Westminster Bridge

(Leaf 5) – Looking Back

Claude Monet - The Thames below Westminster (1871) National Gallery

This poem reflects upon a visit to the Sōseki Natsume Museum in London on the final day before the museum closed in 2017. Sōseki (1867-1916) is perhaps Japan’s foremost novelist, the author of novels such as ‘Kokoro’ (1914), ‘Botchan’ (1906), and ‘Kusamakura’ (1906). He was also my constant companion when I first visited Japan in 2003, because his face used to adorn the ¥1000 note. Sōseki was also a haiku poet, and a scholar of English literature. From 1900 to 1902, he came to study in London, living at various addresses – one of which was 81 The Chase, in Clapham, which he wrote about in an essay, titled ‘Fog’ (1909). In this essay, he describes riding an omnibus over Westminster Bridge during one of London’s famously smog-filled days, and seeing a seagull loom out of the languid and dirt smudged sky. The house opposite where Sōseki used to live in Clapham contained a flat which for many years was a small museum devoted to the Japanese writer. I wrote an illustrated essay about this visit to the museum on its final day, which can be read here.

 

 

WESTMINSTER BRIDGE

 

Riding the top deck of the bus

on a sunny Saturday

afternoon –

 

A seagull emerges from the fog,

catching a glimpse of Sōseki

atop an omnibus, heading in

the opposite direction.