Kris's comments (member since Feb 01, 2009)

Kris's comments from the Japanese Literature group.

Julia, ever read Nabokov's book Nikolai Gogol? I don't know if it's the same thing in the context of Kawabata's novel (I don't remember the Eurasian half-sister), but Nabokov thought that the genius of Gogol lay in these weird little scenes where he would introduce a character, sketch them vividly in a few lines, and then... drop them. Because the reader's natural inclination is: "Ah, he's introduced this character and given him these traits, this character will be important" but Gogol pulls the rug out from under the reader time and again (in the same sense I've always wanted to make a movie in which a major character has a fit of coughing somewhere in the beginning... and doesn't end up dead of cancer by the end! in fact, it's only a fit of coughing, like that which attacks so many non-movie people who don't end up eventually dying of it!).

For me the supreme beauty of Kawabata as an artist is this sense of deep mystery (try finding a Kawabata novel or story with a neat resolution!) of what's said, what's left unsaid, what seems important only to be never mentioned again, these deep and unfathomable currents beneath the surface of human existence. I've never found a writer who's able to convey as much in "a few brush strokes," so to speak. For those interested - though the translation can also be a bit stilted - the Palm-of-the-Hand Stories by Kawabata are extraordinary.

Mr Murakami is a "rockstar" because he manages the feat of appearing somewhat "literary" while remaining chock full of pop culture references to give the kids what they want. Though his books certainly aren't in the John Grisham depths of the intelligence barrel, he's thankfully never threatened his readers with anything approaching a deep thought. As far as I can glean - and keep in mind that this is having read a number of the author's works (Wild Sheep Chase, Wind Up Bird Chronicle, Kafka on the Shore, Sputnik Sweetheart, and The Elephant Vanishes as far as I can recall) - Murakami is pretty much content to create a vague sense of urban ennui and dread, coupled with a number of "surreal" episodes, references to whatever pop song the hero may be listening to at any given time, and keeps the pace fairly brisk - and it's a good formula that serves him well. And I've liked the books, even if in retrospect I have a hard time telling them apart (only that Wind Up Bird had some war sections that showed real brilliance and that Kafka had a few uncomfortably Oedipal scenes). But it's not truly great art as far as I'm concerned.



I think the depiction of Japanese women in classic fiction is a little more complicated than people here make out: are they all subservient little dolls or are they just treated that way by their men? And consider how the Japanese man is presented in many of these books too: cold, cruel, boring, boorish, incapable of real affection, never in any way "heroic." The women, while often superficially in the minor role, often find ways to pull the strings, and often come across as ultimately more awake, more human than the men. And they certainly didn't always play the passive role: Kawabata's Beauty and Sadness - and others, like Tanizaki's Quicksand, or Mizoguchi's great film Sisters of Gion - contrasts the repressed traditional Japanese woman with the "modern girl" who takes the role of avenger.

The best Japanese writers had insight and sensitivity, and if they created passive women they were simply reflecting the reality of the time; and sometimes holding a mirror to reality is enough.

As for "new and refreshing" Japanese fiction, most of it holds about as much appeal for me as the latest "new and refreshing" Dan Brown extravaganza. But I admit to a preference for traditional Japan, its elegance and attention to aesthetics (without denying its faults and cruelties) to the modern-day cityscape of pachinko parlors, pornographic comic books, singing toasters, and the terrifying ubiquity of the dastardly Hello Kitty.

Quite a few, in fact. I'm not opposed to Murakami, even if I act like it. I find him perfectly adequate for what he aspires to, and though the books kind of blend together for me, they've all been rather pleasant (I have never actively disliked a Murakami novel). He even has rare moments of real brilliance. However, sometimes I feel like I have to bash Murakami because no one else does. I don't like the championing of Murakami as World's Greatest Writer because it's both frankly untrue by a pretty wide margin and that so many people who should know better say so is a worrying sign.

Marc wrote: "Well there you go. It's more than about running."

Indeed. I hereby humbly revoke my sarcastic comments.

I'd also like to add that I'm more than slightly amused how Murakami can publish a book about jogging - an activity of entertainment value on par with, and an artistic purpose perhaps somewhat below that of rock polishing - and still see it translated and sell like hot cakes. Good on ya, Haruki!

While I don't think any really worthwhile discussion got off the ground about the last book (mostly along the lines of Ilikedit/Ididntlikeit), the Japanese books in my queue currently are AND THEN by Natsume Soseki, DARK NIGHT'S PASSING by Naoya Shiga, and NAOMI by Tanizaki Junichiro. Should one of the following be picked, I'll throw in me two cents. Peace.

I've read a couple of Hibbett's translations (this and a pair of Tanizakis: Seven Japanese Tales and Quicksand) and while I find them somewhat stilted and occasionally awkwardly rendered at no point has it ever ruined the reading for me. Hibbett, according to the Harvard website, began studying Japanese in 1942, got a degree from Harvard and also studied at the University of Tokyo and the University of Kyoto, and did his first translation work in the 1960s. He sounds pretty qualified to me, not so much the cone-itchy-waugh sort. His failings as a prose stylist are more open to debate, but I don't find the sections you highlight to be that egregious. As for the so-called "discreet smile," perhaps Howard could have fished around for a superior adjective, but I really don't see the problem. I think discreet smile of the Japanese lady and what comes to mind: powdered geisha girl, eyes cast to the floor, and an almost imperceptible upward curl at the edge of the bright red lips.

That said, it would be nice to get fresh spankin new English translations of a number of classic works (but please without the American slang! "What's up, man?" in 19th century Russia and the like gives me the shivers).

Harvee wrote: "Enjoyed your review, and it's enough for me. Think I'll skip Kawabata and stick with the more modern Japanese writers. Less sadness, same beauty. "

That's tragic.

I get a sick day today. Rotten cold. So I finished Beauty and Sadness. My thoughts on it aren't entirely collected, but to my mind it was a typically outstanding novel by this writer (one of my favorites, mind). Beauty and Sadness - the title alone is simply great, no? Also in that it sums up the man's work. That's all it is, beauty and sadness, beauty and sadness. And it is as dark and as cold as winter night.

The book struck me as more dialogue-heavy than most of Kawabata's works, but then I pull Thousand Cranes and Snow Country off the shelf to find they're also quite dialogue-laden. But here it seemed to slightly work against the book, I thought as I read on. Kawabata's peculiar magic is that he causes you to linger on certain images or revealing bits of dialogue, but the sheer amount of speaking here caused me to do what most people do when there's so much talking - you kind of fly through it. However, this gives the book a burning, relentless quality that you don't often get with this typically precise and restrained author.

It is also, with the possible exception of The Lake, his darkest novel. In the beginning the focus is on the writer who when he was twenty-five had taken the virginity of a fifteen year-old girl, and the vibrations of their meeting in Kyoto two decades later. The woman has become an artist, the man a successful writer whose most successful book was the story of their affair. The meeting touches off feelings that had been dormant for so long. The woman artist realizes she still loves the man who stole her youth (she's been secretly holding the candle for him) and the man, too, has been unable to "love like that" since. But typical for Kawabata the story takes strange ways. Eventually the true twisted heroine of the book is revealed: the artist's student, a 19 year-old of "disturbing beauty" who wants revenge on the old man for the torment he has caused her sensei (who, it is eventually revealed, is also her lover) and who is quite clearly insane.

There is a relentless and unstable element to this novel that I haven't found in the author's other works. The ending seems as inevitable as it is pitch-perfect. More later, certainly. This is one I have to think over some...

I think so. It's a practice that seems to have occurred only in the early days through to the '30s or '40s (though I haven't checked all the citations on that site). It is surely strange that Thomas Mann and Knut Hamsun would be given the award on the back of a solitary book - especially weird in Mann's case, as Buddenbrooks was one of his very first novels, written thirty years before the Nobel (with Death in Venice and The Magic Mountain getting pitiful one-sentence nods only towards the end of the Academy's presentation speech).

Marc wrote: "Just a small comment: the Nobel Prize is given for a writer's entire body of work, not specific books."

True today, but not always. See the following citations:

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/liter...

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/liter...

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/liter...

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/liter...

The only Slovenian writer I know is the poet Tomaz Salamun, who I heard read (in English translation) at the University of Georgia in 2000 or 2001. About ten other people attended.

I can help somewhat more with Romanian: Petru Dumitriu was a fine novelist who's now long out-of-print in English, Paul Celan wrote his first poems in Romanian, Nina Cassian and Ana Blandiana are two other fine poets, hmm... Actually, I'm slipping here. Can't do better today. Ask again tomo. Might be able to help you with film directors moreso (for instance: Lucien Pintilie!).

Lindu wrote: I'm refreshing my memory by reading on my portable device. I can already see the purists taking me to a dark corner..


With a lead pipe.

Good on ya, Marc. A Soseki or A Dark Night's Passing would be fine choices, too.

My problem with the recent Japanese fiction as opposed to the "classic" stuff is my problem with recent Japan in general. To be honest Hello Kitty, pachinko parlors, and anime do not float my boat. The greatest Japanese authors managed to feel modern while still having some spiritual affinities with, or at least interest in, Japanese history and traditional culture. Even those who rebelled against the Japan of history were often very much worth reading. Too many of the young Japanese authors are completely unaware of or disinterested in the history of Japan and Japanese fiction, casting their interests towards pulp American novelists and movies and the like. I don't see how most Japanese mainstream crime lit differs from American mainstream crime lit. If I want Elmore Leonard or Clive Barker then it's there, but the truly great Japanese writers are unlike those in the States or Europe; they aren't shallow imitations awash in pop culture references and teenage angst.

Yup, I educate in north Thai. It is a slow and arduous process. But I get by.

Anton wrote: "with any luck we'll also end up with some diverse opinions. That sounds like much more fun than everyone agreeing that a great author has written another great book?? :) "

Point taken Anton, but I hope that any discussion of it will be a little more elaborate than "Gee that there's a great author and he writ a durn good book!" You know, a little more detail on why the author and book are great to each individual. Or there may be a number who disagree, who think that the author's great, but this is certainly one of his worst novels, or maybe others will just plain think Kawabata's boring. Certainly there are a number of people who'd agree with that - very little tends to happen in his novels (he ain't big on plot), and they focus almost entirely on atmosphere and subtle placement of bits of dialogue. This style can drive some people nuts. Anyway, my plug for Beauty also has to do with the unlikelihood of my finding any of the others - aside from Sailor - here in north Thailand.

And Lafcadio Hearn isn't Japanese.

Now You're One of Us sounds like a fairly pedestrian Japanese psycho-horror. A brief search around has shown that few people are ecstatic about it, and more than a few positively hated it. Japanese literature has been in the doldrums for the past few decades (same goes with films), and anyone truly interested in the country's literature needs to throw their net further back than Murakami, Yoshimoto, flavor-of-the-moment mystery writers, and whiny teenage girls writing about their piercings: back to Kawabata, Soseki, Mishima, Tanizaki, Oe, Abe, Akutagawa, Hayashi, etc. It is one of the treasure troves of 20th century literare, and a discovery waiting for the adventurous. I do not know if Now You're One of Us is any good or not, but I suggest starting with something that's guaranteed to be worthwhile because it's written by a great writer. For this reason The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea and Beauty and Sadness are the only good options. I've read Sailor, it's terrific, so I vote for Beauty, which just happens to have been written by the fellow who, to my mind, is the greatest of the Japanese novelists.

Beauty and Sadness, people. Rally around it.

I second Beauty and Sadness. It's the only one of Kawabata's novels I haven't read (though it sits on the shelf).

Murakami Haruki and Yoshimoto Banana are nice writers, don't get me wrong, but they're - and I know I'll catch shit for this - quite lightweight. There's really no comparison with the classics. However, compared to what I've heard about more recent Japanese writers - 18 year-olds writing about their piercings and trite little darknesses - Murakami and Yoshimoto are Tolstoy and Chekhov. Luckily, most truly great Japanese novels aren't terribly long - you can get through "Thousand Cranes" on a mild summer afternoon. Here are my recommendations for a start:

"Thousand Cranes" by Kawabata Yasunari
"Palm-of-the-Hand Stories" by Kawabata
"The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea" by Mishima Yukio
"The Sea and Poison" by Endo Shusaku
"Floating Clouds" by Hayashi Fumiko
"Kokoro" by Natsume Soseki
Stories of Akutagawa Ryunosuke
"The Silent Cry" by Oe Kenzaburo
"Woman in the Dunes" by Abe Kobo
"Toddler-Hunting" by Kono Taeko
"The Waiting Years" by Enchi Fumiko

Of course, this is just 20th century stuff. There's a whole world of much older Japanese lit that awaits plundering by the daring. Happy hunting.