And Then
About
Daisuke is a young man of means in Meiji-era Tokyo — educated, idle, and philosophically opposed to working. His father's wealth buys him the luxury of developing theories about life while avoiding its demands. Then his college friend reappears with a sickly wife, and Daisuke's carefully constructed intellectual fortress begins to crack. The emotions he has spent years suppressing — desire, guilt, obligation — flood in. Soseki's middle novel in his famous trilogy maps the collision between Japan's traditional social obligations and the Western individualism flooding into the culture. Daisuke is caught in the gap: too modern to accept arranged duty, too Japanese to simply follow his heart. And Then is a novel about the terrible cost of thinking too clearly about a world that runs on comfortable illusions.
