Japanese Literature discussion
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January in Japan 2024
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Just finished Goodbye Madam Butterfly: Sex, Marriage, and the Modern Japanese Woman . My most lasting impression is: these women aren't different from women in any other country. It really shows how there's a lot of similarly between people no matter where you go. Maybe this wasn't so obvious to either the author or the translator, both of whom are Japanese. Maybe they thought the interviews they crafted into what read like short stories are unique to the Japanese experience.Still, two things stood out as almost uniquely Japanese. The first is the woman who married into a family that owned a large, prosperous Shinto shrine. The eldest son was expected to take over the 'family business', and he did. And the bride knew nothing about it and had to learn it all from scratch from her strict mother-in-law. Can you think of any parallel in the USA? I can't. It's very different from taking over a normal family business.
The second is the rich woman whose parents expect her to 'adopt a husband' and she has to find a man not only willing to marry her but also to take her family name. This is more than just a formality in Japan, because it means the man has to transfer himself from his birth family register to his wife's family register. His parents aren't keen on the deal, either, even after he agrees.
Is there more infidelity in marriage in Japan than elsewhere? The author seems to think so in the introduction, and a lot of the chapters feature infidelity. But are the selections representative, or is the author finding what she's looking for? How would one even measure the infidelity rate in any country? It's not like most people want to admit they're having an affair.
Overall, it's a quick non-fiction read. No heavy academic speak or statistics. One could even pretend it's a collection of short stories, if one didn't know better.
Farewell, My Orange is the sort of book I wouldn't normally pick up because of the bland summary, but it was by a Japanese author I hadn't heard of, and it won an award.Two immigrant women in Australia (from Japan and Nigeria) run into each other at English school and again at work, and become friends. Their lives have their ups and downs, but there is no particular plot. In a word, it's heartwarming. Things are getting better for these women, and you get the feeling things will continue to get better even after the novel ends.
Thanks Bill. I had this in my to-read list because it sounded interesting. Now I am motivated to read it this year.
Finished All the Lovers in the Night by Mieko Kawakami. I was very exited to read it, as it was my first Kawakami novel and expectations were high! It did not disappoint! I loved it! Interesting themes, and meticulous poetic observational writing of Kawakami makes you feel the characters. Fuyuko is a beautiful character! Five stars!
I've started on The Soil , written in 1910 by a rural landowner to tell those who were divorced from the land in Tokyo what country life was actually like. The translator was originally studying it as a historical source but decided it was good in its own right and people should read it in its entirety.And another short manga series (5 vols) oyome ni ikenai . It's a phrase normally translated as "Now I'll Never Get Married", but it's a bit more subtle than that. It means more like "I can never enter another house as a bride", as in doing the whole traditional housewife thing. Our female lead is a beautiful, capable businesswoman who is a slob at home and never learned to cook. So her boyfriend in the company dumps her. She hires a cleaning service, and a cute little high school boy who is excellent at both cleaning and cooking shows up. Is romance on the plate for this 27-year-old breadwinner (female) and 17-year-old homemaker (male)? I'm going to call this a gender-bender, not because anyone is trans, but because each is defying the expectations put on their sex.
Hi, I'm interested in Japanese poetry and literature around personal development, wabi sabi, minimalism,... I'd be happy for book recommendations or even podcasts, videos about these topics. Thanks!
Bill wrote: "Just finished Goodbye Madam Butterfly: Sex, Marriage, and the Modern Japanese Woman . My most lasting impression is: these women aren't different from women in any other country. It..."I believe marital infidelity is more common in Japan. I recall reading a survey that it's not frowned on the way it is elsewhere. Many wives expect and/or accept it, so long as their husbands are discreet. And vise versa for a smaller but sizable number of husbands.
This month, I have read The Final Curtain, by Higashino: https://wordsandpeace.com/2024/01/10/...And The River Ki, by Sawako Ariyoshi: https://wordsandpeace.com/2024/01/19/...
I am currently reading the fabulous
I finished Earthlings by Murata Sayaka. It was disturbing. I switched from the audiobook to written text. The audiobook was too intense for me. I had to pause for a few days near the end of young narrator part. Still it was worth reading even though I was wussy about some of the narration. I have a have Life Ceremony to read later.
I wish Life Ceremony had been released in between CSW and Earthlings. It’s a nice in-between. A lot of stories in there I love!
oyomi ni ikenai was a light read. Because of their age difference, the couple took a long time to get together, which is entirely believable. It's light because the challenges put in their way are surprisingly easily overcome. It was better in the earlier volumes, because the author started to lose her way and pad out the story with unnecessary amounts of dialog and recap. It felt like I was fighting to get to the end. I will try this author again. She has better known series.Moving on to Homemade , a collection of shorts (I think) from Tanikawa Fumiko, an author who always leaves me with good feelings afterwards. This is an omnibus volume that contains both volumes of the original release.
I'm nearing the end of The Soil as well. It's a slow, painful read as our main characters struggle to keep themselves fed in their poverty. I need to pair it with something lighter to soften the blow.
The Soil is the story of two men, one married to the stepdaughter to the other. Both are angry men who hate each other. The other family members in the story, even those present through the whole story, don't get any real introspection and can only be considered secondary. I would have liked a wider range of viewpoints to give us the full range of village life, but that's not what the author had in mind.In addition, many of the short chapters begin with lyrical descriptions of early 20th century farming life as the seasons come and go. This is the historical detail the translator was looking for when she first picked it up. I enjoyed these parts more than the story itself, with its endless suffering and (intentionally) unlikable main duo.
Starting Strawberry Night . Oddly, even though the Japanese title of this book is in English, it was 'translated' as The Silent Dead. That doesn't bode well for the accuracy of the rest of the translation. It's unlikely Murray had any say in how they translated the title, but if the publisher is willing to muck with something in plain English, there's no telling how much of Murray's translation they changed as well.
Laurel wrote: "I've just started two fresh books: Japanese Death Poems: Written by Zen Monks and Haiku Poets on the Verge of Death
Okinawa by Susumu Higa, con..."
I reviewed Okinawa! It's such a good book!
Bill wrote: "Just finished Goodbye Madam Butterfly: Sex, Marriage, and the Modern Japanese Woman . My most lasting impression is: these women aren't different from women in any other country. It..."Would this book help me prep a podcast episode about misogyny?
I doubt it. It's more about infidelity than anything violent.
Bill wrote: "I doubt it. It's more about infidelity than anything violent."10-4. Not necessarily interested in violence, just bad attitudes about women.
DNF The Silent Dead. Part one was quite the page turner; I read over a hundred pages in one sitting. Even then the sexual harassment was getting to me, and as it got worse in part two, it and other police abusing police without their bosses doing a thing to stop it is what killed this book for me. One can claim that in the real world the cops aren't the good guys, but in a police procedural they are.Those who are into police procedurals may beg to differ, and that's fine. Take their word over mine. Just don't expect me to read this.
Started on Nocturne of Remembrance . It's unfortunately the second book of a series with the first book never released in the US. It begins with a crime our MC committed in his youth, and doesn't quite tell us everything. Then it wraps up loose ends from book one before proceeding to book two "Nocturne of Remembrance."It seems to me already that this book requires you to have read book one. I haven't, but I'll struggle through because others of you have given it such high ratings. I can't shake the feeling that I'm going to be missing something along the way, though.
Bill wrote: "Started on Nocturne of Remembrance . It's unfortunately the second book of a series with the first book never released in the US. It begins with a crime our MC committed in his you..."I didn't have any issue with it being a standalone. I loved this book, but I'm also in the minority based on other reviews. I though it was masterful.
Bill wrote: "DNF The Silent Dead. Part one was quite the page turner; I read over a hundred pages in one sitting. Even then the sexual harassment was getting to me, and as it got worse in part two, it and other..."There are lots of good reasons for abandoning books. Life is short. You've got plenty of others waiting for your attention.
I finished Night on the Galactic Railroad and Other Stories from Ihatov by Kenji Miyazawa, translated by Julianne Neville. Now I'm checking out all the links to movie and play adaptions in the very educational discussion thread about this book, and listened to Alison's podcast episode about Miyazawa. All very interesting context that makes me appreciate the stories more.
Just finished Botchan by Natsume Sōseki and translated by J. Cohn. My two favorited characters were Ms. Kiyo (“pure”) and Mr Hotta (“porcupine”). I would have been interested in a story just about either of them. I read this book as part of the Japan Society of Boston modern fiction book club. We have a monthly book discussion via zoom. I am looking forward to the discussion.
Nocturne of Remembrance really is a great courtroom thriller. I hesitate to say why because I would spoil it for you.The downsides are slight. I think it goes a bit overboard with the surprise witnesses and sudden introduction of evidence (the sorts of things frowned on by real courts). Also, I think the translator could have done us English speaking readers a service by describing the recent legal change known as a semi-jury; it was mentioned several times early in the novel, but I still don't know what it is.
Hopefully this is still in print so you can read it for yourself.
Bill wrote: "Nocturne of Remembrance really is a great courtroom thriller. I hesitate to say why because I would spoil it for you.The downsides are slight. I think it goes a bit overboard with the surprise wi..."
I’m glad it turned around for you. Great points about the translation.
Read Heaven's Wind . It's a dual-language anthology of five short stories. The selections were all excellent, and only one of them had I seen elsewhere.Turvill has a 20 page appendix where he describes general difficulties in translating from Japanese to English, with examples from the text. For the most part I agree with him, but I don't agree with leaving out cultural content to make the text easier to understand, or substituting something in English culture for something in Japanese culture.
I understand his points in general about having to rearrange the words in a sentence and splitting or merging sentences for readability, but I think he goes too far with that in a dual-language book. I was trying to read both languages at once and his rearrangements led to such dissonance that I couldn't read both without getting confused about the progression of the story. Since I've been watching Japanese movies, TV, and anime for decades with subtitles, I find it surprisingly easy to follow both languages at once without that kind of dissonance. It's only when the translation doesn't sufficiently match that I have trouble. There have been times where this is so extreme that I had to turn off the subtitles and start over.
I'm not saying this is such an extreme case. Trying to read two facing pages at once is new to me, and maybe that's what threw me off. So I opted for the harder of the two choices and read these in Japanese, only occasionally using the English page as a crutch when I was missing something. Yet even then, it involved some hunting to find the matching phrase I was looking for.
This volume is well worth picking up for the excellent stories included, even if you're only going to read it in English. But then be warned that you're only getting 85 pages worth of short stories.
Finished Homemade . It's an omnibus reprint with the titular 200 page manga, several side stories, and an unrelated 40 page short story.Homemade is from 2004, fairly early in her career, and it feels like she's trying for a more complicated story than she'd yet attempted. It contains three plot lines: a girl's relationship with her father and his recollections of her mother, her budding love interest, and her disfunctional daily life with her aunt / stepmother. Tanikawa isn't able to put all these together seamlessly, and the result is unsatisfying. She gets better at it later, but her early works with a single theme are wonderful in themselves; there's no reason to skip over them!
To wit, the bonus short story at the end about a ronin and his crush on a cram school teacher. She only treats him as a student needing help an encouragement. We all know someone this sort of thing has happened to.
One more day left in January in Japan, but I don't see myself starting another book and finishing it tomorrow. So on to something non-Japan related until Places and Tokyo War Crimes arrive.
Finished Haruki Murakami Manga Stories 1: Super-Frog Saves Tokyo, Where I'm Likely to Find It, Birthday Girl, The Seventh Man. Four short stories by Murakami, adapted by Jean-Christophe Deveney with art from PMGL. First of three volumes. I enjoyed the experience! In my opinion the adaptions faithfully captures some of the essence of the original stories. The rhythm of the stories is great, good dialogue and dynamic art. PMGL changes his style to better fit the story. Adapting short stories by Murakami in this format is a no brainer for me.
It's not a Murakami, but good fun nonetheless.
I finished Botchan in time for my book club meeting. I just need to review my notes to be ready. Probably my last significant book for JanuaryinJapan except for a few more light novels in the Unwanted Undead Adventurer series that is in the winter 2024 anime season. This was fun and I got much out of everyone’s novels of choice and their comments. Thank you all, Jack
Finishing up January in Japan with In Praise of Shadows by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki. Thank you all for some suggestions I wouldn't have found otherwise!
Laurel wrote: "Finishing up January in Japan with In Praise of Shadows by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki. Thank you all for some suggestions I wouldn't have found otherwise!"
Laurel - IPOS is one of my favorite books of all time. I hope you enjoy/ed it.
I won't finish Judgment at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia by Gary J. Bass today, but I am 300 pages in and recommend it to anyone interested, particularly, in the last part of the title - "the making of Modern Asia." The trials are fully covered, but Bass's coverage of the context of colonialism and events and regional politics from 1925 or so through 1945 is what is truly compelling.
I ended up reading "Naomi" by Junichiro Tanizaki, honestly I was really invested by the story. Even though the main characters have a hugee age gap that at times made me a bit uncomfortable, it eneded up feeling as if the author was making fun of Joji and I felt as if he got what he deserved lol. This was my first time reading anything by Tanizaki and it was really interesting, I'm really excited for my next read which is also a novel by him "The Makioka Sisters".
Tanizaki has quite a few 'perverse' novels. The Makioka Sisters isn't one of them. It's a good choice for someone new to Tanizaki.
Carol wrote: "Laurel wrote: "Finishing up January in Japan with In Praise of Shadows by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki. Thank you all for some suggestions I wouldn't have found otherwise!"
Lau..."
I enjoyed it tremendously! If you have other favourites on the loose theme of aesthetic appeal (like IPOS or The Book of Tea), I'd love to hear them.
Read the last pages of Monkey Business: New Writing From Japan - Volume 7. Still chewing on the last chapter of The Forbidden Diary by Sachiko Kishimoto. Weird stuff. A nice anthology of short stories, poems, essays, and literary manga. It includes a conversation between editor Motoyuki Shibata and Haruki Murakami about his proces of writing short stories.
And that's #januaryinjapan for me this year!
Hi! I'm fairly new to the world of books and Japanese Literature. I am finishing of January reading The Frolic of the Beasts. Yukio Mishima seems like a very interesting author who's writing style seems to be very unique with a lot of hidden messages and references. A big change to the books I've read so far this month; Tales from the Café, What You Are Looking For Is in the Library & She and Her Cat.
I have enjoyed reading these lighter novels and the stories entailed within.
Bill wrote: "Tanizaki has quite a few 'perverse' novels. The Makioka Sisters isn't one of them. It's a good choice for someone new to Tanizaki."I'm happy to see I've made a good choice then! I was debating between The Makioka Sisters and A Cat, A Man and Two Women. Still, I will be reading the latter in the future since the reviews I've read so far are very positive.
My last book for JanuaryinJapan 2024 was Kenji Miyazawa's The Bears of Mt. Nametoko as translated by Karen Colligan-Taylor. She did her dissertation on Miyazawa Kenji and the version I read was illustrated nicely by Masao Odou. I also have a translation by Roger Pulver who has translated many of Kenji's stories and poems.Pulver writes in his translation introduction to the story,
"The line he" (Kenji) "wrote in the first poem in Spring & Asura: Poems of Kenji Miyazawa may be applied to his stories and poems, that is his entire literary legacy..."
'the light is preserved ... the lamp itself is lost'
"In this case , the lamp is a single life and all that went into it. The light is, in Kenji's case, his works; in ours, whatever we leave behind."
"The Bears of Mt. Nametoko, one of Kenji's most loved stories in Japan, can be read in this light. It tells us that we must protect our animals, or it will not be the animals that become extinct but us."
In her notes on the story, Colligan-Taylor writes,
"In the myths of the northern peoples, it is the bear god who will judge the spiritual state of human hunters. Having found Kojuro to be pure and compassionate, at one with the natural world, we might expect Nametoko's bears to pray for his return, for the increase of men just like him."
...
"Within the icy, cold indifference of the universe, there is still the possibility of compassion, self-sacrifice, and forgiveness, the gifts with which Kojuro departs. The bears and the moon from which they take their name will guide him on his way."
Alison wrote: "I believe marital infidelity is more common in Japan. I recall reading a survey that it's not frowned on the way it is elsewhere. Many wives expect and/or accept it, so long as their husbands are discreet. And vise versa for a smaller but sizable number of husbands."Unless you're Miss Japan, apparently ^_^
Bill wrote: "Alison wrote: "I believe marital infidelity is more common in Japan. I recall reading a survey that it's not frowned on the way it is elsewhere. Many wives expect and/or accept it, so long as their..."Oh, hell. What did I miss?!?
Japanese Literature
Books mentioned in this topic
Spring & Asura: Poems of Kenji Miyazawa (other topics)The Bears of Mt. Nametoko (other topics)
What You Are Looking For Is in the Library (other topics)
The Frolic of the Beasts (other topics)
Tales from the Cafe (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Kenji Miyazawa (other topics)Yukio Mishima (other topics)
Motoyuki Shibata (other topics)
Sachiko Kishimoto (other topics)
Haruki Murakami (other topics)
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Currently reading Kafka on the Shore right now and though it is a bit chunky (length wise), I am doing my best to get through it all as the book has been worth reading :)