The Gate

is a 1910 Japanese novel by Natsume Sōseki. It is the final part of a trilogy, preceded by Sanshirō (1908) and Sorekara (1909). The story follows Sosuke, who betrayed his best friend Yasui by marrying his wife Oyone, and how he seeks salvation from his guilt. Plot The Gate concerns a middle-aged married couple, Oyone and Sosuke, who married for love in their student days. As the novel opens, they languish in ennui because they have no children and Sosuke has to focus on his career. Over the course of the novel it is revealed that Oyone was the wife of his former friend Yasui, and that Oyone and Sosuke suffered exclusion from society due to their ill-advised marriage. Oyone feels her childlessness was a punishment sent by the gods for abandoning her previous husband. When Sosuke learns that his landlord's brother has become acquainted with Yasui and wants to bring him for a visit, Sosuke flees to a Zen monastery. Publication history The Gate first appeared in serialised form in the Asahi Shimbun newspaper between March and June 1910. The following year, it was published in book form by the Shunyodo Publishing Company. Background Sōseki did not choose the title Mon (The Gate) himself. When his publisher needed to announce the title for his next work, Toyotaka Komiya, one of Natsume's pupils, chose the title at random from a nearby book, which happened to be Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra.