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I just read Natsume Soseki’s _The Third Night_ (『第三夜』), and I have trouble
understanding well the time in that passage :

> 『お父さん、その杉のねだったね。』
>
> 『うん、そうだ。』と思わず答えてしまった。
>
> 『文化5年辰年だろう。』
>
> なるほど文化5年辰年らしく思われた。
>
> **『お前が俺を殺したのは今からちょうど100年前だね。』**
>
> 自分はこの言葉を聞くや否や、今から100年前文化5年の辰年のこんな暗闇の番に、この杉の根で、一人の目倉を殺したという自覚が、忽然として頭の中に起こった。

Is the kid saying that his father killed him/a man a hundred years ago (point
of view from the future) since he’s saying 今からちょうど100年前だ, or that he indeed
killed someone else a hundred years ago?

/EDIT/ The English translation in my book says that the father remembers
killing a _man_ a hundred years ago, while I thought that the kid comes from
the future (it’s a dream) and he indeed killed the kid that night. (In the
text, he wants to get into that forest in order to abandon him because he’s a
burden since he’s blind.)
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2022-02-11T23:24:46.673
93373
2022-02-12T00:41:00.387
2022-02-12T00:01:21.670
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50494
question
meaning time
Trouble interpreting time in a Soseki text passage お前が俺を殺したのは今からちょうど100年前だね
Anything is possible since all this is happening in the narrator’s dream. The
kid might as well have come from the future.

However, there is little ambiguity here. The kid specifically says **今から**
ちょうど百年前. It means 100 years before the time of speech, or simply “100 years
ago”. The most natural interpretation would be that the father (the dreamer)
killed the kid (a blind man) 100 years ago in their respective earlier lives.

This interpretation is backed up by facts. 文化五年 is year 1808, and 夢十夜 was
first published in 1908.
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-02-12T00:41:00.387
93374
2022-02-12T00:41:00.387
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answer