Book Review of “I Am A Cat” Volume One by Natsume Soseki, translated by Nick Bradley

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This is a new translation of a Japanese satirical novel published circa 1905.

It is mostly about the relationship between a not-very important Japanese academic and a stray cat.

If we can judge a civilisation by how it treats its most vulnerable members, perhaps we can at least partly understand a nation by how it views its cats. Although the translator has focused on the author’s relationship with English and The English, he does have fun with German tourists too, and that is interesting for two reasons:

In 1905, the slogan which Imperial Germany used to define the role of women was known as the three Ks: Kinder, Küche, Kirche. This was widely but somewhat irreverently extended to: Kinder, Küche, Kirche, Katze.

Two of the female Japanese characters in this novel, the pair who look after “Miss Calico,” certainly see this as a duty. The other female Japanese characters are largely cat-neutral or even anti-cat.

I Am A Cat may be the first Japanese novel of its kind, but there was an English translation of a German novel, from about a century earlier (before Germany was a country, let alone an empire) about an academic’s relationship with a cat, seen in the opening passages as terribly elderly and needing to have his face dipped in a saucer of cream to make him take some nourishment. (The reviewer is trying, but failing, to remember either the German or the English title.) So, this is a genre and a basic premise which was established in German literature before the Victorian cat-craze in England, which Soseki took with him back to Japan.

But the execution of that premise is all Japanese, as far as one can tell: the male academic and his friends are very rude to nearly everyone and especially unkind to women. They enjoy misleading people in a way which makes the victim seem, and feel, extremely foolish. Soseki projects this behaviour upon the character of The Master (of the cat and little else) which is based on himself, but the cat finds it offensive and perhaps so does Soseki.

Some of the shaggy dog stories are simply too long and bullying, but the reason why this classic novel gets four stars rather than five is that the “uneducated” human characters are given Dick Van Dyke-level Edwardian Cockney accents which strike a bit of a bum note. This may, however, accurately convey the way Soseki wrote the original dialogue.

I Am A Cat by Natsume Soseki and translated by Nick Bradley is published in the UK by Vintage Classics (Random House) on the 4^th of September 2025