Natsume Soseki’s only coming-of-age novel, *Sanshiro* depicts the eponymous twenty-three-year-old protagonist as he leaves the sleepy countryside to attend a university in the constantly moving real world of Tokyo. Baffled and excited by the traffic, the academics, and-most of all-the women, Sanshiro must find his way among the sophisticates that fill his new life. An incisive social and cultural commentary, *Sanshiro* is also a subtle portrait of first love, tradition, and modernization, and the idealism of youth against the cynicism of middle age.