People like Natsume Sōseki

Natsume Sōseki (夏目 漱石, 9 February 1867 – 9 December 1916), born Natsume Kin'nosuke (夏目 金之助), was a Japanese novelist. He is best known around the world for his novels Kokoro, Botchan, I Am a Cat, Kusamakura and his unfinished work Light and Darkness. He was also a scholar of British literature and writer of haiku, kanshi, and fairy tales. From 1984 until 2004, his portrait appeared on the front of the Japanese 1,000 yen note.

Natsume Kin'nosuke was born on 9 February 1867 in the town of Babashita, Ushigome, Edo (present Kikui, Shinjuku, Tokyo), the fifth son of village head (nanushi) Natsume Kohē Naokatsu and his wife Chie. His father, a powerful and wealthy nanushi, owned all land from Ushigome to Takadanobaba in Edo and handled most civil lawsuits at his doorstep. He was a descendant of Natsume Yoshinobu, a Sengoku period samurai and retainer of Tokugawa Ieyasu. Sōseki began his life as an unwanted child, born to his mother late in her life, forty years old and his father then fifty-three. When he was born, he already had five siblings. Having five children and a toddler had created family insecurity and was in some ways a disgrace to the Natsume family. A childless couple, Shiobara Masanosuke and his wife, adopted him in 1868 and raised him until the age of nine, when the couple divorced. He returned to his biological family and was welcomed by his mother although regarded as a nuisance by his father. His mother died when he was fourteen, and his two eldest brothers died in 1887, intensifying his sense of insecurity.