Editing Botchan (section)

== Major themes ==
* Botchan's observations and thoughts about [[Matsuyama]], on [[Shikoku]], one of the four main islands of Japan. Botchan grows up in the rapidly modernizing [[Meiji-era]] Tokyo before moving to the more traditional Matsuyama. He is often confounded by the culture and customs of Matsuyama.
* The battle for the heart and mind of Botchan between Yama Arashi and Red Shirt. Will Botchan's common sense and moral grounding be corrupted by Red Shirt, or will he team up with Yama Arashi to battle the [[elitism|elitist]] culture and its break from tradition and morals, for purely selfish gain, that Red Shirt represents? This is the question posed through much of the novel.
* At the time of the writing of ''Botchan'', Japan was in the midst of a rapidly accelerating [[westernization]], where traditional Japanese values and way of life were disappearing, especially in big cities such as [[Tokyo]]. Soseki himself had spent three years in [[London]] as a student of [[English literature]]. In his later works, Soseki seems to imply that the antagonist Red Shirt represents the author himself; an elitist intellectual who has only a shallow understanding of European culture, at odds with Japanese values and morals.