Natsume Soseki's Matsuyama

Dogo Onsen, Masaoka Shiki, and the Enduring Legacy of "Botchan"

Natsume Soseki (l) and Masaoka Shiki talking literature in Matsuyama, 1895 (Diorama from the Shiki Memorial Museum. All Photos by Hope Anderson)

A week after my day at Tokyo University I arrived in Matsuyama, the city that inspired Natsume Soseki’s comic novel Botchan (“Young Master”). I had come from Naoshima, the Inland Sea art island, via Takamatsu, w…