For the last three years, Hiraoka has been working in the provincial office of a bank but got caught up in a scandal when one of the men working for him embezzled funds. This life is disrupted when Hiraoka, an old school-friend, and his wife Michiyo move back to Tokyo. With his intellectual and aesthetic talents, he feels superior to his father and brother, who are both successful businessmen. He is cared for by his elderly housekeeper and his houseboy, Kadono, whom he teased into taking the job, criticising Kadono for being lazy because he didn't work, never noticing his own hypocrisy. His family believes he is intended for great things someday, but he continues to drift from day to day, full of romantic notions but afraid to take a definitive step in any one direction lest he have to deal with the consequences.

However, Daisuke is plagued by anxiety, often feeling his chest to make sure his heart is still beating. Having received an excellent education, he is supported by his father and brother in his own home where he is free to study his books, visit his sister-in-law, and indulge his aesthetic tastes. The title of this work makes it clear that there will be no definitive ending hammering a moral home.ĭaisuke, a 30-year-old Tokyo bachelor, seems from the outside to have a most pleasant and undemanding life.

In Soseki's early works, he made sure that they conveyed some kind of lesson, conforming to the then-common notion that fiction should have an educational purpose.

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