J-Lit Giants: 6 - Kobo Abe

It's Wednesday - and that means it must be time for another J-Lit Giant!  Gary, of The Parrish Lantern, is back again to introduce us to another great of Japanese literature - and after visiting the world of poetry in his last post, he is back to prose this time :)

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A Man of Many Masks – Kobo Abe

Kōbō Abe (安部 公房 Abe Kōbō), pseudonym of Kimifusa Abe (安部 公房), was born on March the 7th 1924 in Kita, Tokyo, but he grew up in Mukden (now Shen-yang) in Manchuria during the second world war. In 1948, he received a medical degree from the Tokyo Imperial University, yet never practised medicine. As well as being a prose writer, he was also a poet (Mumei shishu - "Poems of an unknown poet" - 1947), playwright, photographer and inventor. Although his first novel Owarishi michi no shirube ni ("The Road Sign at the End of the Street") was published in 1948, which helped to establish his reputation, it wasn’t until the publication of The Woman in the Dunes in 1962 that he won widespread international acclaim.

Often described as an avant-garde playwright and novelist, he shared the same literary map as the likes of Samuel Beckett, Franz Kafka and Eugene Ionesco through a shared sense of the absurd and the central theme of an alienated and isolated individual at a loss in the world. Kobo Abe manages to do this within the realms of genres that would be recognised by most: if you fancy a detective novel, there's The Ruined Map; for Science Fiction, Inter Ice Age 4; for Fantasy, Kangaroo Notebook.  There’s even a love story aspect to The Face of Another.

In the 1960s, he worked with the Japanese director Hiroshi Teshigahara on the film adaptations of The Face of Another, plus The Pitfall, The Woman in the Dunes and The Ruined Map. Then, in the early 1970s, he set up an acting studio in Tokyo, where he trained performers and directed plays. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1977.

Among the honours bestowed on him were the Akutagawa Prize in 1951 for The Crime of S. Karuma, the Yomiuri Prize in 1962 for The Woman in the Dunes, and the Tanizaki Prize in 1967 for the play Friends. Kenzaburō Ōe stated that Abe deserved the Nobel Prize in Literature, which he himself had won (Abe was nominated multiple times).

Kobo Abe, through his work as an avant-garde novelist and playwright, has had names of the calibre of Albert Camus, Alberto Moravia and Franz Kafka, (as well as those mentioned above) thrown at him, and like Kafka there is an apparent clinical detachment in the writing, as though Abe’s medical background has had a direct influence upon his writing style.  Yet with this there is also an elegance that makes his work an immensely enjoyable and also an incredibly satisfying read – on all levels.

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Two Great Books by Kobo Abe

The Face of Another (1964) - A plastics scientist loses his face in an accident and proceeds to obtain a new face for himself. With a new 'mask', the protagonist sees the world in a new way and even goes so far as to have a clandestine affair with his estranged wife. There is also a subplot following a hibakusha woman who has suffered burns to the right side of her face. In the novel, the protagonist sees this character in a film (click link for my post).

The Ruined Map (1967) - The story of an unnamed detective, hired by a beautiful, alcoholic woman, to find clues related to the disappearance of her husband. In the process, the detective is given a map (a ruined one), to help him - this turns out to be more like a metaphor of the guidelines one should have in life. The impossibility of finding any relevant clues to solve the mystery leads the main character to an existential crisis, building slowly from inside, and this finally puts him in the position of identifying himself with the man he was supposed to find.

These are just two of around eight English translated novels and at least one short story collection from this fabulous writer, and I mean fabulous with all its connotations. Kobo Abe, manages to astound and amaze and yet remain within the realms of what could be defined as the mundane reality of the world about us.

For more information I will be posting a version of this post on my blog at a later date, with all the Novels and a synopsis of them.

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Thanks again, Gary :)  Abe is another writer I should really have read more of.  Apart from a couple of short stories, I've only managed to get to his most famous work, The Woman in the Dunes.  More to come, I'm sure...

And how about you?  What is your favourite Kobo Abe book?  Just leave a comment in the usual place if your favourite hasn't been mentioned :)

Nichi-Yōbi News: Week 3

Some of you may have caught last week's discussion on the great Ten-Ten controversy (in the comments section of last Sunday's post), and being the avid linguist I am, I googled a few things researched the matter thoroughly on your behalf.  Having come to the conclusion that, in usage at least, Matt was correct, I have used my great technological skills to manipulate the image on the left accordingly (Momotarō is still less than impressed...).  Let's all move on, shall we?

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As always, I'll start by pointing you in the direction of our in-house posts.  This week's J-Lit Giants submission was a great piece by Patrick on Osamu Dazai.  If you haven't already done so, please check it out :)

While you're here, why not have a look at the reviews page too?  The list is growing very nicely, and by the end of the month we should have a wide range of interesting and well-written posts.  If you haven't submitted your review yet, please leave your link on the page.  Next week, I'll let you know why that might be to your advantage...

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One of my favourite J-Lit blogs, Nihon Distractions, pointed me in the direction of Asymptote magazine this week, where you can read an excerpt from Toh EnJoh's Akutagawa-Prize-Winning book Harlequin's Butterfly.  It's a book which has yet to be fully translated into English, but on the strength of this extract, it's one which would be worth trying :)

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While we're on the topic of the Akutagawa Prize, the latest award was announced this week, and as the Japan Times reports, it has gone to Natsuko Kuroda.  What is especially interesting here is that at the ripe old age of seventy five, Kuroda (for her book ab Sango) has become the oldest ever winner of the prize - one which is for up-and-coming literary talents!

Also this week, Ryou Asai & Ryotarou Abe were jointly awarded the Naoki Prize, the popular equivalent of the more-literary Akutagawa Prize.  We can look forward to seeing all three books in English - some time around 2033...

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...and speaking of Akutagawa-Prize-winning authors whose works are still unavailable in English, a tweet courtesy of @wrongsreversed sent me to an old post written by Risa Wataya about a lecture tour she went on in Germany and Italy. It's an interesting piece by a writer whose books should be translated into English - hopefully, this oversight will be rectified very soon...

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That's all for this week, but come back on Wednesday for another J-Lit Giant - and there'll be more news next Sunday, of course!  I'll have some more interesting links, and I'll also be letting you know about my second giveaway (which will be a little different from the usual kind...).  See you then!

J-Lit Giants: 5 - Osamu Dazai

Today's J-Lit Giants offering is another guest post, this time from Patrick.  Patrick is not a blogger, but he is on twitter (@ResearcherNo1), and he is a big J-Lit fan.  In his own words:

"I was born and raised in Los Angeles, but now live in Seoul.  I'm currently a salaryman and have a degree in philosophy.  My interests include: books, movies, music, food (cooking and eating), baseball (watching, not playing), and travel."

Now that you've met Patrick, let's find out more about his chosen J-Lit Giant :)

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Suicide, rebellion, addiction, genius and Dazai 

“Osamu Dazai once wrote a short story entitled “A Handsome Devil with a Cigarette.” I had always thought it was a great title for a film. I like Dazai a lot.”  Film-maker Wong Kar-Wai

Osamu Dazai, the pen name of Shuji Tsushima, is one of the most famous 20th century authors in Japan. With an eponymous literary prize and his stories still being made into movies and manga, Dazai’s work continues to remain popular. However, outside Japan he is not as well-known as other Japanese authors. 

Born into a large and wealthy family in 1909, Dazai’s interest in writing started early. However, before even turning twenty, he had discovered women and drugs, and attempted suicide for the first time. After moving to Tokyo and entering university, he continued to be drawn to women and drugs and was arrested on more than one occasion.  And so began a cycle of Dazai getting into trouble, his family bailing him out and subsequently disowning him. This continued throughout his life, with friends eventually replacing his family. During his career as a writer, he ran away with numerous women, became addicted to drugs and alcohol, was committed to an insane asylum and attempted suicide numerous times. This of course is a short and crude, but accurate, description of a far more complex life, a life written about with far more skill by Dazai himself in many stories, including "Eight Scenes from Tokyo".  He continued to write through World War II and survived the many bombings, only to succeed in committing suicide in 1948 at the age of 38.

A master storyteller, Dazai’s body of work is diverse, though he is best known for his semi-autobiographical fiction.  For these stories, he borrowed liberally from the details of his life.  This, along with his use of the first person narrative, blurred the line between author and characters to create a style similar to what we see in some of the works of John Fante and Charles Bukowski.  Especially in Japan, Dazai is also well known for his modern retellings of classics and folk tales.  Not satisfied with merely updating these stories, he departs significantly from the originals to create something unexpected and wildly inventive.

Dazai’s themes of hopelessness, alienation and nihilism captured the feelings of many in post-war Japan, while his rebellion against the establishment has always endeared him to younger readers. For me though, it is his sense of humor and the humanity in his characters (for better and worse) that continue to draw my interest.

Despite his life being cut short, Dazai left us a significant number of short stories as well as novels and essays. While his exact place in modern Japanese literature is still debated, his importance is undeniable. Osamu Dazai is a complex individual, and there is much to discover and enjoy in his writing. Having read almost everything of Dazai’s writing translated into English, I can definitely say that I agree with Wong Kar-Wai. I like Dazai a lot. In fact, he has become one of my favorites.

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Though Dazai is usually known for his pessimistic semi-autobiographical fiction, his work is actually quite diverse, which I’ve tried to reflect in my recommendations. 

No Longer Human – Quintessential Dazai at his nihilistic best and considered by many his masterpiece. It is one of the all-time best-selling novels in Japan, along with Natsume Soseki’s Kokoro and Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood. 

Self Portraits – A short story collection of his autobiographical fiction spanning the years 1933 – 1948. This work includes his first story using the name Osamu Dazai, “Train,” the previously noted “Eight Scenes from Tokyo” and “Handsome Devils and Cigarettes,” as mentioned by Wong Kar-Wai. 

Blue Bamboo – A collection of seven stories including Dazai’s modernized retellings of classics and folk tales. For these he draws from a wide range of material, including Japanese and Chinese classics and even Hans Christian Anderson. A departure from his autobiographical fiction, this book offers another facet of Dazai the author and showcases his talent as a master storyteller. 

* If anyone is interested, contact the author (mysocalledresearch@gmail.com) for an almost complete list of Dazai’s short stories translated into English (around 100). 

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Thanks to Patrick for his views on Dazai, a writer I want to try more of.  The only one I've read so far is The Setting Sun, a great novel which didn't even make Patrick's top three!

As always, now it is over to you!  Have you read anything by this writer?  What would you recommend as a first Dazai book?  Please leave a comment if you want to give us the benefit of your experience :)

Nichi-Yōbi News: Week 2

Well, it turns out that Momotarō was right to look away in disgust last week - it seems that my Japanese wasn't quite as impressive as I'd hoped.  Matt of A Novel Approach informed me that the ten-ten (the little marks on the top right of the final character) are actually superfluous.  Gomen - I'll fix it up next week, promise...

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Anyway, let's get on with this week's summary of what's been happening in January in Japan.  Once again, we've had a good number of reviews on a wide range of books, from Murakami to Kawabata, Ekuni to Tanizaki - all collected for you here.

And, speaking of Tanizaki, old Jun'ichiro was the subject of this week's J-Lit Giants post.  Please have a look - he's a writer well worth checking out.  Next week's giant?  I'm afraid you'll just have to wait until Wednesday to find out...

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As you all know, our group readalong book is Hiromi Kawakami's The Briefcase, and it seems to have been a good choice (if I do say so myself!).  This week, the novel was one of five chosen for the shortlist of the 2012 Man Asian Literary Prize, giving Kawakami the opportunity to become the first Japanese writer to take home this award - congratulations!

As the news of the shortlisting unfolded, another piece of news soon appeared on Twitter.  Apparently, Portobello Books will be publishing another Kawakami book in July, one entitled Strange Weather in Tokyo, bringing the number in English translation to three (after The Briefcase and Manazuru).  I enjoyed The Briefcase (as you'll see in my review at the end of the month), so this is a book I'm looking forward to :)

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Another successful writer is (of course) Haruki Murakami, and Friday of this week was his 64th birthday - happy birthday, Murakami-san :)  Conicidentally, Random House have released an i-Pad app, a calendar for 2013 which (apparently) also has a few stories which are previously unreleased in English.  I'd like to see the list of stories first, but it still sounds like a nice little present for your favourite J-Lit fan... or yourself ;)

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Finally today, a tweep(!) I followed recently, @wendy_tokunaga, has been forwarding all kinds of Japanese-related links.  I'm a sucker for these things, and I can't resist reading them, even when not all are that relevant.  However, a couple of good ones were a page giving information about Japanese culture in New York and an interview with a sake sommelier in a New York restaurant.  If that sounds like your kind of thing...

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That's all for now - I'll see you next Sunday with some more rubbish useful information - hope you'll join me ;)

J-Lit Giants: 4 - Jun'ichiro Tanizaki

It's time to praise another of those J-Lit Giants, and I'm especially happy to introduce today's writer.  He's a man who straddles both sides of the Kanto-Kansai divide and a writer who, while unwilling to write conventional endings, is very interested in what his characters get up to in the bedroom...

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Jun'ichiro Tanizaki, born in 1886, is one of the most popular and well-known modern Japanese writers.  He was born in Tokyo and spent most of his young adult life writing for newspapers and magazines, with moderate success.  At this time he had a great interest in all things western, even moving to Yokohama, where there were more foreigners than in Tokyo.

However, it wasn't until he moved to Kyoto, after the 1923 earthquake in the Tokyo region, that his writing became more widely noticed.  His move to the Kansai region brought about a rediscovery of traditional Japanese culture, and this translated into a different style of writing, one in which his characters attempt to return to their cultural roots.  This was a way for Tanizaki to work through his own feelings about the way modern Japan was developing.

Anyone who has read works by Tanizaki will probably agree though that another theme which pervades his work is eroticism - put more bluntly, sex.  Many of his more famous works are relatively explicit and utterly compelling.  Again, there is more than a hint of the writer's own life in these tangled relationships (although his novels are definitely fiction...).  Tanizaki repeatedly attempts to examine the conflict between the need to keep up a show for outsiders while a marriage is falling apart, often because of differing sexual needs.

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Tanizaki's work can be quite accessible, but at the same time a little unfamiliar.  Perhaps more so than usual, his works seldom have a conventional ending, leaving the (western) reader stranded and confused.  He believed that if he described his characters well enough, there was no need to spoon-feed the readers with an ending.  This is writing for those who are prepared to draw their own conclusions :)

My three Tanizaki books to start with are:

1) Quicksand - This is a fast-paced psychological, erotic novel, one which twists and turns, amazing the reader both with its unexpectedly risqué storyline and its continual developments.  New readers will enjoy a slightly stronger emphasis on plot than can be the case with Tanizaki.

2) Some Prefer Nettles - The writer's twin obsessions of relationships and the Kanto-Kansai divide are both present here in a short psychological work, detailing the disintegration of a marriage.  This is a work which definitely falls into the ambiguous-ending category ;)

3) The Makioka Sisters - Generally regarded as Tanizaki's classic, The Makioka Sisters is a fairly long novel for J-Lit, running to close to 500 pages.  It follows three sisters living in Osaka as they attempt to balance their family responsibilities with their own wishes and a changing society.

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Does this sound like your kind of writer?  If so, why not give him a try soon?  I'm sure that some of you out there will be able to recommend several other Tanizaki works to start with too.  Comments in the usual place, please :)