Q

So i spent last night finishing Banana Yoshimoto’s Kitchen. It was quietly brilliant. No gimmicks or moments of exceptional sublimity, but when i was done i knew i read something really, really good.

Then i realized how much i loved everything by Japanese authors – and how much Japanese authors i’ve unconsciously consumed.

Also by that i don’t just mean Murakami’s Norwegian Wood (lolol) (it wasn’t even one of his bests, no not even close) (in fact it’s only famous because he tried his hand at a different style, can i say more Englishy~?. Which i guess made it more read-able to the general public. Hypes..) (try his short stories, in particular The Elephant Vanishes) (After Dark was good too).

It’s, slightly, language. Most are translated and the language takes on a kind of clarity you cannot get from text in English originals. Simplicity, and a stunning flow in narrative. But that’s not all.

It’s mainly the perspectives these Japanese authors take on. Too often i find that books from everywhere else are shaded with pretension. There’s this knowledge that they are writing, creating a form of art, with something they need to tell. I think it’s this awareness of having a sort of power or task or importance that taints their writing with contrition.

This contrition extends to the need to avoid cliché, which usually drives the story into hitting walls – if you are conscious of clichés you cannot transcend it. Many Japanese authors can – somehow. It’s that strange kind of surrealism they have, i guess – a twisted almost perverse way of viewing life they have that gives them the vastness of thought.

They can take life, death, marriage, controversy, love, and deconstruct them to their pure essence, before stringing them together in the weirdest, simplest, but get this – most natural – fashion possible.

It’s also Japanese novels that can make everything seem both depressing and hopeful at the same time – which is really how life is all the damn time.

Even Amélie Nothomb (who is my favorite author of all time gushgushgush), spent her childhood in Japan and could never see anywhere else as home again – i like to think of her as Japanese. I can’t claim to have read Japanese authors intensively, but i guess more extensively than most. Wanted to finish Tale of Genji (because it somehow felt right to start at the very seed of Japanese literature) but i’m not all that disciplined or intellectual – modern texts are easier to sit through.

Of course there’s the usual Natsuo Kirino and Kazuo Ishiguro that everyone reads  (Kirino is spectacular with characters) (Ishiguro is good but that distinct Japanese touch i love isn’t very apparent in his works – he might as well be a good Ang Moh writer who writes with a Japanese slant, same goes with Murakami).

Yukio Mishima. He is the only one who can make me sit through historical texts (eughbarf) (i know, coming from a History student.. i don’t deserve that A, really). Kenzaburo Oe, whose short stories i really, really loved. Mitsuyo Kakuta, i’ve only read ONE of her most famous work actually her translated texts are limited but shdamn was she good. Some years ago (when i was taking third lang, which holy damn is SEVEN years ago) i tried Yasunari Kawabata’s short stories and a novel about the mountain, which i remember was good but didn’t really spend time with. So recently he’s been popping up more often so imma check him out. Well ok this is all i can remember now.. which probably means i haven’t really been reading Japanese texts as much as i should given how much i enjoy them.

THAT’S IT. Reading list expands.