Who they were
Born in Edo at the Restoration’s dawn, he became a scholar of English literature and was sent by the government to London (1900–02), an experience he found miserable. He returned to succeed Lafcadio Hearn at Tokyo Imperial University.
What they did
In 1907 he famously quit academia to write serialized novels for the Asahi Shimbun. After the satirical “I Am a Cat” (1905–06) and the beloved “Botchan” (1906) came darker masterpieces of individual loneliness in a modernizing society — “Sanshiro”, “And Then”, and “Kokoro” (1914).
He died of a stomach illness in 1916, leaving “Light and Darkness” unfinished.
Legacy
His portrait was on the 1,000-yen note from 1984 to 2004. He is the writer who gave modern Japanese its literary voice — and its classic account of the modern self.