On Japanese Literature Part I

When I was about thirteen I was introduced to Japanese literature by a teacher who gave me a copy of Lady Murasaki's "The Tale of Genji".  As I sit here typing the two volume edition is staring at me and I'm trying to remember what I loved about it, but I can't seem to, yet somehow the book exudes a sort of aura for me. I remember details of my reaction to the book, which is really in many ways just a love story. I say just a love story, but of course it's far more complex than that and that is probably the reason why I can't remember much more than the major events of the book, which all seem to be the deaths of the various characters including what alludes to the death of Genjii himself.

I might have not known it then, but "The Tale of Genji" left its mark on my literary tastes, but it wouldn't be until ten years later when I went to live in Japan that I would really begin to discover Japanese literature and love it in a way that is unique and different from the way I love the literature of other countries.

My reintroduction to Japanese literature was by way of Japan's current reigning author, Haruki Murakami's "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World". Of all of Murakami's works, and even those which are in many ways superiorly written such as "The Wind Up Bird Chronicles" or "The Wild Sheep Chase", Hard-Boiled is still my favourite. It's also oddly one of the few Murakami books I don't actually own anymore since it was lent and never returned. I'd like to think, despite being slightly grumpy at the moment because I'd love to pick it up and rifle through the pages that the person I lent it to had a similar reaction. Maybe it was because it was the first of Murakami's books that I read, but it is to date the only of his works that completely enveloped me in Murakami's particular sort of world. None of his other books have ever managed to do the same, but it's what I consider my least favourite Murakami book, "Kafka On the Shore" that renewed my interest in Japanese literature and prompted me to expand my library.

On the inside cover of Kafka On the Shore was a little blurb about Murakami and some of the prizes he had won. I made a note of the prize he won for Hard-Boiled (The Tanizaki Prize), which I would later find out was rather prestigious and named for another Japanese author, Junichiro Tanizaki.

I have to confess I've only read one of Tanizaki's works. "The Key" shocked me and I am not easily shocked. The reader is allowed to glimpse into the intimate lives of a married couple thanks to the format of "dueling diaries" that is used. To see how the husband describes his wife's body, which is reduced to a description of its parts is in sharp contrast to his wife's frankness about the decline of her husband's sexual prowess due to age and her own reactions to his time worn limbs.  But it would be unfair to say that it is all the book is about. There are interesting plot twists woven in with everything else. It is on a very short list of books I intend to read again, as quite frankly I am certain that I missed something in my reading, but that is Tanizaki's genius.

Recently I picked up another of Tanizaki's works, "The Makioka Sisters", which I still haven't read and didn't know existed until I found it in the secondhand Oxfam bookshop that opened in Paris. I also plan on one day reading "Confessions of a Mad Old Man".

Scanning my bookshelves it'd be obvious that I'm a fan of Japanese literature. Some authors I buy without even bothering to read the blurb first. I simply want the book on hand so that I'll have the opportunity to read it later. I'll pick up anything by Soseki, who's "I Am A Cat" is particularly wonderful (and yes it's narrated by a cat). I went to great pains to collect Mishima's "Sea of Fertility" tetralogy. I bought each of the four books by stalking the shelves of Book Off, a Japanese secondhand bookshop in Paris, and was delayed in reading it because I found "Spring Snow", the first book in the series of four books last.

I wouldn't want to tell someone to invest their time in reading The Sea of Fertility tetralogy without mentioning that it is the best and the worst of Mishima's works. Spring Snow is not only my favourite of the four, but also my favourite of Mishima's works. Of his other books if I were forced to pick a favourite I would probably settle on "The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea"

Now I have many more books to add to my list when it comes to Japanese literature, but I'm going to leave you with a book not written by someone who was Japanese, but deserves his place amongst the other great names I've mentioned here, and even amongst the greater names and books I've yet to mention. The Japanese called him Koizumi Yakumo, but you might know him better as Lafcadio Hearn.

"Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things" was written by translating old texts and collecting stories that had previously only been known through storytelling.  A few stories are uniquely Hearn's own. There is even a study on insects included.

Kwaidan (meaning ghost story and that's all I'm going to give away) is a unique book and no foray into Japanese literature for a non-native would be complete without it. Here Japanese ghost stories and superstition are flavoured for the Western palate in such a way that nothing of the nuance of Japanese culture is lost in translation, which, no matter how good the translator, often sadly happens as Murakami has voiced himself many times over the years.

I've listed the books mentioned in this post to make it more convenient for those who might want it to build a collection of their own, but quite frankly, the best bits of Japanese literature are still to come.


Books mentioned in this post (in order of my personal preference, with the books I've not yet read in italics:

Murakami, Haruki:

• Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
• The Wind Up Bird Chronicle
• The Wild Sheep Chase
• Kafka On the Shore

Lady Murasaki:

• The Tale of Genjii

Tanizaki, Junichiro:

•  The Key
• The Makioka Sisters
• Diary of a Mad Old Man

Mishima, Yukio:

The Sea of Fertility tetralogy -

• Spring Snow
• Runaway Horses
• The Temple of Dawn
• The Decay of the Angel

•  The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea
• Confessions of a Mask
• The Sound of Waves
• After the Banquet
• Way of the Samurai

Soseki, Natsume

• I Am a Cat
• The Miner
• The Wayfarer
• Three Cornered World

Read more >>

Oh Haruki

"Who do you think the best living author is?" She asks, puffing away on a bright red Nat Sherman Fantasia.

"I guess it'd be Murakami," he answers, his eyes traveling over to one of the many shelves of books and down the spine of The Wind Up Bird Chronicle.  "I have a really nice edition of Noreweigan Wood," he says almost sighing.  "Really nice."

"Even after Kafka on the Shore?"

The mere mention of Kafka on the Shore is enough to abruptly end most conversations on Murakami it seems. It happened just today. I asked friends on Facebook who their favourite author was and one mentioned Murakami. The conversation was going along nicely until I dropped the KOTS bomb. Then it abruptly ended and I was forced to talk about Margaret Atwood's poetry. Even KOTS if better than Atwood's poetry, and it's my least favourite of Murakami's works.

He who loves Murakami enough to declare him the greatest living author is the same "he" who once had a cat that traveled around town and loved to be carried in a plastic shipping bag. I tell him about that time when I lived in New York and decided I needed to go to a Denny's after reading Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. There was a blizzard but I drove to New Jersey anyways and ate a Grand Slam breakfast not so far from Princeton University where Murakami had been a writing fellow and where he wrote The Wind Up Bird Chronicle.

At that time with only one of Murakami's books under my belt I was enchanted by the touches of modern life interspersed with parallel worlds. It was at once science fiction, cyberpunk, and a hard-boiled Chandleresque detective story. I didn't know enough of Murakami's works to know that the themes I so loved would be repetitive. Cats, spirits, spaghetti, love hotels, the Beatles, and of course Denny's. Denny's is mentioned so often in Murakami's work that once I'd progressed through enough them I wondered if he wasn't sponsored by the eatery. At best, Murakami should be entitled to free coffee at any Denny's for life.

I am a fan of Japanese literature in general. I read Lady Murasaki's Tale of the Genji before I knew what a big deal it was supposed to be and Miyamoto Musashi's The Book of the Five Rings is still a favourite. It was after reading Soseki's I Am a Cat that my interest in Japanese literature was reborn. I've since amassed a fairly impressive collection of Japanese authors, enough to see where one half of Murakami's style originates from.

But as of late I've found his writing to be a disappointment. After Dark was empty somehow. I read it in one sitting and was glad I'd saved my money and borrowed it off of someone. Seeing as I can buy a book just because I like the title, that in itself is the harshest criticism I could give an author. I didn't buy your book. In the case of After Dark, I never will.

Murakami's latest work 1Q84 is beyond my reading abilities in Japanese, and the English translation isn't going to be available until October. It's three volumes will be published all at once, but will it be worth it? If I were going to spend a massive amount of time reading any Japanese author's multi-volume work I'd keep reading Mishima's Sea of Fertility tetralogy. Spring Snow, the first book in the SoF was so brilliantly written that I almost don't want to read any of the others to allow it's perfection to remain unmarred like when you wake up early in New York after a big snow storm and to find that despite the fact millions of people live in the city there isn't a footprint on your sidewalk yet - which is in itself a perfect analogy for the book.

Kafka on the Shore's title put forth a fact any Murakami reader knows: Murakami loves Kafka. He has even won the Kafka Prize and Hard-Boiled is heavily influenced by Kafka's The Castle. But I can't help to think that Murakami, lover of running marathons, was running a marathon when he wrote it. On a treadmill.

It is difficult when the authors we love disappoint us. It has happened to me before. I read Rushdie's The Ground Beneath Her Feet and promptly set out to read every Rushdie book I could afterwards. The Ground Beneath Her Feet is still my favourite Rushdie book. I couldn't read Satanic Verses or Midnight's Children. Grimus was particularly terrible. I feel the same about Paul Auster. The New York Trilogy was amazing. The Brooklyn Follies not so much. I met Auster shortly after reading The New York Trilogy at a poetry event of his and was even more captivated after convincing him to come out and have a drink with me and my friend who was obviously quite in love with him. He is in short, a damn interesting person. It only made it harder when I was so let down by The Brooklyn Follies.

Maybe someday I'll publish enough books to know what it feels like to have created something so great that everything else I might write or have written will pale in comparison. I hope I do. I also hope I can take a dose of my own critical medicine. But as Henry Miller once said, "you learn as much from a badly written book as a well written one", and for me the lesson I've taken from Murakami is if I find myself writing repeatedly about the same things over and over to the detriment of my craft I'll seek out a psychiatrist instead of a publisher.

Are you looking forward to Murakami's 1Q84? Or, if you've read it, is it worth buying?

Read more >>

Spring Snow - Yukio Mishima

My plan to read the Sea of Fertility series by Mishima was thwarted.

I did however finish the first book, Spring Snow, The Amber Spyglass, and read a few Borges stories. I excuse my inability to finish the SoF series because I was writing in earnest most of the month for my new novel.

That aside, now that I've read the work, I took the time to read a few non-professional reviews. I do see the political significance of Mishima's work - the time period in which he choses to begin his series - but beyond that is a sort of desperation, frustration, and his personal idea that one must die to prove their point and sacrifice for their ideals.

I am going to finish the SoF series and read Scott-Stokes biography on Mishima - I chose not to read the other way around because I don't want to have too much on my mind as I read.

The work itself is beautifully written (I have the Charles Tuttle edition) and so very moving that in times the sadness that pervades the novel gets its hands on you and I had to stop. What Mishima does try to do he does with the aid of a love story gone wrong and knowing that it can never be righted is a sorrow that lingers with you.

The ending did not tie up all the loose ends, so those who say it's possible to read the books out of order or read one and then stop - I can't yet disagree with them. But since one of the main characters has a novel of his own in the series, I'm suspecting that this might not be possible. It's a lot of reading, but the first book was in itself what I would call a masterpiece.

Read more >>

Taking a few pages from Henry Miller

I recently got my mitts on a book by Henry Miller with an appendix that originally appeared in an article entitled "Pour Une Bibliothèque Idéale".

I decided to compile my own list, in no particular order.

The Books that Have Influenced Me the Most

1. Miguel Angel Asturias, Mulatta and the Fly
2. Jean de la Fontaine, Fables et Contes
3. Victor Hugo, Les Miserables
4. Edith Hamilton, Mythology
5. Jerzy Kosinski, Painted Bird
6. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 100 Years of Solitude
7. Yusunari Kawabata, A Thousand Cranes
8. Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
9. Miguel de Unamuno, Mist
10. Isabel Allende, House of Spirits
11. Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart
12. FUP, Jim Dodge
13. Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials Trilogy
14. JRR Tolkien, The Hobbit
15. C.S. Lewis, Chronicles of Narnia
16. Oscar Wilde, A Picture of Dorian Gray
17. Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn
18. Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
19. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is the Night
20. Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
21. George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London
22. George Orwell, Animal Farm
23. Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
24. W. Somerset Maugham, Collected Short Stories
25. W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor's Edge
26. Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
27. Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five
28. Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited
29. Alexandre Dumas Pere, Le Comte de Monte Cristo
30. Alexandre Dumas Fils, La Dame aux Camelias
31. Aesop's Fables
32. Jose Saragamo, Blindness
33. Margueritte Duras, La Douleur
34. Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
35. Cervantes, Don Quixote
36. Lady Murasaki, Tale of the Genji
37. Stendhal, La Chartreuse de Parme
38. Gunter Grass, The Tin Drum
39. George du Maurier, Trilby
40. Zola, La Ventre de Paris
41. Kate Chopin, The Awakening
42. Samuel Butler, The Way of All Flesh
43. Anais Nin, Delta of Venus
44. Anais Nin, The Complete Diaries
45. Khaled Hosseni, The Kite Runner
46. Boccaccio, The Decameron
47. Homer, The Odessey
48. Plato, The Symposium
49. Anton Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard
50. The Perfumed Garden
51. Federico Garcia Llorca, Feder
52. Louis-Ferdinand Celine, Voyage au bout de la nuit
53. Ovid, Metamorphoses
54. Salman Rushdie, The Ground Beneath Her Feet
55. Astrid Lindgren, Pippi Longstocking
56. Albert Camus, La Peste
57. A Thousand and One Nights
58. Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
59. Roald Dahl, James and the Giant Peach
60. Michael Bond, Paddington Bear
61. E.B. White, Charlotte's Web
62. Marcel Proust, A la recherche du temps perdu
63. Thomas Malory, La Mort d'Arthur

There are many more, but I guess I'll stop there for now...

Read more >>