Article 2 saw how Sōseki narrated his way to “self-reliance” through a chain of images — fog, sack, awl, pickaxe, vein of ore. This article returns to that passage (paragraphs 44 through 53) and traces, against the original text, the order in which the metaphor keeps changing shape.
Stage one — fog, and a searchlight
The metaphor begins with “fog.”
I found myself standing frozen, like someone alone and shut inside fog. And rather than hoping some ray of sunlight might reach me from somewhere, what I wanted was to use a searchlight myself — just one beam would do — to see clearly ahead. (working translation)
At this point, Sōseki is not yet passive. Rather than waiting for “sunlight” to reach him from outside, he wants to “use a searchlight” and illuminate the way ahead himself. Already, at this stage, the posture behind “self-reliance” — acting from one’s own side, rather than waiting to be acted upon — is faintly anticipated.
Stage two — a sack, and an awl
But the searchlight isn’t the metaphor’s destination either. In the next paragraph, the image shifts to a “sack.”
It felt exactly like being stuffed inside a sack with no way out. If only I had a single awl in my hand, I told myself, agonized, I could pierce through somewhere and break free — but that awl was not going to be handed to me by anyone, nor could I find it myself… (working translation)
Notice the reversal here: from the open image of a “searchlight” illuminating something far away, to the enclosed image of being “shut inside a sack.” A state of merely “standing frozen” in fog collapses into something more concrete, more suffocating. And with it comes the metaphor’s first tool: the “awl.” But this awl doesn’t yet exist in his hands — “not going to be handed to me by anyone, nor could I find it myself” — the tool itself is still absent.
Stage three — the helplessness of reading
Where might the awl to pierce the sack be found? Sōseki tries to find it in books, and fails.
But no matter what I read, I still couldn’t get out of that sack. I could search all of London and never find the awl to pierce it. I sat in my room and thought. It felt pointless. (working translation)
The phrase “search all of London” is interesting for the geographical scale it brings in. The awl isn’t hiding in some particular book — it can’t be found by searching an entire city, and that scale sharpens just how deep the anguish runs.
Stage four — the diagnosis of “other-reliance”
With the awl still nowhere to be found, Sōseki, for the first time, steps back and analyzes why.
It was then that I first realized: the only way to save myself was to build up, from my own strength, a fundamental concept of what literature actually is. Until then I had been entirely other-reliant — drifting aimlessly about like duckweed with no roots — and I finally realized that this was exactly why nothing had worked. (working translation)
The metaphorical mode breaks off here, momentarily. Neither “sack” nor “awl,” but a new image is inserted: “duckweed with no roots.” Unable to drop anchor, merely drifting — this expresses a different kind of instability from being shut inside a “sack.”
Stage five — the term “self-reliance”
After diagnosing “other-reliance,” Sōseki introduces its opposite: “self-reliance.”
In short, I finally arrived at these four characters, “self-reliance”… (working translation)
Here the metaphor pauses, and an abstract four-character term is presented instead. A switch from image to concept. But Sōseki quickly grounds this abstract term back into a concrete image once more.
Stage six — pickaxe, and vein of ore
Finally, the metaphor hands off from “awl” to “pickaxe.”
After years of anguish, I felt as though my own pickaxe had struck, with a clang, straight into a vein of ore. To say it again: what had been shut inside fog had, at a certain angle, been shown clearly the path it should follow. (working translation)
The “awl” was small, a tool for “piercing through” a wall. The “pickaxe” is larger, a tool for “striking” into the ground. And what lies beyond it is not merely an exit, but a “vein of ore” — a place where something of value lies buried. The role the awl couldn’t fulfill is taken up by the pickaxe, on a far larger scale.
Worth checking as you read
First, this “six-stage” breakdown is ToL’s own analysis — Sōseki himself does not segment the passage this way. Given that this is a spoken lecture, the metaphor was likely layered on extemporaneously for the audience; it may be more natural to read it as one image calling up the next in the act of speaking, rather than as a deliberately engineered piece of literary construction.
Second, the handoff from “awl” to “pickaxe” is not a mere restatement — it can be read as a shift in the scale of the tool itself. An awl is for peering past a wall; a pickaxe is for striking something valuable loose. That difference suggests Sōseki’s “self-reliance” was conceived not as mere escape from his present state, but as an act of actively striking something out.
Summary
| Stage | Image |
|---|---|
| ① | Standing frozen in fog, wishing to light the way ahead with a searchlight |
| ② | Shut inside a sack, seeking an awl to pierce it, but finding none |
| ③ | Searching all of London, and still finding no awl |
| ④ | The diagnosis of “rootless duckweed” — the instability of other-reliance |
| ⑤ | The abstract four-character term “self-reliance” is introduced |
| ⑥ | A pickaxe strikes a vein of ore — a concrete image of arrival |
In short — Sōseki’s metaphor never settles into a single fixed image. Moving from fog to sack, from awl to pickaxe, it delivers the abstract idea of “self-reliance” to his audience as something felt, not merely stated.