The Gate

A novel of tribulation in love throughout the years, all in the understated style that made Soseki so celebrated. Soseki, widely considered the greatest Japanese novelist of the Meiji era, believed The Gate was his best work.

A humble clerk and his loving wife scrape out a quiet existence on the margins of Tokyo. Resigned, following years of exile and misfortune, to the bitter consequences of having married without their families' consent, and unable to have children of their own, Sosuke and Oyone find the delicate equilibrium of their household upset by a new obligation to meet the educational expenses of Sosuke's brash younger brother.