As the final close reading of this feature, we return to the first and last lines of I Am a Cat. Set beside the openings of Botchan and Kokoro, we confirm that Sōseki built three entirely different “voices” across three novels.
The opening line — “I have no name yet”
I Am a Cat opens with these two sentences.
I am a cat. I have no name yet. (working translation)
After “I am a cat” — a declaration of existence — comes “I have no name yet,” a short negative statement. It’s the plain presentation of a simple fact: this creature has no name. But there’s a distinctive effect in how these two sentences sit together. Opening with the grandiose first person “wagahai,” the very next moment reveals a creature so lowly it doesn’t even have a name — the gap between “grandiose language” and “lowly reality” that runs through the entire novel is already compressed into these first two sentences.
The final line — “how grateful, how grateful”
At the story’s end, “Wagahai,” having drunk beer and gotten tipsy, falls into a water jar and drowns. This final interior monologue closes with these words.
It’s growing easier by the moment. I can no longer tell whether it’s suffering or gratitude. … I am dying. I attain this great peace by dying. This peace is attainable only through death. Namu Amida Butsu, Namu Amida Butsu. How grateful, how grateful. (working translation)
That a cat should chant “Namu Amida Butsu” — a Buddhist invocation — is the same species of gesture as the opening line: grandeur and lowliness, sitting side by side. A death by drowning, hardly a dignified way to go, is closed out in language as solemn as that of a revered monk attaining enlightenment on his deathbed.
Three openings, three voices
Now let’s set this beside the openings of Botchan and Kokoro.
| I Am a Cat | Botchan | Kokoro | |
|---|---|---|---|
| First person | Wagahai | Ore | Watakushi |
| Opening line | “I am a cat. I have no name yet.” | “My father’s recklessness, passed straight down to me, has had me losing out since I was a child.” | “I always called that person Sensei.” |
| Character of the voice | Grandiose and grand. Comedy from the gap with a lowly reality | Impatient, declarative. Evidence follows after the fact | Careful, explanatory. Reasons layered one on another |
| Kind of gap | Between the grandeur of the vocabulary and the lowliness of being a cat | None (character and style match) | None (character and style match) |
As seen in the previous close reading, Botchan and Kokoro both matched the narrator’s character to the velocity of the prose. But I Am a Cat is built on an entirely different principle. It generates its comedy by deliberately not matching the narrator’s language (grandiose, grand) to the narrator’s actual existence (a lowly cat).
Worth checking as you read
First, this comparison of three works (I Am a Cat, 1905; Botchan, 1906; Kokoro, 1914) is not meant to suggest Sōseki’s style evolved consistently in this order over time. Each of the three is best read as an independent experiment in its own right.
Second, whether the cat is chanting “Namu Amida Butsu” in any genuine devotional sense, or simply borrowing human religious language one last time for comic effect, cannot be settled from the text alone. This article leans toward the latter reading — echoing the opening line, grandeur and lowliness sitting side by side to the very end.
Summary
| Point | Content |
|---|---|
| Opening line | Right after the grandiose declaration “Wagahai,” the lowly fact of having no name follows |
| Final line | A lowly death by drowning is closed out in the solemn language of a religious invocation |
| Comparing three works | Botchan and Kokoro match character to style; I Am a Cat deliberately does not |
| Sōseki’s technique | He uses both matching (for persuasive force) and mismatching (for comedy) as deliberate tools |
In short — I Am a Cat carries the gap between grandiose language and lowly reality from its very first line to its very last, and that mismatch is this novel’s own distinct principle of narration, apart from either Botchan or Kokoro.