Happy Sunday! I have been a fan of Japanese literature for a very long time. I usually start the new reading year with stories written by Haruki Murakami which are full of magical realism. Fortunately he has a new book coming out in November, The City and It's Uncertain Walls.
"We begin with a nameless young couple: a boy and a girl, teenagers in love. One day, she disappears . . . and her absence haunts him for the rest of his life.
Thus begins a search for this lost love that takes the man into middle age and on a journey between the real world and an other world – a mysterious, perhaps imaginary, walled town where unicorns roam, where a Gatekeeper determines who can enter and who must remain behind, and where shadows become untethered from their selves. Listening to his own dreams and premonitions, the man leaves his life in Tokyo behind and ventures to a small mountain town, where he becomes the head librarian, only to learn the mysterious circumstances surrounding the gentleman who had the job before him. As the seasons pass and the man grows more uncertain about the porous boundaries between these two worlds, he meets a strange young boy who helps him to see what he’s been missing all along."
I've branched out quite a bit over the years and have acquired many more books written about and by Japanese authors. From Reading the City series,(I hope to eventually read them all) I have added the Book of Tokyo, A City in Short Fiction, with short stories written by Banana Yoshimoto and more:
"A shape-shifter arrives at Tokyo harbour in human form, set to embark on an unstoppable rampage through the city’s train network… A young woman is accompanied home one night by a reclusive student, and finds herself lured into a flat full of eerie Egyptian artefacts… A man suspects his young wife’s obsession with picnicking every weekend in the city’s parks hides a darker motive… At first, Tokyo appears in these stories as it does to many outsiders: a city of bewildering scale, awe-inspiring modernity, peculiar rules, unknowable secrets and, to some extent, danger. Characters observe their fellow citizens from afar, hesitant to stray from their daily routines to engage with them. But Tokyo being the city it is, random encounters inevitably take place – a naïve book collector, mistaken for a French speaker, is drawn into a world he never knew existed; a woman seeking psychiatric help finds herself in a taxi with an older man wanting to share his own peculiar revelations; a depressed divorcee accepts an unexpected lunch invitation to try Thai food for the very first time… The result in each story is a small but crucial change in perspective, a sampling of the unexpected yet simple pleasure of other people’s company. As one character puts it, ‘The world is full of delicious things, you know."
My family are also big fans of the Godzilla movies created by Toho Studios in Japan which lead to us wanting to eventually travel to Japan. The closest we have gotten is through our armchair travels which is why I recently picked up Pico Iyer's A Beginners Guide to Japan:
"In A Beginner’s Guide to Japan, Iyer draws on his years of experience—his travels, conversations, readings, and reflections—to craft a playful and profound book of surprising, brief, incisive glimpses into Japanese culture. He recounts his adventures and observations as he travels from a meditation hall to a love hotel, from West Point to Kyoto Station, and from dinner with Meryl Streep to an ill-fated call to the Apple service center in a series of provocations guaranteed to
pique the interest and curiosity of those who don’t know Japan—and to remind those who do of its myriad fascinations."
I enjoy translated books from a variety of countries but there is an emotional richness to Japanese literature, with layers and complexity that will capture your attention.
Japanese Literature divided into four periods
Why I love Japanese Literature
65 Best Japanese Books of All Time
Contemporary Japanese Literature
Where to Get Started with 57 Essential Japanese Books in English
Happy Reading!
