Not including light novels or manga, what do you guys think? Classic vs contemporary Japanese literature. Is it superior to other literature, or is it just standard and not unique like manga is?Apparently the first novel ever written was made by a Japanese woman. I have a hard time believing this, because I thought that the Greeks, Romans, or Chinese would come up with novels before. After all, Japan started their civilization a little later than the other ancients.
I can't read Japanese
>>25309384> I have a hard time believing this, because I thought that the Greeks, Romans, or Chinese would come up with novels before. It depends on your definition of “novel” because the ones before Don Quixote didn’t exactly follow a standardized form. The oldest work we would now consider as a book length novel following the same characters on an arc from beginning to denouement are probably either Petronius Satyricon circa 100 AD (though it only exists in fragments) or Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe (circa 250 AD)- the first complete novel.
>>25309400it's translated into english, read it english
>>25309403I'm not convinced japanese language can be translated at this pointIn fact I don't believe any language can be translated into another without losing out on the authors original story
>>25309413No it's not the original, obviously, but it can be translated; however poorly. A translation is a completely different version of the same story; you just have to be okay with that.
>>25309413>>25309452Reddit.
>>25309384I like Ryu Murakami. Tried to read Tale of Genji during my weeb phase, but it was hard for me at the time and it impacted my enjoyment, so I gave up like, 1/4th of the way through. It's been a long time; I should try re-reading it.
>>25309384Only thing I give a shit about is natsume souseki, read him in Japanese.
>>25309503Just read the manga version if you get filtered again.
I like Essays in Idleness. I've read it 4 times cover to coverI've read 300 pages of Tale of Genji, Tales of Ise, Pillow Book and Hojoki I love Akutagawa and Mishima
>>25309546No.
No Longer Human is a very /lit/ novel.
>>25309645Then don't cry that you're incapable of finishing it and remain eternally filtered by references to it in other works.
they were rightly influenced by Dostoevsky
>>25309384I'm into everything post Meiji restoration.
>>25309413People who expect translations to be 100% faithful have unrealistic expectations. Consider Shakespeare plays for instance, written in your native language, do you really think you could understand them in the manner a contemporary man who would have read them during the 1600s or seen live performances does?
>>25309658for all of the effort aston put into studying, reading, translating, and writing about japanese, his history of japanese literature makes it seem like he thought japan and its arts were near worthless
>>25309384>ClassicGeneric, quite bad asian mythos. The Chinese clears.>contemporary Japanese literaturePost war Japan had the greatest writers in the history of humanity, the communist ones. Sadly, a lot of them are forgotten because of their politics.Nowadays, a lot of highbrow stuff is very baizuo in its approach to social issues, which tanks the overall quality of their works. Heaven by Mieko Kawakami, for example. Incel falls in love with a femcel, and the femcel falls in love with that incel, before the concepts of "incel" and "femcel" were even a thing? Amazingly approached, since no western feminist was talking about it at that time. The femcel has anorexia mirabilis? Phenomenally written, for the same reason. They both are subject to bullying? Bullying is still a very discussed topic among lib women, so you'll find in Heaven the most tacky, cringe, borderline schizophrenic take on it I've even read ever.Good thing the amount of prostitutes in contemporary Japan is insane, and their numbers don't seem to dwindle any time soon, and, as you may know, the prostitutes write only the deepest, most beautiful novels ever conceived by humanity, so I do have hope for Japan to produce some more great works of literature, at least for the time being. But, sadly, they are very rarely translated into English, since they almost always filter the normalfaggots.
there's that untranslated novel by shozo numa about herbivore men or a herbivore society, only translated to french, there used to be an anon who made threads about, haven't seen a thread about it in 5 or so years
no, i won't be paid to wear a dress shirt to my job. that about sums up why you feel this way about translations
>>25309690doesn't matter, even Shakespeare's translations into other euro languages were good enough to inspire. People should start thinking that maybe JP to Eng translations aren't good because Japs just can't write for shit. Their language is restrictive as fuck on thought expression and information transfer is abysmal
>>25310045what i am hearing you say is they can't write for you or western audiences, their language has a lot of nuance and you are too lazy to learn these nuances
I've read books in french, arabic, english and japanese, and japanese books, beside the recent stuff like Haruki Murakami, are way better than the other languages I mentioned, I've also read translations of japanese in french and english before learning it but they can't ever reflect the beautiful prosing of this language.Some of my favorite Books in Japanese :- Kusamakura, Natsume Souseki (I've also read two chapters in french)- Kokoro, Natsume Souseki- Ningen Shikkaku/No longer human, Dazai Osamu (I've read this one in japanese and english)- Shayou, Dazai OsamuI plan to read more classics, especially Mishima (but it's the most complicated I think) and now I'm reading Aku no Kyōten by Kishi Yūsuke, it's good but not comparable to the books I mentionnés.
Consistently style over substance.The problem with being a collective, consensus nation is subversive or unique points of view are hammered down. It leads to literature that is either extraordinarily cliche or outright inaccessible because only the most dedicated schizo authors get published. Disappointing considering the prevalence of physical bookstores in Japan. I also think the social inner- and outer-face aspects of the language make it quite stiff, which may be why there are way more prolific Japanese filmmakers and artists than authors. Something about words as a medium doesn't work with Japanese creative. I greatly enjoyed Dazai but found out that most Japanese don't consider his writing very worthwhile due to his personal behavior. Mishima is at least an extraordinarily interesting dude. Shinichi Hoshi's short-short stories are in a very cool format, but they do suffer a bit as products of their time. Ironically, the one thing I do agree with the Japanese on is that Murakami is awful. Adolescent regurgitation of imagery that is functionally meaningless and almost an inverted weeaboo for 1960s American pastiche.
