Japanese Literature discussion
Book and Other Group Chat
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Tim wrote: "Honestly, I liked LWWP so much that I went out and bought Cult X, The Kingdom and Evil and the Mask. "I have read Evil and the Mask (and also saw the film adaptation). I liked it, but will say it's a little different from your usual crime thriller. A lot more dialogue, from what I remember. More about ideals, philosophy, etc. If you liked Nakamura's other works, you might like this one too. Meanwhile, I'll check out Last Winter We Parted based on your review :)
I finally finished Runaway Horses. Enjoyed it, but as usual, not enough Honda!
I just bought First Snow on Fuji by Yasunari Kawabata. I can’t claim I’m reading it yet, but am quite delighted to put it on the physical pile of Japanese Lit TBR options in my bedroom.
I started an arc of Michael Wert’s Samurai, which is a perfect overview for me, since I know virtually nothing of Japanese history prior to 1850 or so.
I just finished Spring Garden. One could call it a slice-of-life, I suppose, as nothing much happens. The name of the book is the title of a book of photographs the characters have read, photographs of the blue house in their neighborhood. The plot revolves around our protagonists getting a good look at the house, in a semi-stalker sort of way. (Can one stalk a house? Or does that term only apply to people?)I started Hell last night. So far it has an exceedingly jumbled timeline, and is about a place peopled by the dead. Hard to say whether I'll like it yet. I've only liked some of Tsutsui novels.
Hi everyone, posting this from Asia right now on my vacation (in Vietnam, not Japan, but still...). Spring Garden sounds like a unique sort of read and one I may actually consider. I just finished Murakami’s first novel Hear the Wind Sing. Enjoyable but very much a first novel (review to come later) and I just started Penguin Highway which may take me a bit to finish based on travel times and such.
Tim wrote: "Hi everyone, posting this from Asia right now on my vacation (in Vietnam, not Japan, but still...). Spring Garden sounds like a unique sort of read and one I may actually consider. I just finishe..."
I'm looking forward to hearing more about your vacation, Tim. Exceedingly jealous of your time in VietNam, for starters. Are you with your family or traveling alone?
I own a copy of Spring Garden - received it as part of a box of Japanese lit in translation a couple of years ago - maybe from Pushkin? it's pretty short isn't it - like under 120 pages?
It is from Pushkin (and is seriously full of British idioms!) and was roughly the 160 pages GR lists it as.
Carol wrote: "I'm looking forward to hearing more about your vacation, Tim. Exceedingly jealous of your time in VietNam, for starters. Are you with your family or traveling alone?."Traveling with family. My wife is originally from Vietnam and now that we have a daughter, we wanted to make sure her parents got to see her in person. We’re not going to do many of the “tourist” sort of things while here, it’s mostly going to be visiting with family and such... but we did visit a few temples which I may try to post pictures of later at some point.
Enjoy Vietnam!!As for currently reading: just finished Pico Iyer’s newest book on Japan.:: and, I recommend reading... the review at least:
Check out the Autumn Light page for my review.
Reading Confessions of Love. I get the impression that the main character (a male artist) will have a number of relationships with young women through this book, since he's already on number two.The first young woman is liberated and willful, and sadly has been given no positive personality traits whatsoever. If the author was male (which she isn't), he would naturally face accusations of misogyny for it. Hopefully the characters get better, because I enjoy the author's writing style and find the development original.
In other things, I'm growing increasingly tired of Goodreads. Not only are the staff discontinuing Feedback to stop us from criticizing their more ridiculous policies and from ganging up on them, but their recommendation system is increasingly disfunctional due to how they categorize works.
Many of the recommendations they give me now are of works I've already read, because while I've read and rated "Common Sense", "The Rights of Man", etc. separately, I haven't read the collected works of Thomas Paine. If I mark that read, I'm double-counting. If I mark it non-interested, it will stop recommending similar works in the future. It's hard for them to squeeze in any genuine recommendations between these fake ones.
I find goodreads clunky in so many ways. I do everything on my phone and the app is missing many of the features of the site and when I’m viewing these group comments there are just random words missing from the middle, it’s a total guessing game sometimes. I wish there was a similar platform we could use instead because I love this little group. :) I just received my copy of Cari Mora by Thomas Harris. So that’s my week sorted!
after all the references in this groupI now finally bought a copy of Salvation of a Saint. I will be reading it in german for my german practice (Heilige Mörderin). That will be bedside book for now, and during the commuting still going strong on War and Peace which I find seriously brilliant.
Jeshika wrote: "I find goodreads clunky in so many ways. I do everything on my phone and the app is missing many of the features of the site and when I’m viewing these group comments there are just random words mi..."Oh man. I am jealous. Enjoy.
Jeshika wrote: "I find goodreads clunky in so many ways. I do everything on my phone and the app is missing many of the features of the site and when I’m viewing these group comments there are just random words mi..."Btw, STOP USING THE APP . When you’re on your phone, use the desktop version. Always. Just sayin.’
Carol wrote: "Jeshika wrote: "I find goodreads clunky in so many ways. I do everything on my phone and the app is missing many of the features of the site and when I’m viewing these group comments there are just..."Ahaha! I've been properly scolded. Okay, I will use desktop ver.
Came home from the library with, amongst others, Falling From the Floating World by Nick Hurst and The Pine Islands by Marion Poschmann, coincidentally both about someone leaving one place and going to Japan. The former looks more thriller-y, so I'll see how that goes. The Poschmann has been on my radar since the Man Booker International longlist, so that's about to be started:Blurb on cover starts: 'When Gilbert Silvester, a journeyman lecturer on beard fashions in film, wakes one day from a dream that his wife has cheated on him, he flees - immediately, irrationally, inexplicably - for Japan.'
I mean, come on, that just ticks all my quirky boxes in one!
Both those are new and both look interesting!!
Currently reading the manga Stay by Nishi Keiko. I guess that's another book I'll have to add to the database when I'm done :)The description of Nishi as a shojo (for girls) author is a bit reductionist, but maybe I'm only saying that because the only series I've read from her so far is My Big Sister's Marriage which is definitely josei (for adult women).
Stay is eight volumes of 30-page vignettes, so far mostly about high school students. I wouldn't call them short stories because they're more about presenting a situation than a plot. Each vignette has a title, which would make one think they stand alone, but already several of them are referencing characters in earlier ones. So perhaps in time (I'm only in the middle of volume one) they'll all start to link together into a novel.
Carol wrote: "Tim wrote: "Finally finished Penguin Highway... I cannot recommend it. :("Ack! Because......?"
I’m going to be lazy and just copy/paste my review. :D
So, I read this because it is the first English translation of an author I genuinely respect. How do I respect him if this is the first English edition of one of his books? Adaptations. In Japan Morimi’s work is very popular, and has been made into several movies and TV series. In fact, the recent adaptation of his novel “The Night is Short, Walk on Girl” is one of my favorite anime films in recent years As such, I was greatly looking forward to checking out an actual copy of one of his novels… I was extremely disappointed (Note: a translation has also been announced of “The Night is Short…” Despite my negative reactions to this, I will probably give that one a shot as I liked the movie so much).
This book is so overly sentimental as to be infuriating. Every page tries so hard to be nostalgic and heartwarming, that it only frustrated me. Now, I’m not against nostalgia and sentiment if it is done well, but it requires a proper execution and that it requires us to give a damn about the characters, and that is not the case for me. Our lead is in the fourth grade and he’s way too smart to be a fourth grader. He’s infuriatingly smart; a little know it all that praises himself every other page. Maybe this is meant to be charming? I don’t know. He tries to be calm and adult to such an extent that he doesn’t really feel like a child. Even his “charming” (quotation marks due to I think that was the author’s intention, but honestly it’s somewhat baffling) quirk to keep calm is to think about breasts. I’m not joking. Everything becomes associated with breasts to him… mountains, candy, clouds, everything. I don’t know if this was trying to be a joke for a future anime adaptation or what, but it comes off bizarre and unfunny in context with the novel.
Side characters are a little better than our lead, but are mostly forgettable. There’s responsible adult 1, responsible adult 2, the bully, the best friend, the possible crush. For the most part they are fine and accomplish their intended goals in the novel (and frankly I would have much rather read about ANY of them). The only side character of any interest is the Lady, who interestingly, despite my joke of giving characters fake titles, is actually nameless and just referred to as the Lady throughout. She’s a bizarre one, who comes off a touch on the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope side, but actually has strange abilities such as creating penguins out of coke cans… yeah, the plot goes some weird places.
Speaking of, for a book with such a fantastic plot (and I mean it in terms of fantasy, and not in terms of being good) it’s a shockingly dull read. In fact, I found myself around the half way point getting bored every ten pages or so and putting it down. At first I attributed this to jet lag as I had just gotten off a 30+ hour series of flights and having traveled from an 11 hour time zone difference, but upon trying another book, I realized that I was able to finish 60+ pages easily, so nope, it was just boredom with this one.
I debated on the 1 or 2 star rating for some time and decided to go with a 2. Despite my complaints, it started off well enough and had me interested at the start. It carried on well for about 1/3 of its length before falling flat. I honestly think that this book isn’t extraordinarily awful; it’s just nothing I would want to read. I can easily imagine others reading it and being charmed by its sappy leads and nostalgic wonder. Perhaps I’m just too much of a grouchy old man, but this is just not for me.
Tim wrote: "Carol wrote: "Tim wrote: "Finally finished Penguin Highway... I cannot recommend it. :("Ack! Because......?"
I’m going to be lazy and just copy/paste my review. :D
So, I read t..."
Well. Not extraordinarily awful is faint praise indeed. :)
Thanks for the warning.
I have just finished The Forest of Wool and Steel by Natsu Miyashita. A very quiet, subtle short novel about a young man who trains to become a piano tuner. If anyone has seen the film 'Departures' - about a man training to be a funeral mortician - it felt very similar in tone. The translation was done by Philip Gabriel, who does a lot of Murakami, so I felt in pretty safe hands. I enjoyed it, in the way that nothing much happens and its all about imagery, metaphor and contemplation. (Oh, I now see that it was made into a movie last year, so I must try and track that down!)
Alan wrote: "I have just finished The Forest of Wool and Steel by Natsu Miyashita. A very quiet, subtle short novel about a young man who trains to become a piano tuner. If any..."Sold. Thank you for this mini-review, Alan.
Not Japanese Lit:I am reading Saigon Calling: London 1963-75, a graphic novel memoir by Marcelino Truong. It is the sequel to Such a Lovely Little War: Saigon 1961-63, which was phenomenal and covered, if I recall correctly, Vietnam from 1955-1962. The first book was more compelling, but I’m a big fan of Truong’s writing and the artwork is exquisite.
I'm reading Mishima's The Temple of Dawn. I feel somehow compelled to finish the tetralogy (with some breaks in between). Honda gets a lot more airtime now, which is great, but I'm not feeling the princess thing and the Bangkok setting.
J wrote: "I'm reading Mishima's The Temple of Dawn. I feel somehow compelled to finish the tetralogy (with some breaks in between). Honda gets a lot more airtime now, which is great, but I'm not feeling the ..."I empathize, I liked the first two better... I didn't finish Temple of Dawn actually ^^;
I started reading Coin Locker Babies... Finally. I've been putting this off for so long because of length and it being one of my final Ryu Murakami books... So far it's very similar in feel to Evil and The Mask. Thoroughly enjoying it.
Coin Locker Babies was the only Murakami Ryu novel I liked. Granted, I didn't read them all. I gave up after reading a couple of others I didn't care for.
Ohhh, I'm a big Ryu Murakami fan. I love the "wtf did I just read?" feeling his books leave me with. More of his works need to be translated.
I don't want to be a bother, but I did read this recently and it is about Japan, so I just want to share the recent publication of my first work as an editor. It features work by Alex Kerr, Simon Rowe, Amy Chavez and an intro by the wonderful translator Juliet Winters Carpenter. Consider grabbing a copy if it looks interesting to you: Encounters with Kyoto
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4...
Oh, congratulations! I'll definitely take a look, thanks for sharing!
I'm about a third of the way into Shame in the Blood, originally published as short stories and then collected into a novel.It starts well, with a chaste romance between young adults from two poor families. But then it seems to have fallen into the cliche of the starving author. I'll continue reading, hoping it escapes that trap.
I'm currently reading Perfect Blue: Complete Metamorphosis by Yoshikazu Takeuchi. It was the influence for the amazing Satoshi Kon film, just titled Perfect Blue. The book and the film are similar, but other than the initial plot description, completely different. It's a quick read at only 208 pages and large print, so I'll probably finish it in a day. Thought I'm not finished yet, I'd say it's probably worth a read for horror fans, or fans of the film.
Christian wrote: "I empathize, I liked the first two better... I didn't finish Temple of Dawn actually ^^;"I'm two months late with the reply, but thank you for the sentiment. I put Temple of Dawn on hold and at this moment it's not looking likely that I will return to reading it anytime soon. I really liked Honda in the first two books, but Mishima has somehow wrecked his character in book 3 and that really annoys me.
I'm now on Andrea Camilleri's The Snack Thief, and it's a lot more fun. Didn't realise August is Shimada's book, so I hope to get to it soon.
I started Seven Japanese Tales by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki. I’m only on the initial story (it’s 85 pages) but enjoying it this far.
Is Shunkin the first story? It's still one of my favorite Tanizaki stories.
Bill wrote: "Is Shunkin the first story? It's still one of my favorite Tanizaki stories."Yes, it is! I am mesmerized.
Currently reading A Kiss of Fire By Togawa Masako. It's a complicated plot told from three alternating perspectives: the fireman, the detective, and the arsonist. But we don't really know if "the arsonist" is the arsonist.At the halfway point now, it keeps getting more complicated. But it isn't succeeding at building tension. It's too soon to say how I'll rate it, but so far I don't think it's as good as either The Lady Killer or the Master Key.
I am reading an ARC of Japanese Ghost Stories by Lafcadio Hearn and loving it. A typically excellent Penguin introduction, understated creeptasticness and ... that cover. 
.
Not specifically Japan-related, but I'm reading another locked-room mystery Extinction about what killed most life on earth 250 million years ago.(Don't blame me. The author even called it a locked-room mystery.)
Carol wrote: "I am reading an ARC of Japanese Ghost Stories by Lafcadio Hearn and loving it. A typically excellent Penguin introduction, understated creeptasticness and ... that co..."This looks wonderful. I think I’ll be reading this in October
Tim wrote: "Carol wrote: "I am reading an ARC of Japanese Ghost Stories by Lafcadio Hearn and loving it. A typically excellent Penguin introduction, understated creeptasticness a..."It's really a treat for me. The footnotes totally rock, too.
Plainsong is a pure slice-of-life novel. The main character is single and has no hobbies to speak of, leaving him plenty of free time. Into this free time wander a number of oddballs, and he tolerates them because he has nothing better to do.A third of the way in, there is still no discernible plot yet. There may never be.
Carol wrote: "I am reading an ARC of Japanese Ghost Stories by Lafcadio Hearn and loving it. A typically excellent Penguin introduction, understated creeptasticness and ... that co..."I've just started dipping into this, too. Loving it. I admit to never having heard of Lafcadio Hearn, but apparently he's highly regarded as someone who really 'got' the Japanese.
I don't know this book, but I'm intrigued now to dig it out:
The Dream of Lafcadio Hearn: a novel, with an introduction by Roger Pulvers - a fictional account of Hearn's life.
Alan wrote: "Carol wrote: "I am reading an ARC of Japanese Ghost Stories by Lafcadio Hearn and loving it. A typically excellent Penguin introduction, understated creeptasticness a..."He’s got quite the back story. Irish ghosts and tragedies encountered young. The introduction was great. I’ll look for that Pulvers book, too. There’s another novel coming out this fall, The Sweetest Fruits by Monique Truong, described as a reimagining of Hearn’s life.
I’ve encountered Hearn’s stories here and there in other collections but the presentation here, even the order of them, is making them more accessible and interesting to me.
Bill wrote: "Plainsong is a pure slice-of-life novel. The main character is single and has no hobbies to speak of, leaving him plenty of free time. Into this free time wander a number of oddballs..."I’ve not read this but always heard great feedback on it, hope you’re enjoying it.
Carol wrote: "Alan wrote: "Carol wrote: "I am reading an ARC of Japanese Ghost Stories by Lafcadio Hearn and loving it. A typically excellent Penguin introduction, understated cree..."Thanks for that, Carol. Funny how somebody or something just suddenly appears to be in vogue - this Penguin collection and these 2 novels, like buses all appearing at once!
Oh, I have a book of Oriental Ghost Stories by Lafcadio Hearn that I’ve owned for years now and never picked up. Might prioritise these for October if people are liking his works.
Japanese Literature
Books mentioned in this topic
When the Museum Is Closed (other topics)Nan-Core (other topics)
Chieko, and Other Poems of Takamura Kotaro (other topics)
Chieko's Sky (other topics)
Tale of the Princess Kaguya Picture Book (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Kotaro Takamura (other topics)Iori Kusano (other topics)
Fehu Kazuno (other topics)
David Guterson (other topics)
Donald Keene (other topics)
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If anyone has a recommendation of Japanese version of Grimm's fairy tales, e.g., authentic, Japanese stories that everyone raised in Japan learns/hears and that form a common cultural reference point, let me know.