Plot Summary Kairo-kō is structured with a brief introduction followed by five main parts. The first part, titled "The Dream," features a dialogue between Guinevere and Lancelot, where she shares a dream about a snake coiling around them, symbolically binding them together; the scene concludes with Lancelot departing for a tournament. The second part, "The Mirror," draws inspiration from Tennyson’s The Lady of Shalott —the Lady can only see the outside world through a mirror, as looking directly would cause her death. However, upon seeing Lancelot, she turns to gaze at him, which leads to her demise, though she manages to place a fatal curse on Lancelot before dying. The third part, "The Sleeve," recounts the well-known episode in which Elaine of Astolat persuades Lancelot to wear her sleeve on his shield during a joust as a symbol of her affection. In the following section, "The Transgression," Guinevere discovers Lancelot’s connection with Elaine, and Mordred accuses her of betraying King Arthur through her affair with Lancelot. The final section, "The Boat," revolves around Elaine’s death; overwhelmed by her unrequited love for Lancelot, she dies and is set adrift in a boat carrying a letter declaring her love, which floats downriver toward Camelot. Background Written in 1905, Kairo-kō was among Soseki’s earliest novels and played a significant role in establishing his reputation as the leading novelist of the Meiji Era. Similar to other early works like the short story Rondon tô (“The Tower of London”), it was heavily influenced by Sōseki’s difficult experience during his stay in the United Kingdom from 1901 to 1903, where he studied both medieval and contemporary British literature. Sōseki had previously engaged with Arthurian legend in The Phantom Shield , also published in 1905, though in that work the Arthurian setting serves mainly as a backdrop for a story of courtly love. His primary sources for Kairo-kō were Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d'Arthur and Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s Arthurian poetry, especially The Lady of Shalott . The novel also draws upon Tennyson’s Idylls of the King and Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene , particularly in the depiction of Merlin’s mirror. Kairo-kō blends medieval and Victorian Western influences with Japanese and Chinese literary traditions. As its subtitle “A Dirge” indicates, the prose is richly lyrical and interspersed with reflective passages on the sorrow and anguish associated with passionate love. The archaic style of writing may have been further inspired by the Pre-Raphaelite and fin de siècle artworks Sōseki encountered in London. Kairo-kō explores the theme of adultery, a motif that recurs throughout much of Sōseki’s later work. Literary critic Jun Etō controversially proposed that Kairo-kō , like Sōseki’s subsequent novels, contains a coded reference to his own affair with his sister-in-law. The novel was translated into English by Toshiyuki Takamiya and Andrew Armour and included in the volume Arthurian Literature II , edited by Richard Barber and published in 1982.