--- product_id: 14512692 title: "The Gate (New York Review Books Classics)" price: "NT$1250" currency: TWD in_stock: true reviews_count: 13 url: https://www.desertcart.tw/products/14512692-the-gate-new-york-review-books-classics store_origin: TW region: Taiwan --- # The Gate (New York Review Books Classics) **Price:** NT$1250 **Availability:** ✅ In Stock ## Quick Answers - **What is this?** The Gate (New York Review Books Classics) - **How much does it cost?** NT$1250 with free shipping - **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship - **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.tw](https://www.desertcart.tw/products/14512692-the-gate-new-york-review-books-classics) ## Best For - Customers looking for quality international products ## Why This Product - Free international shipping included - Worldwide delivery with tracking - 15-day hassle-free returns ## Description An NYRB Classics Original 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, Sōsuke and Oyone find the delicate equilibrium of their household upset by a new obligation to meet the educational expenses of Sōsuke’s brash younger brother. While an unlikely new friendship appears to offer a way out of this bind, it also soon threatens to dredge up a past that could once again force them to flee the capital. Desperate and torn, Sōsuke finally resolves to travel to a remote Zen mountain monastery to see if perhaps there, through meditation, he can find a way out of his predicament. This moving and deceptively simple story, a melancholy tale shot through with glimmers of joy, beauty, and gentle wit, is an understated masterpiece by one of Japan’s greatest writers. At the end of his life, Natsume Sōseki declared The Gate, originally published in 1910, to be his favorite among all his novels. This new translation captures the oblique grace of the original while correcting numerous errors and omissions that marred the first English version. Review: A deft description of Buddhist novel - The Gate I had heard that Natsume Soseki was familiar with Zen of Buddhism. This novel describes their silent and solitary life of Sosuke and his wife Oyone In their young days, Sosuke usurped Oyone from his close friend. The scene that Sosuke sits in Zen meditation is inserted in the last of this novel . Zen seems to insist that man is Buddha. And if I say without the fear of misunderstanding, man is the lump of the good. But the novel seems to insist the reverse. In the Jodo-Shinshu sect of Buddhism, man is wicked person. The novel seems to insist such. I introduce such scene. [Seated now face-to-face with the divinatory, it was in all seriousness that she tried to ascertain whether Heaven had decreed that she was to bear a child, and if so, whether the child would survive to maturity. The divinator, who looked no different from other fortune-tellers who peddled their services on the street for a coin or two, lined up his blocks this way and , shuffled his fifty long sticks, keeping count all the while, then finally, after stroking his goatee portentously and pondering for a moment, studied Oyone’s face closely and pronounced with complete equanimity: “ You cannot have any children.” Oyone remained silent as she digested these words, considering them from every possible angel. Then, raising her head again, she replied with another question: “ Why can’t I ?” She had assumed that the man would deliberate again before responding, but without hesitating he looked her straight in the eye and replied unequivocally: “You will recall that you behaved unforgivably toward someone in the past. Your sinful behavior has become a curse that will prevent you from ever bringing a child into this world.” These words were a stab to her heart. All the way home her head drooped limply, and she had barely been able to raise it that night in front of her husband. It was this judgment rendered by the divinatory that Oyone had refrained from divulging. When, on this still night , with the dim glow from the lamp he had placed in the alcove about to dissolve in darkness, Sosuke first heard of this incident from Oyone’s lips, he could not help being perturbed. “ Really―to concoct such an idotic errand when your nerves were so shattered to begin with! What was the point of spending good money to hear that sort of nonsense?” Did you go back again after that? “ “ Oh, no, never! It’s too frightening.” ] Review: Not-So Quiet Life - think Natsume Soseki's novel The Gate (1910) is one of his best novels. It is a curious novel since not much of notice happens in the story. The main character, Sosuke, is something of a cypher, he goes through life with quiet resignation much like his contemporary salaryman brethren of today, but little by little his back story is revealed. He basically gave up all his future possibilities to marry his wife Oyone, whom he stole away from his best friend at Kyoto University. This causes much consternation and separated him from his family and put him in a sort of social exile. He has wandered from Place to place before finally settling his home town of Tokyo. He had to within draw from university and go to work, he works six days weeks and has little energy for anything else on his Sundays off. He is also in charge, by default, of a much younger brother, Koroku, who is studying at university. He had let his uncle handle the family's inheritance, but when his uncle dies he learns that they have squandered it and his brother has to move in with Sosuke and Oyone until they can find a solution to the financial problems. Sosuke is ineffectual and has problems being proactive-he reminds me of contemporary Japanese who are the same and fall back on the "shoganai" mentality, which essentially means "it can't be helped," it seems like a national characteristic to me. I liked how Soskei drops us in the middle of Sosuke's life and then slowly reveals the trials and tribulations that cause him consternation. ## Technical Specifications | Specification | Value | |---------------|-------| | Best Sellers Rank | #216,230 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #16 in Japanese Literary Criticism (Books) #548 in Classic American Literature #751 in Literary Movements & Periods | | Customer Reviews | 4.2 out of 5 stars 206 Reviews | ## Images ![The Gate (New York Review Books Classics) - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81c06RxslKL.jpg) ## Customer Reviews ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ A deft description of Buddhist novel *by D***A on February 19, 2014* The Gate I had heard that Natsume Soseki was familiar with Zen of Buddhism. This novel describes their silent and solitary life of Sosuke and his wife Oyone In their young days, Sosuke usurped Oyone from his close friend. The scene that Sosuke sits in Zen meditation is inserted in the last of this novel . Zen seems to insist that man is Buddha. And if I say without the fear of misunderstanding, man is the lump of the good. But the novel seems to insist the reverse. In the Jodo-Shinshu sect of Buddhism, man is wicked person. The novel seems to insist such. I introduce such scene. [Seated now face-to-face with the divinatory, it was in all seriousness that she tried to ascertain whether Heaven had decreed that she was to bear a child, and if so, whether the child would survive to maturity. The divinator, who looked no different from other fortune-tellers who peddled their services on the street for a coin or two, lined up his blocks this way and , shuffled his fifty long sticks, keeping count all the while, then finally, after stroking his goatee portentously and pondering for a moment, studied Oyone’s face closely and pronounced with complete equanimity: “ You cannot have any children.” Oyone remained silent as she digested these words, considering them from every possible angel. Then, raising her head again, she replied with another question: “ Why can’t I ?” She had assumed that the man would deliberate again before responding, but without hesitating he looked her straight in the eye and replied unequivocally: “You will recall that you behaved unforgivably toward someone in the past. Your sinful behavior has become a curse that will prevent you from ever bringing a child into this world.” These words were a stab to her heart. All the way home her head drooped limply, and she had barely been able to raise it that night in front of her husband. It was this judgment rendered by the divinatory that Oyone had refrained from divulging. When, on this still night , with the dim glow from the lamp he had placed in the alcove about to dissolve in darkness, Sosuke first heard of this incident from Oyone’s lips, he could not help being perturbed. “ Really―to concoct such an idotic errand when your nerves were so shattered to begin with! What was the point of spending good money to hear that sort of nonsense?” Did you go back again after that? “ “ Oh, no, never! It’s too frightening.” ] ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Not-So Quiet Life *by P***Y on October 13, 2017* think Natsume Soseki's novel The Gate (1910) is one of his best novels. It is a curious novel since not much of notice happens in the story. The main character, Sosuke, is something of a cypher, he goes through life with quiet resignation much like his contemporary salaryman brethren of today, but little by little his back story is revealed. He basically gave up all his future possibilities to marry his wife Oyone, whom he stole away from his best friend at Kyoto University. This causes much consternation and separated him from his family and put him in a sort of social exile. He has wandered from Place to place before finally settling his home town of Tokyo. He had to within draw from university and go to work, he works six days weeks and has little energy for anything else on his Sundays off. He is also in charge, by default, of a much younger brother, Koroku, who is studying at university. He had let his uncle handle the family's inheritance, but when his uncle dies he learns that they have squandered it and his brother has to move in with Sosuke and Oyone until they can find a solution to the financial problems. Sosuke is ineffectual and has problems being proactive-he reminds me of contemporary Japanese who are the same and fall back on the "shoganai" mentality, which essentially means "it can't be helped," it seems like a national characteristic to me. I liked how Soskei drops us in the middle of Sosuke's life and then slowly reveals the trials and tribulations that cause him consternation. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Darknesse visible *by C***Y on April 11, 2019* Middle-aged married couple, Sosuke and Oyone, live a quiet, mostly solitary life, getting by on Sosuke's civil servant salary. They live literally under a cliff in a home they rent from their well-to-do neighbor. The Gate is the third installment, published in 1910, in what is considered Natsume Soseki's first latter-day trilogy, this one revolving on the stages of maturity and one's evolving relationship with family and society, of novels originally serialized in the Asahi Shimbun. Each of Soseki's novels inspire me not only for their insight, their descriptive brilliance, their painterly sense of scale and composition, but for their unique formal innovations. The Gate presents us with the couple's resigned, socially retreating and at times dangerously unhealthy existence, and while it's tempting to say this is a novel wherein nothing happens, the suspense and depth here is a matter of retrospective revelation: why are they childless? why have they relinquished their ties with society and family? These are revealed only rarely and late in the novel, giving it the redolence of a suspense wrought in recollection. Soseki was himself a sickly sort for most of his short life, and he was in the midst of one of his more debilitating and painful bouts of intestinal distress which caused his death a mere three years hence. He didn't even have the strength to title this book; his publisher took The Gate from a fortuitously placed book nearby, Nietsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra. The title is apt, however, resonating as the entrance of the Zen retreat Sosuke goes to seeking solace and perhaps enlightenment in the alarming arrival of his estranged college friend, Yasui, at the home of the next-door landlord's home. The Gate is then perhaps an entrance into meditation, memory, regret, resignation. --- ## Why Shop on Desertcart? - 🛒 **Trusted by 1.3+ Million Shoppers** — Serving international shoppers since 2016 - 🌍 **Shop Globally** — Access 737+ million products across 21 categories - 💰 **No Hidden Fees** — All customs, duties, and taxes included in the price - 🔄 **15-Day Free Returns** — Hassle-free returns (30 days for PRO members) - 🔒 **Secure Payments** — Trusted payment options with buyer protection - ⭐ **TrustPilot Rated 4.5/5** — Based on 8,000+ happy customer reviews **Shop now:** [https://www.desertcart.tw/products/14512692-the-gate-new-york-review-books-classics](https://www.desertcart.tw/products/14512692-the-gate-new-york-review-books-classics) --- *Product available on Desertcart Taiwan* *Store origin: TW* *Last updated: 2026-10-31*