∇
troperville

∇
tools

∇
toys

SubpagesLiterature
Main

main index

Narrative

Genre

Media

Topical Tropes

Other Categories

random

Subpages:

Literature: I Am A Cat

"I am a cat. As yet I have no name"

Written by Sōseki Natsume (the pen-name of Natsume Kin'nosuke), I Am a Cat first appeared in ten installments in the literary magazine Hototogisu (Cuckoo) between 1905 and 1906. Soseki had not intended to write more than a short story but it was so popular that he expanded it to fill a whole book.It is the chronicle of an unloved, unwanted, wandering cat who spends all his time observing humans, from his schoolteacher master, his servant, his horrible children, and more.

Examples

Humans Are Bastards: One of the first things the cat tells us of was how a Shosei (student) catches, boils and eats cats. It doesn't get much better from there when he tries to sneak into the school-teacher's house and repeatedly gets thrown out by the maid. The children spend a lot of their time torturing the poor thing.
Shout Out: In the original Japanese dub of Azumanga Daioh, the bombastic (as is typical with Norio Wakamoto) way Chiyo's father identifies himself to Osaka during her dream sequence is a direct invocation of the book's title ("Wagahai wa neko de aru.")

Hyouka

Japanese Literature

Kafka on the Shore

alternative title(s): I Am A Cat; Wagahai Wa Neko De Aru

random