The earliest, and only major, prose treatment of the Arthurian legend in Japanese, it chronicles the adulterous love triangle between Lancelot, Guinevere, and Elaine of Astolat.
Like other of Sōseki's early works, such as the short story "Rondon tô" ("The Tower of London"), it was informed by his unpleasant stay in the United Kingdom between 1901 and 1903, during which he studied medieval and contemporary British literature.
[1] Kairo-kō represents a mix of medieval and Victorian Western material with Japanese and Chinese forms; as the subtitle "A Dirge" suggests, the prose is highly lyrical and tempered by passages meditating on the pain and sadness tied to torrid love.
Literary critic Jun Etō put forth the controversial suggestion that Kairo-kō, like Sōseki's subsequent novels, contained a coded intimation of his own affair with his sister-in-law.
[1] Kairo-kō was translated into English by Toshiyuki Takamiya and Andrew Armour for the volume Arthurian Literature II, edited by Richard Barber and published in 1982.