夏目なつめ漱石そうせき「坊ぼっちゃん」などの自筆じひつ原稿げんこう発見はっけん 奈良なら 天理てんり大学だいがく

The manuscript of one of the representative works of the Meiji era literary master, Natsume Sosekis Botchan, had been missing, and researchers were searching for its whereabouts. However, a university in Nara Prefecture announced on the 10th that they have discovered all 150 pages of the manuscript.

It is also reported that a part of I Am a Cat has been found.

The announcement was made by the Tenri University Library located in Tenri City, Nara Prefecture.

All 150 handwritten pages of Botchan and 62 pages of the handwritten manuscript of Chapter 10 of I Am a Cat have been found, and on the 10th, the manuscripts were released to the press.

In each case, you can observe traces of revisions such as underlining and additions, allowing you to see the process until these masterpieces, which are still read today, were created.

According to libraries and other sources, while it was confirmed that the manuscripts of Botchan and I Am a Cat were included in the catalog of an exhibition held in Ehime Prefecture 30 years ago, their whereabouts had been unknown since then. However, in 2019, when the library purchased manuscripts from an antiquarian bookstore, an appraisal of the handwriting and the manuscript paper used confirmed that they were indeed handwritten by Soseki.

Professor Ota Noboru, an emeritus professor at Tenri University specializing in modern literature, said, It seems that Soseki did not leave many manuscripts at hand, and they are quite scattered, so the fact that they have remained like this is an indescribable emotion.

It is impossible to consider the creation of a work without looking at the handwritten manuscript, and it is a first-class material for researchers. We hope it will be widely utilized in the future, he says.

Sosekis handwritten manuscripts will be exhibited at the Tenri Gallery in Chiyoda, Tokyo from May 18, and at the Tenri Sankokan Museum in Tenri City from October 15.