I didn't know anything about this book before I started reading it, but Sanshiro was more or less what I expected it to be. The story tells of Sanshiro, a young man leaving behind his sleepy country life to attend university in Tokyo. It's a slow paced coming-of-age novel that takes place over a short period of a year or so. A classic country mouse comes to the big city and is overwhelmed by the fast moving life, the traffic, the bold women, and strange new customs. After an initial near erotic encounter with a woman on the train, Sanshiro is condemned as a 'coward' for not making a move on her, setting him up as a passive protagonist who mostly observes the world but doesn't partake in all it has to offer. University is something of a disappointment at first as he tries to find his feet, but gradually his social circle broadens as he meets other students, professors, and their relatives.
Sanshiro is also a love story, but one characterised by continual failures and disappointments. There is a sense of futility, but also realism, to all the characters' undertakings. Sanshiro does not end up marrying Mineko, the girl he is in love with. His friend Yojiro's campaign to get their professor friend, Hirota, a teaching placement at the university backfires and fails. Sanshiro's studies are not conducive to greater knowledge or scholarly ambition, and there is also the sense that he does not manage to escape his provincial past or fully integrate with Tokyo culture. There is also a grisly suicide early on the novel which acts as a bad omen. The narrative is a loose account of Sanshiro's first year, with each chapter acting as a slice-of-life, philosophical insight into his world. Some of the haiku-like descriptions of sky, light, shadow and trees come across as clumsy and borderline absurd, but I'm sure they're beautiful to read in Japanese.
Rating: 3/5
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