Soseki Natsume (1867-1916) was a great wordsmith in Japan, known for his most popular novels "Kokoro", "Botchan", and "I Am a Cat". Pathographic studies of Soseki have speculated possible psychiatric diagnoses, including schizophrenia, manic-depressive illness, neurosis, "sensitiver Beziehungswahn", depressive-paranoid syndrome, social-phobic paranoia, and borderline case. These studies were conducted from a pathogenic viewpoint.
 However, so-called "Soseki studies" have entered into a new phase, now more than a century since his death. Ishihara, a Japanese literary scholar, has developed some arguments, in which he rereads the original text of Soseki's novels from the perspective of three types of readers: 1) readers of that period, 2) readers slightly after Soseki's time who he could write for, and 3) readers of the present day who Soseki could not write for.
 In reference to Ishihara's studies, this author reconsidered the text of Soseki's first novel, "I Am a Cat" (1905-1906), focusing on the life and death of the cat, through whom Soseki expressed and channeled his loneliness, and on how to live with neurasthenia and persecutory insanity, from a salutogenic viewpoint.
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