This feature has read I Am a Cat across six articles, from the angle of language: the gap between a lowly cat and its grandiose, learned register (overview). Here, sort which of this novel’s linguistic techniques still work today, and which reflect the intellectual fashions of the Meiji era.
What still works today
The technique of turning a gap in register into comedy (article 2, article 5) is a universal comic device, effective across any era. Narrating the trivial in grand language — the technique the “rice cake and truth” scene crystallizes — is still widely applied in comedy and parody today.
The technique of marking education and class through how broken-down speech is (article 3) also remains, alongside Botchan’s dialect representation, an effective technique for fiction today. The skill of conveying the rickshaw man’s tomcat’s background instantly, through nothing but broken-down forms like “don’t make me laugh” and “where the hell,” is genuinely impressive.
Characterization through verbal tics and nicknames (article 4) likewise remains an effective technique today, alongside the corresponding device in Botchan — one Sōseki used repeatedly.
What reflects the intellectual fashions of its era
At the same time, a few points need to be read consciously as elements specific to the intellectual fashions of the time.
The vocabulary the cat uses — “truth,” “grasp,” “stumble upon” (article 5) — was, in the Meiji era, imported as terminology for translating Western philosophy, and was fashionable among the intellectuals of the day. This novel itself likely uses the flood of such scholarly, imported vocabulary as material for deliberate parody. For today’s reader, just how much these words carried the ring of “buzzwords” at the time isn’t intuitively obvious, and requires some annotated understanding.
Two novels, two experiments
Read together with this feature and the feature on Botchan, it becomes clear that Sōseki, in roughly the same period (1905 to 1906), carried out two entirely different experiments concerning language. Botchan made the collision of regional speech (Edo against Matsuyama) the engine of its story. I Am a Cat made the collision of register — species (cat against human) and the presence or absence of education — the wellspring of its comedy. That the same author, within the space of a few short years, wrote two masterworks from such different linguistic premises says everything about the sheer breadth of Sōseki’s ear for language.
Summary
| Category | Point |
|---|---|
| Still works today | Turning a gap in register into comedy, marking class through broken speech, verbal tics and nicknames |
| Reflects its era’s fashions | Meiji-era translated vocabulary like “truth” and “grasp,” a parody of the Western-philosophy boom |
| Relation to Botchan | Sōseki ran two entirely different linguistic experiments — region/dialect, and register/education — within a few short years |
In short — the core technique of I Am a Cat — a gap between the grandeur of language and lowly reality — is a universal comic principle that still lands today. But the Meiji-era scholarly vocabulary that decorates it needs to be read consciously, as a fashion of its time.