Just 100 years ago, Natsume Soseki (1867-1916) was teaching Shakespeare's Macbeth at Tokyo Imperial University, predecessor of the University of Tokyo. Soseki had started the course the year before, and it proved so popular that the lecture hall was always packed to capacity.

Soseki, however, continued to suffer from a nervous breakdown-a condition that had afflicted him since his government-sponsored student days in Britain.

At the advice of poet-novelist Takahama Kyoshi, Soseki turned to creative writing in 1904. This resulted in ``Wagahai-wa Neko-de Aru'' (I Am a Cat), which was completed in December of that year and critically acclaimed by Kyoshi, Kawahigashi Hekigoto and other disciples of Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902).

The work was published in the January 1905 issue of Hototogisu, a literary periodical begun by Shiki. This would catapult Soseki to fame.

Soseki, whose birth name was Kinnosuke, was born on Jan. 5 (on the lunar calendar) in the Ushigome district of Edo (present-day Tokyo). It was the year before the Meiji Restoration started. He would live through, and write about, the process by which an ``opened'' Japan interacted for real with the rest of the world for the first time after centuries of isolation.

In a lecture he gave on the theme of the dawn of modern Japan in the final days of the Meiji Era, Soseki noted: ``We feel superior when we badmouth people who are ignorant of Western table manners-how to hold the knife and fork, that sort of thing. The only reason we feel superior is that Westerners are more powerful than ourselves.''

He pointed out that ``Westernization'' was only a superficial phenomenon, a mimic, and not something that grew and matured naturally from within.

I think there is much wisdom in his observation even today, when we look back on the path Japan has walked since.

Incidentally, it was on Jan. 5 exactly 100 years ago that the Vox Populi, Vox Dei column first appeared in the Osaka edition of The Asahi Shimbun. The column did not go national until after World War II in September 1945, but I am reminded anew of how this column has received the support of generations of readers.

Soseki resigned from teaching and joined The Asahi Shimbun three years after the column was begun in Osaka. His first contribution to the newspaper was the serial novel ``Gubijinso'' (The Poppy).

--The Asahi Shimbun, Jan. 6(IHT/Asahi: January 7,2004) (01/07)