Last time we read the opening of Mishima’s The Sound of Waves — a novel that begins with the description of a place and not a single human being. This time, the opposite: a novel that begins with an act of naming.
I always called that person Sensei, and so here too I will write simply “Sensei” and not give his real name. This is less a matter of reticence before the world than that calling him so feels, to me, more natural. Whenever I call up my memory of that person, the word “Sensei” comes at once to my lips; it is the same when I take up my pen. I cannot bring myself to use some cold initial in his place.
— Natsume Sōseki, Kokoro, part 1 (“Sensei and I”), chapter 1 (1914; working translation)
The first sentence — Watakushi wa sono hito o tsune ni sensei to yonde ita — runs twenty-three morae: one sentence, one clause, one predicate, with no ornament at all. That plainness is itself the technique. Here is how it is built.
1. The skeleton — “Sensei” sits in the slot before the verb
Five constituents: watakushi wa (topic) / sono hito o (object) / tsune ni (frequency) / sensei to (the quotative to) / yonde ita (predicate). Japanese places new information immediately before the predicate. What sits there is sensei — a title, not a name. The sentence’s only business is to present that one word as its focus.
2. Opening on a relationship
The first content word is “that person,” and the sentence’s errand is what the narrator calls him — not a landscape, not the weather, not a face, not an event. The novel announces here that it is the story of a relationship mediated by a mode of address. Where The Sound of Waves enters through place, Sōseki enters through appellation.
3. Watakushi — the first person sets the register
The pronoun is glossed watakushi: stiffer, educated, adult, male, with a careful formality. Not boku, not ore. This single word sets the temperature of the whole book — an introspective, self-restrained man writing a memoir. Boku would make him younger and more intimate; ore would make him rougher. Choosing a first person is choosing a voice for the work, not a tone for the moment.
4. Sono hito — the withheld name, and sono vs. ano
All we learn is that the referent is a person: no name, no description, pure deixis. That is the hook — who? And it is sono hito, not ano hito. Ano hito would carry a memory shared with the reader; sono hito treats him as someone being introduced here — a degree colder.
The second sentence reveals that the withholding is deliberate: “I will… not give his real name.” The narrator pre-empts the reader’s obvious question — why hide it? — and answers with a psychological reason rather than a practical one: “less a matter of reticence before the world than that it feels more natural to me.” That faintly defensive self-explanation shows the narrator’s habit of mind at once.
5. Yonde ita — the three jobs of -te ita
-te ita does three things at once:
- Habitual past: not a single act (yonda) but a repeated practice — “I used to call.”
- Retrospective vantage: narrated from a later point, looking back on a closed interval.
- Closure implied: -te ita frames that habit as belonging to a period that has ended. Nothing says the man is dead, yet the aspect alone lets the end of the bond be felt. (The reader will later learn that Sensei has died.)
The adverb tsune ni reinforces the same theme. Not the colloquial itsumo but tsune ni — “invariably,” an absolute, with a touch of gravity. In one adverb, the relationship is pre-declared as fixed and unwavering.
6. Word order — why the focus is sensei to
The flow is: watakushi (given, topic) → sono hito o (new, but deliberately vague) → tsune ni (frame) → sensei to (the point) → yonde ita (landing). Everything is arranged so the sentence crests on sensei and settles on the aspect that says: this is memory.
7. Choreography of tense — from past to present in four sentences
- S1 yonde ita — past habitual (the remembered relationship).
- S2 “I will… not give his real name” — non-past. A jump to the now of writing; metafictional. The narrator knows he is composing this.
- S3 “…it feels more natural to me” (… de aru) — non-past, general. He answers the reader’s question before it is asked.
- S4–5 whenever he recalls the man, “Sensei” comes to his lips; the same when he takes up his pen — present habitual. The feeling is still alive.
8. The de aru register — the copula is the style
uchiakenai / shizen da kara de aru / onaji koto de aru / ki ni naranai — the copula throughout the paragraph is de aru: the written, expository register. Not desu/masu (too socially soft), not a blunt bare da. De aru gives the narrator composure and authority — the voice of a man writing a considered confession.
In sound, too, the n… n of sensei / yonde keeps a level, soft beat; nothing spikes. Twenty-three morae, one breath. Because the drama is all on the side of what is withheld, the surface is kept perfectly calm.
In sum — the prose craft this one sentence shows
| Technique | In the first sentence |
|---|---|
| Open on a relationship, not a scene | first content word is “that person”; the errand is “what do I call him” |
| Put the work’s central word in the focus slot (before the predicate) | sensei to — a title, not a name |
| Withhold the concrete (name, face, place, date) to create forward pressure | sono hito — zero description |
| Let the first person set the work’s temperature | watakushi — the voice of a self-restrained adult man |
| Choose the demonstrative for emotional distance | sono hito, not ano hito |
| Use -te ita to say “remembered / already over” without saying it | yonde ita |
| Turn sentences 2–3 to the act of writing, pre-empting the reader | “I will not give his real name” / “it feels more natural” |
| Let the copula (de aru / da / desu) set the register | de aru throughout |
If Mishima foregrounds the structure of Japanese narration, Sōseki compresses its distance — whom you name, how you address them, where you watch from — into a first sentence. He gives no name, sets a title in the focus position, starts to close a lid on time with -te ita, and then at once slides that lid toward the present. Style is the use one makes of structure.
The previous entry in this vein: “Reading Japanese Narration in the Opening of Mishima’s The Sound of Waves.” The companion piece that rebuilds the grammar from scratch: “The Basics of Japanese Grammar in Three Sentences of Mishima.”
