A statue of Soseki Natsume, the foremost Japanese novelist of the Meiji Era (1868–1912), has been erected at the Soseki Museum near where he lived in London from 1901 to 1903, Kyodo Tsushin reported on 19 August.
Museum curator Ikuo Tsunematsu and Prof. Hana Taharasako, an art lecturer at Ibusuki Shogyo high school in Kagoshima Prefecture, lobbied hard for a statue of Soseki, whose portrait appeared on the ¥1,000 note from 1984 to 2004.
Soseki is said to have had a miserable time in London, due to poverty and loneliness. He wrote that he lived “like a poor dog that had strayed among a pack of wolves”.
