Inside My Glass Doors
(Garasudo no uchi)

GERMAN / Christoph Langemann 

"When I look around outside through the glass door, I see a plantain covered with frost protection, branches looking like a plum tree with red berries, and the power poles abruptly standing up straight; other than that, there are not so many things that are worthwhile mentioning"

The author Soseki Natsume (1867-1916) is a prominent writer, who has left such brilliant masterpieces in Japanese literature history as Sanshiro (Sanshiro), Kokoro (The Heart) and so on, and his works have been widely read for a century. This piece is composed of the essays which Soseki wrote when he was suffering from a longstanding stomach disease and stayed inside his house due to the cold. Everyday he stayed in his study, sitting by the glass door, and had visitors from time to time. He wrote about wonders the visitors gave him, past incidents, popular topics at the time, and his remarks about people and the society in a quiet tone. While he had hardly mentioned his personal matters in public, his own life and sentiment are described in these small essays.

These essays take a unique position among his entire works for conveying Soseki's warm side of personality, philosophy, and his humor. When they began appearing in the Asahi newspaper in the Taisho period, they immediately won a lot of readers. Based on his clear thoughts, Soseki captured the small surprises in everyday life and wrote about them with his dynamic mind. His sentences are still fresh and energetic. And despite the fact that they were written a hundred years ago, they have not become outdated as they surpass the times.