Natsume Sōseki

Born in 1867 as the Meiji Restoration began reshaping Japan, Natsume Kinnosuke was given up for adoption twice before graduating from Tokyo Imperial University as a scholar of English literature. The government sent him to London in 1900; he spent two years in poverty and racial isolation, suffering a severe nervous breakdown that shadowed the rest of his life. He returned to lecture at Tokyo Imperial, then broke through in 1905 with I Am a Cat, a satirical novel that made him famous. In 1907 he resigned to write full-time for the Asahi Shimbun — a first for Japan, the birth of the professiona…