Natsume

Natsume Soseki taught literature at the University of Tokyo after studying abroad in London, and, when he later became an author, he brilliantly sublimated those very conflicts in his novels.

At the age of 27, he won the Gunzo Literary Prize, a prestigious Japanese literary prize, for a probing essay on Natsume Soseki, who is regarded among his compatriots as the first major fiction writer of modern Japan.

The biggest conflict in “Drifting Home” is between former best friends Kosuke and Natsume, who have been chilly to each other ever since they both moved away from the same apartment complex that’s now become their oversized life raft.

The emotional battleground between the reticent but traumatized Natsume and the guarded Kosuke is rich territory but feels more procedural than fleshed out, as does the fantastical logic of the world, which lacks coherence.

The film follows Kosuke and Natsume, sixth graders and longtime friends who were raised together in the same apartment complex, and whose relationship has been tense ever since Kosuke’s grandfather died.