[ 3 / biz / cgl / ck / diy / fa / ic / jp / lit / sci / vr / vt ] [ index / top / reports ] [ become a patron ] [ status ]
2023-11: Warosu is now out of extended maintenance.

/lit/ - Literature

View post   
File: 103 KB, 1240x823, E489D51D-82C1-4F1A-9167-1439AAA2A4DF.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
19513178 No.19513178 [Reply] [Original]

When you read older modern Japanese literature like Dazai or Mishima it seems extremely serious to the point of melodrama. I am curious why this is the case even though Japan is so commonly associated with the exact opposite sort of escapism.

Is Murakami born from the same Japanese societal sentiments that made anime?

There’s a lot of stuff I like about modern Japanese entertainment. A lot of anime and manga is honestly really good at just being comfy.

Are there any modern authors that can take some of the more serious and thematically complex elements of older literature and combine it with some of the happy and carefree elements of modern pop culture?

>> No.19513197

There are multiple currents running through Japan.
Do you think everyone is an anime fan? In fact anime in Japan is often more looked down upon than it is in the west.
Most of Japan do nothing but worship their bosses and work themselves to death by suicide.

>> No.19513204

>>19513178
Boku no pico is a ruthless critique of societal mores and has been compared to Dante writing wise

>> No.19513209

I can speak japanese
If you can't speak japanese you shouldn't come to 4channel or 4chan

>> No.19513217

>>19513209
Why would you ever learn Japanese?
Subtitles aren't that bad, you could've learned a language which would.help you in life or make you more culture .

>> No.19513218

Is murakami worth reading

>> No.19513243

>>19513217
>or make you more culture
sorry bro one tanka by Teika btfos most of european poetic canon

>> No.19513250

>>19513218
Read Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Kafka on the Shore.
If you like those then check out the rest of his bibliography. All his books are pretty samey, and he hasn't written anything good since Kafka on the Shore, so you can ignore his newer stuff unless you get addicted.

>> No.19513824
File: 173 KB, 768x1024, work_novels.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
19513824

>Are there any modern authors that can take some of the more serious and thematically complex elements of older literature and combine it with some of the happy and carefree elements of modern pop culture?
Yes, they're busy writing trivial literature for Japanese audience.
pic related: novels featuring different workplaces

>> No.19513903

He is sort of like Manuel Puig in that he didn’t draw a lot of inspiration from the established style of his country. So he isn’t really affiliated with a “school” of contemporaries.

Mieko Kawakami is a newer author who sort of borrows from him, but really if you want the same tone and voice you want to be reading Chandler, Vonnegut, Carver, Fitzgerald, Brautigan...

>> No.19513964
File: 3.28 MB, 3466x2841, 1637857198496.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
19513964

>>19513178
The older literature of Japan is steeped in the traditions that existed in the prewar period, this gives rise to themes that many westerners still struggle to understand and is in many ways the "true" Japan...themes of eroticism entwined with extreme violence...however the modern Japanese culture is mostly trivial and does not deal with anything that punctures the mask of the superficial and caters towards those of a childish and American sensibility...it is more palatable to undiscerning people but reflects a Japan spiritually ruined by the war and ensnared by the American dollar...it only only maintains a facade of the once highly unique Japanese culture

>> No.19514076

>>19513178
You lack context, read the transitional authors, Tanizaki, Soseki, Kawabata, etc.