/jp/ - Otaku Culture

"Japanese literature."

Seriously, there's tons of Japanese literature in translation here in the west, and has been for decades. It's only recently, after the anime boom of the last 20 years, that we're seeing light novels being translated in such large numbers, because there might just be an audience for them. The difference is that light novels are aimed almost solely at an audience made receptive by the expectations of anime and manga, whereas an "otaku" is much less likely to be interested in reading, for example, Masuji Ibuse's "Black Rain" just because it comes from Japan. How many light novel readers have sat down and read any Yukio Mishima? Or is somebody into SOA likely to pick up Otsuichi's horror novels just because they happen to come from Japan?

If you're interested in Japanese literature there's a fuckton of it available in English, but it's much more varied than LN fare.