/lit/ - Literature

>>4549766
日本書紀(Nihon Shoki), 古事記(Kojiki), 万葉集(Man'yo shu), 古今和歌集(Kokin Waka Shu), 伊勢物語(Ise Monogatari), 源氏物語(Genji Monogatari/The Tale of Genji), 枕草子(Makura no Soshi/The Pillow Book), 方丈記(Hojoki), 平家物語(Heike Monogatari), 新古今和歌集(Shin Kokin Waka Shu), 歎異抄(Tanni Sho), 徒然草(Tsurezure Gusa), 風姿花伝(Fushi Kaden), 奥の細道(Oku no Hosomichi); those are generally recognized as basic canon of classical Japanese literature (including philosophy and non-fiction).

And my favourite pieces out of that list are 万葉集(Man'yo-shu), 古今和歌集(Kokin Waka Shu), and 源氏物語(Tale of Genji). And added to them, I like とはずがたり(Tohazu Gatari), 正法眼蔵(Shobo Genzo), and some anthology of Noh(能)-scripts.

I believe ''the Tale of Genji'' is the all time best of Japanese classical literature. And ''Tohazu Gatari'' should be the second place. It's autobiography of a court lady, mostly love-affairs of the author. Shobo Genzo is philosophical work on Zen Buddhism and its Satori, written by Dogen, one of the greatest monks in Japanese history.

>>4550039
At least in Japan, there was tradition of court-ladies' literature, which we call 女房文学(nyobo bungaku) from 10th to 13th century. Their works such as ''Tale of Genji'', ''The Pillow Book'', or ''Tohazu-Gatari'' are recognized as culmination of Japanese classical literature. Compared to them, men's contribution on national literature were not that much great in general, because they put more effort on writing Chinese than Japanese.

>>4545982
in fact many Chinese stories are also comprised in Konjaku.

added to that, I shouldn't have forget the name of another popular source of modern mysterious stories, Tohno Monogatari by Yanagida Kunio.

>>4544530
We had several anthologies of such mysterial stories amd folklores since ancient era, and they are often used as source of materials by midern Japanese authors. Representative anthology is "Konjaku mongatari shu(今昔物語集, anthology of stories of the past)". It contains almost 1000 stories known in 12th century in Japan.

If you have read Akutagawa Ryunosuken's short stories, you might remember stories of Heian-era, ancient Japan, such as "the nose","rashomon", or "in the groove". Or you might have heard of Aramata Hiroshi, contemporary popular novelist's "Onmyo-ji" series.

These are adopted from episodes in "Konjaku" -- and actually original story is often better than adopted one.

>>4544083
Don't overestimate me. I just have basic knowledge of what I like and that's all. In my univ I was in faculty of engineering and majored material science.

Still here, and in real world I'm in Tokyo Disney Sea waiting for the time of parrade. And I'm a bit drunken already.

Issues about WW2 may not be appropriate to argue in /lit/, so I recommend you to ask Japanese in /int/ if you wanna get response from Japanese in general. But if you want to know my own standpoint I'm alright to talk it after I go back my home. See you later.

>>4541953
And most of us read ''the tales of Ise'' in our middle school as text book of classical Japanese. Classical Japanese, used in ancient literature written in 1000 years ago is different from modern Japanese in terms of both vocabulary and grammar (a little -- not that much as the difference between OE and PdE), so we need to study them to read original text.

That's why Tanizaki and many other people have translated ''Tale of Genji'' to modern Japanese. I believe most of Japanese who read Genji are by translated version. But Tanizaki's translation was not that good, to be frank. Of course his sense of words are outstanding, but his translation was too loyal to the original text. The problem is, the original text of Genji omits most of Subjects and Objects. The author often doesn't describe who said that words to whom, because at least her contemporary thought it is obvious, showing it is too verbose. And that makes reading quite difficult. So usually translator note them to help reader's comprehension, but Tanizaki didn't. Therefore, for me, ironically, original text with note is easier to read than Tanizaki's translation.

>>4541953
Chinese are everywhere in my country, so naturally I have daily opportunities to converse with them including my colleague, my cliant, my neighbor. You can find Chinese restaurant everywhere, too, and famous China towns are in Yokohama, Kobe, and Nagasaki.

My favorite Japanese poet is Miyazawa Kenji(宮沢賢治). He's well known as juvenile author and his juvenile works are indeed alright, but his genius is shown better in prose poetry field I believe. Added to that among Japanese traditional verse, I prefer Aizu Yaichi(会津八一), who often described scenery of Nara or Kyoto and its old temples, because I used to live in there and loved to walk around to see temples. But in terms of verse, I must admit Japanese appears in ancient anthologies such as Manyoshu(万葉集) or Kokinshu(古今集) are far better than contemporary, although I like Aizu.

>>4540004
I've read 三国志(Romance of Three Kingodoms),水滸伝(Water Margin),西遊記(Journey to the West) and 封神演義(Creation of the Gods) when I was teenager. They are very popular in Japan and we have a bunch of novels and cartoons adopted or inspired from them.

魯迅(Luxun) is also popular and I read one of his short story in our middle school textbook. I think I've read most of his main works. And recently I tried 金瓶梅(Jing ping mei) and surprised its sensual description. At least it's more obscene than Lady Chatterley's Lover and therefore I like it.

>>4540609
and personally, I used to read only by Kundoku method like most of Japanese. After I learned Mandarin I also read directly by current Chinese pronunciation.
when I see 朝辞白帝彩雲間, first I read directly like ''zhao ci bei di cai yun jian'', and then apply Kundoku method to this, to be like ''朝に辞す白帝彩雲の間(ashita-ni ji-su hakutei saiun-no kan)''.

Traditionally we have two ways for reading Chinese poem; one is direct reading with ''On-yomi'', the other is by using some specific scheme called ''Kun-doku method(訓読法)''.

Kun-doku is a kind of direct translation with little flexibility. Convert the word order of original text into Japanese Subject-Object-Verb order, and allocate ''On'' or ''Kun'' pronunciation,which I explained above, to each Chinese Characters of original text. You cannot add or omit any words except postpositional particles.

for example;
夕陽 無限 好 /seki-you mu-gen kou/ (direct reading)
->夕陽 無限に 好し /sekiyou mugen-ni yoshi/ (kundoku)

只是近黄昏 /tan-ze kin kou-kon/ (direct reading)
->只だ是れ 黄昏に 近し /tada kore koukon-ni chikashi/ (kundoku)

Thus we convert Chinese verse into Japanese prouse poem. It's different from ordinary translation applied to other language, because its process is systematic and have little flexibility. So you can reconstruct the original text from Japanese precisely.

>>4540339
I learned to pronounce ''can't'' as /kˈæːnt/ in my school, so it seems our English is mainly American.

as a non-native maybe I should be satisfied with this result

In Japan we gave 2 series of pronunciation to each Chinese Characters; ''On-yomi'' and ''Kun-yomi''.

''On'' (the sound) is what we recognized as original Chinese pronunciation (although it is distorted under Japanese phoneme system).
''Kun'' (the meaning) is Japanese word that has same meaning as the Chinese Character.

Since we learned Chinese Characters first from ancient Korean and later from Chinese of Tang dynasty, so among ''On'', there are at least 2 types of pronunciation.

for example; 人 (/ren2/ in Mandarin) is pronounced in Japan as
/nin/, On-yomi from ancient Korea(Go-on).
/jin/, On-yomi from Tang China(Kan-on).
/hito/, Kun-yomi.

>>4540112
Yes, our pronunciation of Chinese Characters preserve some features of ancient Chinese which is already lost in Mandarin.

for example 国, whose pronunciation in Mandarin is /guo/, in Japanese /koku/ (and in Korean /guk/ btw). and in ancient Chinese it is assumed to be pronounced /guok/ or something like that. If you only know Mandarin you cannot recognize that 国 used to have /k/ consonant in the end of word. There are many such cases.

>>4539985
>reconstructed ancient chinese

as you said, I also heard that ancient Chinese spoken before Han dynasty (what we call 上古音) didn't have tone. I am not sure whether this hypothesis are correct though, if so, Chinese acquired tone after that by 5th century when recognized there were 4 different tones in their language (this is different from current Mandarine's).

Chinese pronunciation have been changed in each period. in youtube there are some movies reading poems by reconstructed ancient pronunciation. it sounds quite different from Mandarine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Sr0bLg4fiQ

>>4539898
Agreed, it's just for threatening students (or people who insist China should abolish Chinese Characters). I don't think ordinary Chinese can understand this story only by its sound.

>>4539980
as >>4539999 mentioned I'm not Chinese but Japanese, and I have never thought about what kind of western literature is popular in contemporary China. But what >>4539999 said totally make sense to me. Chinese literature often try to imply more than what is written, by inspiring readers to recall their knowledge of canon in each era.

>>4539678
"Shi shi" is a story, written only with Chinese characters that has "shi" sound.

When we foreigners learn Chinese, some teacher show this to inform how "tone" is important in that language.

>>4538967
It's a pity you don't enjoy what your Chinese ancestors left for you, one of the richest literature of the world. I also envy native Chinese speaker because they can appreciate rythm and rhyme of Chinese poem which we foreigners are difficult to get.

What I felt from this Libai's poem is, self-content of hermit.

First I see a guy's back, sitting on field, facing to a mountain.
Birds flying over high above the mountain, and goes away.
And one lonely clowd comes, and goes away.
Mountain and Libai's back remain in quiet.

His back, somehow makes me feel such message;
"I don't care about human society, it's annoying"
That's what my Libai is likely to say.

>>4537734
wow.

I am really happy to read you reply because indeed, that 江南逢李亀年 is my best, very best favorite poem.

Once I read through an anthology of Dufu's poem in chronological order, and I met this poem last (precisely 4th from the last) of that book. Since I know how the poet's 60 years life was (or almost I lived with him, shared his lament and joy,by reading his poems), this poem, this quiet and beautiful scene of falling flowers and two old men, really touched to me.

he don't speak anything in this poem. but I can see his whole life, told in these 28 syllables. This is real masterpiece, I think.

166 words per minute, 34% slower than average.
slightly better than 3rd grade kids.

I'm shocked.

>>4532700
If I asked to make a list of representative pieces of modern Japanese literature, without my personal preferences, it will be like this.

・''I am a Cat'' by Natsume Soseki, 1905
・''Botchan'' by Natsume, 1906
・''Kokoro'' by Natsume, 1914
・''Michikusa / Grass on the Wayside'' by Natsume, 1915

・Short Stories including ''Maihime / The Dancing Girl'' of Mori Ougai

・Short Stories including ''Uta-andon / A Song by Lantern Light'' of Izumi Kyouka

・''Shisei / The Tattoer'' by Tanizaki Jun-ichiro, 1910
・''Some prefer Nettles'' by Tanizaki, 1928
・''A portrait of Shunkin'' by Tanizaki, 1933
・"The Makioka Sisters'' by Tanizaki, 1948

・Short Stories including ''The Nose'', ''Rashomon'',''In a Groove'' and ''Hell Screen'' of Akutagawa Ryuunosuke
・''Spinning Gear'' by Akutagawa, 1927

・''Before the Dawn'' by Shimazaki Touson, 1935

・''A Dark Night's Passing'' by Shiga Naoya, 1937

・''The Setting Sun'' by Dazai Osamu, 1947

・''Snow Country'' by Kawabata Yasunari, 1937
・''The Sound of the Mountain'' by Kawabata, 1954
・''The House of Sleeping Beauty'' by Kawabata, 1961

・''Confessions of a Mask'' by Mishima Yukio, 1949

・''The Silent Cry'' bu Oe Kenzaburo, 1967

If I were allowed to reflect my own preference, I'll remove ''Kokoro'', ''A Dark Night Passing'' from there and add Tanizaki and Dazai's some short stories.

>>4532126
am I too slow ? it seems I'm gonna take 10 years to finish this

>>4532139
We don't have complete translation of ''the human comedy'' in Japanese. And buying imported books are too expensive . This is only way to read it for me.