About Japanese Literature

1. A curious observation came up recently amongst a few friends while we were talking about the books we were reading. We were all reading something written by a Japanese author, and the discussion led to other Japanese authros that we’ve read; in the course of our conversation a common theme was how depressing Japanese authors can be. I’m hardly well versed in Japanese literature — my experience of Japanese fiction extends no further than a handful of Murakamis and Koushun Takami’s Battle Royal, but in a group of four only one of us managed to come up with a Japanese book that wasn’t depressing in any way. The rest deals with pain and loss, or violence, or oppression; the list of depressing subjects goes on. So why are Japanese authors so damn depressing? And if we know it’s depressing, why do we keep reading it?

2. Right, back to Murakami.

Comments

  1. Japanese authors are depressing because their whole country is based on squelching the individual and celebrating the beauty of mono-chromatic conformism. For the three awful years that I was over there I realized that a country that honors mass suicide as a form of respect is probably retarded.

    Michael Zielenziger’s book “Shutting out the Sun” ( http://www.shuttingoutthesun.com ) is a much more consice explanation that will answer your question more eloquently with less straight-up racism than I could.

    Comment by Alamaster Moody — September 18, 2008 @ 11:01 pm

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