Often, novelists have attempted to depict the effects of political and social conditions on an individual’s ability to balance freedom and collective obligations. Sanshirō, written by Natsume Sōseki during the Meiji era and having an eponymous hero, explores Japan’s prospects after ditching the feudal system and embracing Western culture. Sōseki incorporates characters that resist the prevailing social norms, including Mineko and Nominaya, who embody independent and industrious lifestyles. The novel highlights themes espoused in Jean-Jacques Rousseau The Social Contract, which asserts that existential challenges compel individuals to exchange personal rights for collective responsibilities. Further, Sanshirō exemplifies the liberation process espoused by Olaudah Equiano in The Interesting Narrative, involving embracing the principles of laissez-faire economics. Natsume Sōseki narrates the experiences of Sanshirō as he battles his adolescent naivety and interacts with characters that thrive amidst debilitating social structure through progressive behavior and economic suaveness.
Sanshirō, which is an eponymous title, narrates the experiences of Ogawa Sanshirō as he studies at the Imperial University in Tokyo during the Meiji era. Natsume Sōseki highlights the journey taken by Sanshirō’s using different trains through Saigawa, Tokyo, Kyoto, and Nagoya. In the introductory sections, Sanshirō manifests his social awkwardness, when a female acquaintance taunts his cowardice. Unlike his betrothed traditional girl, Miwata Omitsu, the city women, including Satomi Mineko, who endears him, challenge his socialization. The protagonist’s friends are Sasaki Yojirō, the scientist Nonomiya Sōhachi, and the philosophical scholar Hirota. The novel adopts the Meiji era setting, characterized by changing political and cultural conditions. Sanshirō follows the experiences of a college student in a Japanese metropolis and the prevailing social norms regarding marriage, arts, and national identity.
Further, Africans who were subjugated in the New World through the slave trade experienced cultural alienation. Equiano highlights the predicament by stating, “I had often seen my master and Dick employed in reading; and I had a great curiosity to talk to the books” (39). In the New World, the protagonist pursues freedom by engaging in mercantilism, religion, and education. According to Equiano, slavers frequently flogged their slaves for failing to meet their performance quotas or requesting their stipends. To avoid such humiliations, the author pursues his freedom while relying on biblical anecdotes, once comparing his newly-acquired liberty to the miraculous heavenly ascent of Elijah. Equiano clamors for the liberation of black slaves through economic, ethical, and religious persuasion.
Philosophy scholars have often studied the interaction between human oppression and liberty. In The Social Contract, Jean-Jacques Rousseau reproves the traditional social organization and advocates for a social contract theory as the solution to human challenges. According to Rousseau, the social contract begins when individuals recognize the need for cooperation toward achieving common ends (6). When humans aggregate into a state, the general will compels individuals to subordinate their interests for the common good. The Social Contract highlights that leaders should not base political authority on force, but on the individuals’ rational choice to cooperate. Rousseau considers the relationship between human oppression and liberty as a consequence of social interactions, and advocates for a social contract based on general universal principles.
For many historians, the principles of laissez-faire economics could emancipate people from oppressive structures. Since social relations are predicated upon property ownership, anti-slavery scholars clamored for the inclusion of blacks into the commerce exchanges. Equiano depicts his economic disenfranchisement by stating:
The only coat I had with me my master took away with him, and said if my prize-money had been 10,000 L. he had a right to it all, and would have taken it. I had about nine guineas, which, during my long sea-faring life, I had scraped together from trifling perquisites and little ventures; and I hid it that instant. (58)
To gain his freedom, Equiano asserts his dignity to potential kidnappers and uses his stint as a sailor to accumulate capital resources. In Sanshirō, Nonomiya struggles to operate with economically sustainable means by moving into the suburbs, teaching at the University for a fifty-five yen stipend and moonlights at a private college (Sōseki 56). Sōseki characterizes Nonomiya as laden with ambitions to succeed amidst severe conditions by partaking in the labor market.
Despite being a fundamental element in human relations, political liberty depends on natural freedom. According to Simpson, Rousseau predicates The Social Contract on the truism that nature is governed by necessity and force, rather than obligation (5). Rousseau highlights that people gain their liberty by exercising their power within the confines of other individual’s pursuits. Further, humans surmount their original primitive state, which equates to enslavement, by partaking in mutually binding covenants. In Sanshirō, city dwellers inculcate in children liberating behavior, as exemplified by Mineko, who exudes autonomy. Sōseki portrays the role of liberty in human relations by illustrating how women had gradually gained freedom from unequal social dictates.
The Japanese Meiji era, which reformed the country’s social relations, incorporated political systems that deviated from previous norms. In Sanshirō, Natsume Sōseki chooses characters that surmount their debilitating social conditions through economic gains and progressive behavior. Sōseki portrays Mineko as a modernized woman who makes autonomous decisions within the confines of the social contract and Nonomiya as a scholar who embodies Equiano’s belief in intellectual and economic liberty. In Rousseau’s Social Contract, individuals should form social associations that prioritize the common good while preserving personal sanctity. Scholars should examine how internal consternation, as experienced by Equiano, affect Sanshirō’s ability to thrive within the city’s liberal lifestyle. Understanding such matters could explain why Sanshirō is unable to exert his will in intimate relationships and social discourses.