I found this just lovely in a very quiet, no-frills way; I particularly appreciated the exploration of Sensei's inability to trust people, period, including himself. Somehow I know what that feels like--to hold simultaneously an unreasonably high standard of morality and the knowledge that no one meets it. With all the historical context given, I couldn't help imagining it as fully autobiographical, with Ryunosuke Akutagawa as the original narrator and Soseki, of course, as Sensei (I just read Rashomon, too, with the detailed timeline of Akutagawa's life at the beginning). It is so strange for me to feel such an affinity with Japanese men who wrote nearly--or, in this case, more than--one hundred years ago.