This guy is considered to be the greatest japanese author of 20th century. Why are there never any threads about him here?
There's always a distinction between East Asian authors that are popular at home and those that are popular abroad. They tend to rate those writers with a strong sense of their era and culture the most highly. Sōseki is a lot like this. But it's a hard sell for foreigners who have a pretty loose connection to modern Japanese culture, let alone its historic development. Chinese writers are much the same.
>>25078768>SosekiPopular and celebrated in the west.>Chinese authorsAre popular and celebrated in the west...Names like Yu Hua, Mo Yen, Su Thong, Gao Xingjian, Lao She, Eileen Chang are world-wide phenomena. Mo Yan got Nobel Prize ffs.
>>25078776I didn't say they aren't translated but they write about things that are difficult for Westerners to appreciate so there's always a barrier to cultural transmission.>Are popular and celebrated in the west...Names like Yu Hua, Mo Yen, Su Thong, Gao Xingjian, Lao She, Eileen Chang are world-wide phenomenaThese are all niche writers even within literary circles. Most Western people don't know what the cultural revolution is and even the ones that do aren't going to have a solid appreciation of how it dramatically changed Chinese culture. Because why would they? They aren't Chinese. That affects the likelihood of someone to read and 'get' Yu Hua which is why redditors call To Live misery porn.>Mo Yan got Nobel Prize ffsSo? Svetlana Alexievich got one too and nobody knows who she is either.
>>25078789>These are all niche writers even within literary circles.My 60 year old neighbor who I chat about literature sometimes knows who both Yu Hua and Mo Yan are and no she isn't chinese and isn't interested in china. And in China Yu Hua is bestselling author...Even if that were true - isn't this board supposed to be the place for that? Don't you retards act all mighty about being intellectuals?Tanizaki is far less 'niche' than Mishima - as I said in OP he is often claimed to be the best japanese author of 20th century yet mishima gets basically non-stop threads. I am going to blame the /pol/ infection, since the threads aren't about his books anyway.>barrier to cultural transmissionI do not live in 19th century France (in fact nobody on this board does) yet I can appreciate Count Monte Cristo. The 'barrier to cultural transmission' (what a nonsense term) is far greater when it has to go both through time and place for sure?Lastly and I mean this seriously mate - you sound like slow person trying to sound clever. Try doing something about it. Some self-reflection would help for sure.
>>25078757By whom?
>>25079094nice gotcha.
In France we're pretty lucky, we have a "Pléiade" version in 2 volumes. Even though there's not everything he wrote, but still...
>>25078776>Mo Yan got Nobel PrizeBecause the CCP aggressively campaigned on his behalf. He's a shit writer.
>>25078789>I didn't say they aren't translated but they write about things that are difficult for Westerners to appreciateShut up, pseud.
Getting new "unpublished" work every couple of year is also a great, especially when it's not "pure" novel.Anyway, any favourite work from him?
>>25080332a treat*
>>25080332I've started Makioka Sisters yesterday, about 100 pages in, it's been beautiful experience. Like a combination of Tolstoy and Austen.
>>25079222By some shitty publisher? Yawn.
>>25080451I saw the film of that and wasn’t particularly impressed at the time. It’s basically a Jane Austen telenovela but the catch is each sister has a season attached to her summer winter spring summer and her overall mood and appearance even the color reflects this. That seems gimmicky and crude.
>>25078776Other than Three Body Problem and the Little Red Book, no one outside China is reading modern Chinese literature
>>25078757Kobo Abe is the greatest Jap author of the 20th actually.
>>25080705Well the book has amazing attention to detail akin to 19th century realists and in other parts the prose is beautiful. What's beautiful about the book is that it's poetism comes through the hyperrealistic detail becouse the book is about enjoying beauty of ordinary things.>And when Sachiko was asked what flower she liked best, there was no hesitation in her answer: the cherry blossom. >All these hundreds of years, from the days of the oldest poetry collections, there have been poems about cherry blossoms. The ancients waited for cherry blossoms, grieved when they were gone, and lamented their passing in countless poems. How very ordinary the poems had seemed to Sachiko when she read them as a girl, but now she knew, as well as one could know, that grieving over fallen cherry blossoms was more than a fad or a convention. >The family – Sachiko, her husband and daughter, her two younger sisters – had for some years now been going to Kyoto in the spring to see the cherry blossoms. The excursion had become a fixed annual observance.(…) For Sachiko there was, besides pleasant sorrow for the cherry blossoms, sorrow for her sisters and the passing of their youth.>As the season approached, there would be reports on when the cherries were likely to be in full bloom. With each breeze and each shower their concern for the cherries would grow.>The cherries of the Heian Shrine were left to the last because they, of all the cherries in Kyoto, were the most beautiful. Now that the great weeping cherry in Gion was dying and its blossoms were growing paler each year, what was left to stand for the Kyoto spring if not the cherries in the Heian Shrine? >>25080731>>250807022 retarded children who think being edgy and argumentative means they have personality.
japanese fiction is insufferable. thank god for the germans or their ontology would have been dogshite too
I've read The Key, and while it was entertaining, it read like a weird voyeristic coomer fantasy. I vastly prefer Kawabata and Mishima.
>>25082660I like the Kawabata edition of Bamboo cutter he did from traditional Japanese.
>>25080837You're a silly twat
the Japanese can't right>the mountain was tall>the ocean is far away>the sky is blue>it's summer>i want to die
>>25082884Oh my, how embarrassing...
>>25078757Not as homoerotically fascist as Mishima.
>>25083812Mishima is performative fascist for performative readers. No wonder this board obsesses over him (not over his books - they don't read)
>>25083955Life for sale bangs tho
>>25078776>>25079064>Names like Yu Hua, Mo Yen, Su Thong, Gao Xingjian, Lao She, Eileen ChangNobody has fucking heard of these people, even people who are into literature. Take your ESL ass back behind the firewall, you have no idea what western tastes or trends are like.
>>25084128His books great but people here don't understand them and basically reduced Mishima to parody of himself
>>25079064>yet I can appreciate Count Monte CristoBecause some books are successful at generalizing their themes beyond their time and place and others aren't. I'm telling you that Asian literature frequently fails to do this because Asian writers aren't even slightly concerned with their writing being well received outside their culture nor are they concerned with accessing the general truths behind things. They're totally satisfied with writing about the particulars of a time or place. Yu Hua is writing *for* Chinese people and is expressing a reflection *on* Chinese culture and history. That's it. Any engagement with Yu Hua is sociological. Nobody is drawing deep insight into the nature of suffering from his works even if his characters suffer immensely. I blame Lu Xun for this who set the tone for modern Chinese writing and only ever engaged in incessant (and boring) cultural critique.>Lastly and I mean this seriously mateYou're embarrassing yourself trying to sound white when you're obviously an upset chink with ill intentions.
>>25084942Sailor who fell from grace is a great novella where if you want to introduce Nietzschean themes and political ideas about self autonomy of a state vs being only a vassal (this book is actually relevant to modern Ukraine now I think about it. Ukraine as the sailor). It’s however too crude in its symbolism to be a truly great book and I relegate it as only for young people (17- 22).
>>25085253Most books are for young adults. That's one of his weaker works too.
>>25085253Mishima to me is author who kind of wanted to say something his whole life - but for long time didn't know WHAT exactly and what's more didn't know HOW to say it. All his books are about 'IT' and he is getting better and better and transmitting it, but Sea of Fertility is where he nailed it. If I remember correctly Sailor Who Fell From The Grace With The Sea came some time before Sea of Fertility, and he 'almost' got 'it' but not quite. On other hand to me Golden Pavilion is an attempt that's almost complete miss.
>>25086251Despite its crude almost Brechtian nature as agitprop with a clear agenda I actually think it says something important about Japan’s autonomy and any country’s natural autonomy and its destiny. The sailor is a masculine and strong man when he sails the seas and lives for himself but the cruel, enticing and seemingly beneficial yet ultimately aimless and effeminate nature of liberal democracy and particularly America’s influence symbolized by the woman does him in and ultimately suicide and self-destruction is his fate. I sort of like it despite also seeing it as crude. It stands clear today in a world of Zelensky’s and syrias.
>>25086251have you read patriotism? he knew exactly what he meant to say there and he wrote it right in the middle of his career.
>>25078757He and Kawabata are my favorites of Japanese lit. >>25080332The Secret History of the Lord Musashi and Seven Japanese Tales are my favorites of his. >>25080451>Like a combination of Tolstoy and Austen.You are insufferable. Not shitting on Tolstoy or Austen, just you.
>>25089573The Makioka sisters can pretty adequately be described as a crude Jap Jane Austen knockoff.
>>25080332Probably In Praise of Shadows, but the Makioka Sisters and Diary of a Mad Old Man were excellent reads too.
>>25089585Sure, but that is because it is not a knockoff and reducing it to a knockoff will make it seem crude.>>25089588In Praise of Shadows is great but I don't think it is a good entry into Tanizaki unless you are into aesthetics. I have wanted to read Diary of a Mad Old Man for years, Brautigan's dedication for Sombrero Fallout was something like "for Junichiro Tanizaki who wrote Diary of a Mad Old Man" and that dedication is where I found out of Tanizaki, so I went down to the used book store which ended up having half a dozen of his books, I bought them all and plowed through them. Still have yet to stumble on a copy of Diary of a Mad Old Man and it is still the book of his I want to read the most. One of these days I will just order a copy.
