What's the Top 5 look like for Japanese literature?
Like, who are generally considered the greats?
>>7961870
Kind of helpful, but that still doesn't tell me who the five or so brightest lights in the Japanese literary firmament or whatever are. That's really the info I'm looking for.
>>7961883
Yukio Mishima is probably the "best" author they've had in the 20th century. Haruki Murakami was considered for a Nobel prize in literature (based on rumours I've heard) and the Tale of Genji is kinda like the Japanese Illiad afaik
>>7961907
Thanks, that does begin to provide some orientation. What else? Is there a Japanese Shakespeare? A Japanese Tolstoy?
Top 4 in my opinion.
大江、個人的な体験。 遠藤、沈黙。 安部、砂の女。 Joyce, フィネガンズ・ウェイク。
>>7961842
Sword Art Online
Spice and Wolf
Overlord
Book Girl
A Certain Magical Index
>>7961907
you obviously dont actually know anything about jap lit beyond /lit/ memes
the top 5 are:
soseki
tanizaki
kawabata
oe
akutagawa
and then the second tier-
abe
dazai
endo
mishima
inoue
then you got a bunch of people whose legacies aren't totally clear yet or are just aren't as important as the above few-
ogai
r. murakami
kirino
yoshimoto
enchi
miyamoto
etc. etc.
h. murakami is basically a non entity unless something significant changes in his output moving forward
>>7961925
That's right, I don't. I just know Mishima because of memes and Murakami is p meme currently, like a YA fiction writer but instead of appealing to 12-18 year old girls it's 18-30 year old women.
>>7961911
the japanese tolstoy is tanizaki
the japanese shakespeare is shakespeare
>>7961842
tale of genji
soseki
basho
kawabata
mishima
>>7961925
OP here. Thanks a lot. Really good.
Pretty much irrelevant-tier writing. There are many Japanese writers and few of them have had any influence beyond their country, even /lit/'s beloved Murakami and Mishima. You're better off watching their cinema which is quite relevant.
>>7961947
This desu
But op, don't go picking up Genji as you're probably not ready for it
>>7962044
/lit/'s beloved murakami and mishima are, respectively, irrelevant and second-tier in japan
oe and kawabata won nobel prizes. inoue was very close to winning one. they're very much relevant on the international literary stage.
>inb4 "muh nobel is irrelevant" meme
only parochial /lit/ards believe this.
>>7961947
>>7962060
issue with murasaki and shonagon is that though they're influential in a sense, they're part of a very distinct literary tradition. their place is akin to a less important beowulf and, to a lesser extent, the canterbury tales, in that the language used is completely different. the modern japanese novel stems from a very distinct tradition as courtly japanese literature, due in part to the artificial changes made to the japanese language and the impact of the meiji restoration
I had an english professor who said japanese lit is so beyond other kinds that probably 20 of the top 50 novels of the last century are japanese
>>7961919
>SAO
>>/trash/
>>7962083
1. murakami is japan's vonnegut
not irrelevant, but top-pleb tier
irrelevant from a lit-circle standpoint, but this is also the case in the west
2. mishima is considered second-tier in japan, but only because everyone would be too embarrassed to admit that the last great writer they had was a public nutjob (private is fine)
3.he asked for top 5 j-lit, not top 5 modern japanese novels
>>7962083
There are loads of irrelevant writers who won Nobel Prizes. Can you acknowledge a single relevant western writer who was influenced by "Oe" and "Kawabata?"
>>7961925
Ace list.
Nowadays in Japan, Dazai is enjoying a kind of renaissance; opinions on Ningen Shikaku are pretty divided , but virtually everyone who reads here loves Shayou and his other early works. Every time I ask someone about Mishima I'm always met with winces or explanations of why he was a fuck up.
Sadly, based Akutagawa and Abe seem to have fewer readers
>>7961842
how is this book?
>>7961907
The Japanese Iliad would be the the Tale of Heike, not Tale of Genji.
favorites from this publisher?
I really like haruki murakami. You should read some of his books if you are in the mood for something entertaining.
>>7962452
Worth its own thread teebeeaitch
>>7962452
"The Long Ships" by Frans G. Bengtsson
"A Time of Gifts" by Patrick Leigh Fermor
"Seven Men" by Max Beerbohm
>>7962465
How dare you
>>7962087
Did you shout "weaboo, weaboo" from the back of the room?
as someone who studies japanese can i just tell you how fucking hard it is to read genji in nihongoooo
fucking christ why didnt i stick with spansih
>>7962308
Mishima just became an embarrassment to the Japs. It really has nothing to do with his writing and everything with his suicide.
>>7962732
Sounds like the japanese are a buncha women
>>7962768
william faulkner went to fort benning dressed as colonel sanders in 1960 to give a rambling speech about how it was time to declare confederate independence anew. when laughed at (who is this moustache?), his 5'5" frame leapt from his perch in the mess hall shaking with rage. he and his five equally colonel-sandersed boyfriends start demanding duels with various servicemen on account of besmirchment. the deranged man brings on suicide by pointing a gun at a random lieutenant.
william faulkner writes very good books. but only those who are comfortable defending that fact will admit that this is the case.
>>7962821
Yeah and hes considered a great author anyway because americans arent pussies
>>7962083
I thought Mishima was also thought to be in reasonably strong contention for the Nobel but then Kawabata won it? Or is this just his fan club?
If its true that mishima's books dont get the recognition they deserve in japan because he like acted shamefully, that actually pisses me off. Thats like national passive aggression.
>>7962878
they do among people who care about literature, but your average educated person will not avoid him without even knowing
like how people avoided nietzsche pre-1970s
>>7962910
Lmao, shame. What a retarded culture.
>>7962913
meant "will" obviously
>>7962908
>you can't learn japanese
What makes you say this?
>>7962878
Not it's not. It's master morality. Mishima challenged that which was set out by the nobles of Japanese society and lost. He is thought of the same way the Greeks thought of beta males.
Outside of Tokyo, Japan has no counter culture. Nerds unironically hate other nerds for being nerdy.
>>7962732
Japan is a Confucian country, and has no will to truth. The consequence of that is that no one cares how good you really are at something unless you behave like someone who's good at it.
A Japanese author on the world stage must act like a representative of Japan or he will be promptly dropped.
>>7962947
he tried and failed
>>7963008
this is somewhat true (if exaggerated), but it's not that it natively doesn't exist, but rather than almost everyone both peculiar and clever ends up in tokyo
>>7963016
complete dogshit; the vast majority can't stand nietzsche or faulkner for fort benning >>7962821, it's the same thing
>people reading translation
Disgusting.
>>7963008
Mishima was an unashamed Nationalist who saw America and creeping Western cultural imperialism as the greatest threat to Japan. In Post-War Japan, this was too much for a society cuckolded by American occupation and consumerism. Trust a gay dude to be one of the few japanese who wanted to bring back its honourable virility
>>7963168
Religiously motivated homophobia was introduced by the Westerners, his sexuality isn't really in conflict with conservatism since homophobia isn't deeply ingrained in Japanese traditions.
I've only read Shusaku Endo and he is really great. It was a translation so it didn't read aesthetically on a very high level, but he deals with themes which I personally found strong and he crafts pretty solid characters. One of my favorite writers now, if anyone can find something that isn't Silence, Kiku or that play I would appreciate it a lot.
>>7961925
I would rate Mishima higher than that, but that's a fairly good list.
Soseki's later work is in a different league from any of them.
>>7963181
Yea actually, you basically don't talk about your sexuality in public here, it shows a lack of modesty.
Also nationalism is, and has been since ww2, a hugely controversial subject here. Mishima was simply too western. In many ways he's the polar opposite of Murakami- he has the goods but he couldn't fit himself into Japanese society.
Japanese literature after the 1900s is western literature
>>7961907
Tale of Genji is more like if the Ithaca chapters of the Odyssey were stretched out 1,000 pages
>>7963296
Japan after the 1900s is a western nation
>>7963143
There is no will to truth here. They don't like Nietzsche because they can't make sense of him. Academics seem to think Japan is the west like Mishima-kun, but Japan never had a value-changing event akin to Christianity, and as such, maintains a society closer to that of the ancients than probably any other place on earth. Even the Kyoto school's view of nihilism is quite different though they think it's the same.
Try it. Come to Japan. No one cares how good you are at anything outside of business, and regular people will expect you to be a model foreigner. Foreigners should act like foreigners (I.e. Atsugiri Jason or people on you ha nani shi ni Nippon he), like teachers should act like teachers and doctors like doctors.
You can even see it in anime, movies and books. It's all exactly as Nietzsche describes ancient society. Empathy is rare and pity is the main way people help each other. Men have a high amount of pride and their interactions are thus guided by custom.
It's fascinating when you realize that this is the source of the "politeness" people find in Japan that dries up quickly when you're no longer a guest. You're essentially a suitor in Odysseus' house.
>>7961870
YOOOOOOOOOOOOO
>>7963008
I never knew the Greeks had a concept of beta males.
>>7963317
>They don't like Nietzsche because they can't make sense of him
i meant in the west
talk about reading nietzsche to your average, see what look you get if there's any recognition
japan is not an outlier on the "will to truth" spectrum (merely more naked)
Dazai
Abe
Oe
Mishima
Soseki
>>7963339
it would help if you actually read them, a large portion deals with kleos
>>7962869
mishima was probably on the lists but there's a 50 year delay before nomination/process is publicized. he was on the 1964 long list of nominations (but not the 1965) but wasn't on the shortlist.
also on the long list were junzaburo nishiwaki, and kawabata who won it 4 years later.
tanizaki was actually on the final shortlist for 1964 and barely lost out to sartre
>>7963381
actually i lied he was on the 1965 long list (and 1963 as well) by the same person as 1964 (harry martinson, who was on the academy and won the prize himself in 1974 amidst some controversy; he generally championed japanese authors on the committee, and was responsible for the bulk of kawabata/tanizaki/mishima/etc. nominations)
tanizaki was fairly consistently nominated, every year from 1958 - 1965 (when he died), minus 1959, and by a pretty wide variety of people
>>7961925
This is very good, I would Second Kawabata and put Endo and Mishima to top tier too.
I have a hard time accessing Soseki :/
>>7962821
could you point me toward somewhere on the internet that discusses this event? I can't find it on google
>>7963464
