inept, but he still wants the people around him to have fun.

Much of Takeshi’s characterization comes from filling in the gaps—fannonization, if you will. But it’s still rooted in the ideas presented in the actual written text, I am just extrapolating more from it than I was given, so I can keep enjoying the text more. That doesn’t make my interpretation of Takeshi wrong or right, but I can at least back up why I think he should be seen as this sympathetic character as opposed to ripping this character type out of thin air. He is not a “brilliant” character, but I think he is a fantastic example of how people can take any character and create an emotional connection to them based on what little action they take throughout the text. The character does not have complex feelings in the text itself, simple Japanese language learning conversations can’t really allow for that, but as he experiences various events throughout these conversations, who he is can be inferred. That ability to infer is what turns Takeshi from a learning tool into a character, a person, someone I was sad to leave behind when I finished the textbook.

What links these characters together is the idea of typing. H. Porter Abbott discusses typing by saying:

“If you follow this argument far enough – that no character can match the complexity and changeableness of people as they really are then all characterization, however “round,” involves some degree of flattening. It is here that the subject of types is especially relevant. All cultures and subcultures include numerous types that circulate through all the various narrative modes: the hypocrite, the flirt, the evil child, the Pollyanna, the strong mother, the stern father, the cheat, the shrew, the good Samaritan, the wimp, the nerd, the vixen, the stud, the schlemiel, the prostitute with a heart of gold, the guy with a chip on his shoulder, the orphan, the yuppie, the Uncle Tom, the rebel.”

Abbott 142

I make sense of both of these characters by examining their actions and attempting to place them in boxes so I may better explain them to those uninitiated to their stories. Moreover, adding a type to these characters allows me to understand why the character may take some of the actions they do: the nameless cat is indifferent to Kuro’s worsening health because he is arrogant and therefore looks down upon him and sees this as inevitable.

On the opposite side of that, we have Takeshi, who I have to create a type for via loose connections and prior experiences with those character types. Being able to link these actions to some sort of character type allows me to better engage with the narrative and find more substance within it. I can point to Takeshi’s actions and build a case for him being a bumbling oaf type of a person; and with that in mind, I can flesh out who he is beyond the page. This is where the idea of fannonization comes back into play. I create the character based on the breadcrumbs I have been given, and I can either keep that idea of who I think the character is grounded in evidence from the text, or expand on that based upon what knowledge I have of the type I have placed him in. For example, from the below scene, readers are only shown Takeshi greeting his boss at the airport. On its own, this is a kind act, but if I then view that idea in tandem with other information I have about his character and his character type, I can see this as a moment where he felt obligated to oblige his boss despite his dissatisfaction with the job. Maybe, I can assume, he lost his boss’ luggage because he’s so overworked, tired, and nervous about accidentally showing off his dissatisfaction. Thus, what once was a simply happy moment becomes one filled with stress and anxiety.

Keeping these ideas grounded, I feel, is really important to building your own knowledge of a text. If you, however, want to break that type, you need to root the reason for that break in a similar logic that would fit the genre or character type. The character’s evolution must occur through their ability to experience something that will uproot their personalities entirely. This is the main idea of Henry James’ view on character:

What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character?… It is an incident for a woman to stand up with her hand resting on a table and look out at you in a certain way; or if it be not an incident I think it will be hard to say what it is. At the same time it is an expression of character.

Henry James qtd in Abbott 137

If we want our typed characters to grow and change, we have to place them in situations where they will experience something that has to change them. If Takeshi had gotten more time to shine in the Genki textbooks, I’m sure that him getting punched in the face by his friend would’ve changed him quite a bit (I’m also certain that this would’ve been the case if these events were part of the main narrative of the textbooks, told in the chapter dialogues). But for now, I take into account those actions and develop his character in my head accordingly. Perhaps he becomes jaded, a worse boyfriend, maybe a better one because he doesn’t want Mary to experience what he did. The same can be said of the cat. What if he experiences genuine affection? What if he is given a name? Will he change his tune about humans entirely? Will he soften? Or will he see this as an exception and look upon these people as kings while further lamenting his hatred for others? Action can take characters in a multitude of directions, and how that is influenced by type and fan interpretation of the outcome is truly fascinating.

For this assignment, I was tasked with not only examining these characters, but using what I learned from them to create a character. I decided to not only take inspiration from the ways these characters were constructed but also from the types that they are presented as. So, how do you build a character based on these ideas of characters that exist on opposite ends of a spectrum: arrogance and absentmindedness? Action. The characters must be morphed to become one or the other by life-changing action. What makes sense to me logically is that the sympathetic oaf must become the arrogant bastard. Change in the other direction doesn’t make sense, especially if you start off as a know-it-all, you can’t become someone who is forgetful.

I was thinking of having a character get dumped by his girlfriend and using that as a sign to turn his life around. But then, I worried about having the main character turn into a misogynist. So, I wanted to spin the way this story was going to go: have the character get dumped, resolve to change, and then have everything go wrong. Even after all that, the character becomes arrogant. King of the homeless, and knowledgeable of the streets, therefore better than everyone else. 

“I’m sorry!” he exclaims, bowing deeply. “Please, just give me one more chance!”

She folds her arms and upturns her nose, “No. Enough is enough. This is the third time you’ve forgotten our anniversary, the sixth time you forgot where we were meeting for a date, and Lord knows how many times you’ve forgotten that we were going on a date at all! I don’t need to put up with this!”

He rises from his bow and grabs her by the shoulders, “Please, just one more chance, I promise I’ll do better! I don’t mean to do this,” tears begin to well in his eyes, but she remains indifferent. He tries to garner her attention–perhaps her sympathy or pity, even–once more: “Work has just been so hard. The hours are miserable, I can barely function when I get home. I’m not trying to make you feel forgotten, I just–“

She cuts him off, “What? Forget?”

He sighs, and breaks eye contact. He can no longer stomach her look of disappointment.

“We’re done. Find someone else who will put up with a fool. It was cute before, back when it was just a once-in-a-while thing, but now? I don’t need this. Goodbye.”

She swiftly turns away from him and strides down the street until she is nothing more than a speck in the distance. Even then, his eyes still track her, and he is hesitant to look away, knowing this will be the last time he sees her.

The young man returns home and finally allows himself to weep. His bellows fill the small room, and he resolves himself to tire himself out with his tears like a toddler for the remainder of the night.

The sun crests over the horizon and into his window. The sun paints his face in an amber glow, and his tear-stained eyes widen to a new dawn.

“This is it. I have to get my act together,” he thinks.

He launches himself from his bed, grabs his cell phone and calls his boss. It’s time for a resignation, he decides. And so begins his trek into a new life. A better life. One that he knows his ex would’ve died to have–would’ve been proud to have.

He immediately regretted his decision to quit his job without a backup plan. Days on the job hunt turned to months, turned to the loss of his possessions to pay rent, turned to the loss of his apartment. He was living in the back lot behind a soapland now. Who were they to chase him away, he thought, they live the same type of downtrodden life that he does. It’s only fair that he make his new home here. A piece of cardboard quickly grows into a tarp, into a tent, into crates forming walls. His jovial demeanor draws pity from the girls at the soapland, and he slowly gains a breadth of information from them about the underbelly of the city. He builds this information into a network, a network of prostitutes, homeless, and yakuza. Eventually, the young man behind the soapland becomes the savior to all in the city. They come for information, food, and advice. 

He’s never felt so powerful. 

One day, he wanders the streets, hoping to scrounge up enough money for a bento box. As he makes his way to the convenience store, he bumps into her, his ex-girlfriend, and he smiles.

“Hello! Bet you didn’t expect to see me like this!” He’s beaming, proud of the rags that adorn his shoulders. 

“Yeah…” Her voice trails off, she’s uncomfortable.

“You know, you live your sheltered life in your nice apartment, but you never really learned to live, you know?”

“Uh huh.” She eyes him with disgust. He detects this disdain quickly.

“I’m serious! You look down on me now, but I have far more meaningful relationships than you ever do, I have power unlike any job could award me! I am a king, and all it took was being able to say hey, what do these people need to succeed?”

She scoffs, “You can’t even care for yourself, and you’re somehow a king?”

“I am. It’s fantastic, you are simply too full of yourself see how fantastic it is,” he upturns his nose to her, “If you don’t want to see how beautiful the other side is, that’s your loss. Your mind is simply too closed, too small, to see the wonder that the world has to offer.”

Feeling as if he said something poignant, he about faces, and marches, head high, back to his kingdom.

“Those rich folk, so absorbed with money and work, that they don’t even see that they know nothing.”

Works Cited:

Abbott, H. Porter. The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative. Cambridge University Press, 2020.

Banno, Eri, Ikeda, Yoko, et. al. Genki I: An Integrated Course in Elementary Japanese. Second Edition. The Japan Times. 2011.

Banno, Eri, Ikeda, Yoko, et. al. Genki II: An Integrated Course in Elementary Japanese. Second Edition. The Japan Times. 2011.

Sōseki, Natsume. I am a Cat. Sōseki Project. 1905.

Header Image Attribution:

Lesson 1 conversation illustration in the Genki I textbook. Page 38. Illustrated by Noriko Udagawa and Reiko Maruyama. Published by The Japan Times, Ltd.. All rights reserved.