The gap between “the cat” and “grand language,” touched on in the overview, reaches its most concentrated expression in the novel’s famous scene involving New Year’s rice cake.
A cat hesitating over whether to eat
A piece of New Year’s zōni rice cake has been left behind in the kitchen. “Wagahai” hesitates over whether to eat it.
Should I eat it, should I not, I wonder, looking around. Fortunately — or unfortunately — no one is here. (working translation)
So far, this is an entirely ordinary bit of feline hesitation. But in the very next moment, the cat verbalizes this trivial situation as a philosophical proposition.
In that instant, cat though I am, I grasped a certain truth: “A rare opportunity compels every creature to dare what it would not otherwise dare.” (working translation)
“Grasped a certain truth” — phrasing as solemn as if a great philosopher had just arrived, after years of contemplation, at the moment of discovery. But what’s actually being described amounts to nothing more than: “No one’s watching, so I suppose it’s fine to eat it.”
Stuck to its teeth, and another “truth”
The cat resolves to bite into the rice cake, only to find it now stuck fast, immovable, to its teeth.
I peer into the bowl, silently wishing someone would come quickly. … Finally, throwing the full weight of my body down onto the bowl, I sink my teeth about an inch into the corner of the rice cake. … Thinking that should do it, I try to pull my teeth free — and they won’t budge. (working translation)
In the midst of this physically absurd struggle, the cat arrives at yet another “truth.”
In the midst of this anguish, I stumbled, quite without meaning to, upon a second truth: “Every creature intuitively foresees the fitness or unfitness of a thing.” (working translation)
“Stumbled upon a second truth” — following the first “truth,” a second. But this, too, amounts to nothing more than an after-the-fact regret: “some instinct told me this rice cake wasn’t meant for me.” The cat itself seems aware of the absurdity, adding:
I have now discovered as many as two truths, and yet, with this rice cake stuck fast, I feel not the slightest joy in it. (working translation)
“Discovered” — a word suggesting a great find — used even as, in fact, the rice cake is stuck to its teeth and the pain is unbearable. This gap between the grandeur of the language and the physical discomfort is the comic core of the scene.
Why this device works
This “rice cake and truth” scene is, in effect, the culmination of the grandiose narration seen in the previous article. Dressing up everyday trivia — hesitating over food, getting something stuck in one’s teeth — in philosophical terminology (truth, grasp, stumble upon, discover) produces a double effect.
One is the simple comedy of the gap in register. The other is a more meta kind of absurdity: a cat, a creature that by rights has no language at all, misappropriating human scholarly vocabulary, beside the point every time. When the cat says “truth,” it clearly means something far lighter than what a human philosopher means by the word — and that very slippage of meaning is what produces the laugh.
Worth checking as you read
First, it isn’t clear from the text alone just how self-aware the cat is in using the word “truth” — whether ironically or not. Whether the cat genuinely likens itself to a philosopher, or the narration (Sōseki, speaking through the cat) is mocking grandiose human scholarly rhetoric itself, admits of either reading.
Second, the vocabulary used in this scene — “truth,” “grasp,” “stumble upon” — consists of terms Japan’s intellectuals of the day actually used, terms coined in the course of translating Western philosophy into Japanese. The novel itself may well be deliberately using the flood of such scholarly vocabulary in the Meiji era as material for parody.
Summary
| Point | Content |
|---|---|
| The first “truth” | Hesitation over whether to eat rice cake, narrated as a philosophical discovery |
| The second “truth” | The struggle of rice cake stuck to its teeth, narrated the same way |
| The comic mechanism | The gap between grand language (truth, grasp, stumble upon) and lowly reality |
| The meta effect | The absurdity of a cat misappropriating human scholarly language, beside the point |
In short — the “rice cake and truth” scene is the passage where this novel’s central comic device — narrating the trivial in grand language — appears in its most concentrated form.