Botchan

Perhaps the most widely-read piece of modern Japanese literature, Soseki Natsume's Botchan has big things on it's mind: A society caught between modernist impulses and traditional culture, the sometimes irreconcilable divide between urban and rural life, and sincerity and pretension. It is the story of a brash, big city Tokyoite who leaves for the "uncivilized" countryside on a teaching post. It is a gem of unembellished refinement: multifaceted, prismatic, and laugh-out-loud funny.