Slashdot Mirror
Japanese Writing After Murakami (the-tls.co.uk)
Roland Kelts, writing for The Times Literary Supplement: At fifty-one, Hideo Furukawa is among the generation of Japanese writers I'll call "A. M.," for "After Murakami." Haruki Murakami is Japan's most internationally renowned living author. His work has been translated into over fifty languages, his books sell in the millions, and there is annual speculation about his winning the Nobel Prize. Over four decades, he has become one of the most famous living Japanese people on the planet. It's impossible to overestimate the depth of his influence on contemporary Japanese literature and culture, but it is possible to characterize it.
The American poet Louise Gluck once said that younger writers couldn't appreciate the shadow cast over her generation by T. S. Eliot. Murakami in Japan is something like that. Yet unlike Eliot in English-speaking nations, Murakami in Japan has been a liberator, casting rays of light instead of a pall, breathing gusts of fresh air into Japan's literary landscape. Now on the verge of seventy, he generates little of Harold Bloom's "anxiety of influence" among his younger peers. For them he has opened three key doors: to licentious play with the Japanese language; to the binary worlds of life in today's Japanese culture, a hybrid of East and West; and to a mode of personal behaviour -- cool, disciplined, solitary -- in stark contrast to the cliques and clubs of Japan's past literati.
Japan's current literary and cultural scene takes in "light novels," brisk narratives that lean heavily on sentimentality and romance and often feature visuals drawn from manga-style aesthetics, and dystopian post-apocalyptic stories of intimate violence, such as Natsuo Kirino's suspense thrillers, Out and Grotesque. Post-Fukushima narratives in film and fiction explore a Japan whose tightly managed surfaces disfigure the animal spirits of its citizens; and many of the strongest voices and characters in this recent trend have been female.
The American poet Louise Gluck once said that younger writers couldn't appreciate the shadow cast over her generation by T. S. Eliot. Murakami in Japan is something like that. Yet unlike Eliot in English-speaking nations, Murakami in Japan has been a liberator, casting rays of light instead of a pall, breathing gusts of fresh air into Japan's literary landscape. Now on the verge of seventy, he generates little of Harold Bloom's "anxiety of influence" among his younger peers. For them he has opened three key doors: to licentious play with the Japanese language; to the binary worlds of life in today's Japanese culture, a hybrid of East and West; and to a mode of personal behaviour -- cool, disciplined, solitary -- in stark contrast to the cliques and clubs of Japan's past literati.
Japan's current literary and cultural scene takes in "light novels," brisk narratives that lean heavily on sentimentality and romance and often feature visuals drawn from manga-style aesthetics, and dystopian post-apocalyptic stories of intimate violence, such as Natsuo Kirino's suspense thrillers, Out and Grotesque. Post-Fukushima narratives in film and fiction explore a Japan whose tightly managed surfaces disfigure the animal spirits of its citizens; and many of the strongest voices and characters in this recent trend have been female.
The time of good old quality trolls with goat.se and what not has long gone.
Now we only see triggered libtards.
Murakami and light novels do not belong in the same paragraph, article or universe.
Yes, I've read my fair share of light novels, but they're almost all garbage, which is putting it nicely.
What does this have to do with nerd news?
and starting with talking of after Haruki Murakami? He's still alive and writing? let's wait until he's dead to talk of A.M.!!!??
and yeah, I read Japanese literature. This doesn't belong on slashdot.
Kore wa tada no bakadesu!
Didn't he do some anime?
"and many of the strongest voices and characters in this recent trend have been female"
But of course they have. TFS was interesting right up to its latest phrase. Then the SJW hammer struck.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
I agree. This has nothing to do with technology or science. It doesn't belong on Slashdot. And I have a degree in Writing!
Will he get lessons in between Bubba and Tyrone turning him out?
Not entirely gone. A few of us are still around. I've long since forgotten the password to the evil_spork account, but that was one of my troll accounts back in the day. I was also around on Geekizoid when that was around. It was a pretty good parody of Slashdot. AC posts were under the name "Bruce Perens" and troll was a positive moderation. I remember getting a temporary IP ban when I picked up five "not gay enough" mods for a small crapflood. It does seem like a lot of the "trolling" now is posting the same political spam in every article, APK crap, or harassing creimer. At least the old school trolling was often funny on some level.
That women know how to write.
I particularly liked his "Voices from the Hellmouth" series. I haven't read his "post Fukushima" narratives but I am sure they are equally as good.
Except topics like this have been posted to Slashdot for nearly 2 decades. Get over yourself.
I think you meant -
You amateurs (/. doesn't believe in anything other than 7-bit ASCII
so the Japanese characters don't display)...
CAP === 'unarmed'
natural selection at work!
Boring !
What does this have to do with nerd news?
The Hentai versions of Murakami's works are definitely "Nudes for Nerds" . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
What does this have to do with nerd news?
Science fiction often inspires technical trends, and many of Murakami's books are in SF areas. Therefore it is reasonably relevant on Slashdot.
Having said that, and having read quite a bit of Japanese literature (mostly in translation), I'm not sure I would credit Murakami with being that influential. Admired and respected, yes, but I'm not seeing that many similarities between what he does and what the other authors write. The I novels are largely unchanged from Soseki's day, even though the backgrounds are modern.
Then again, I've only read one book by Kirino... But maybe there was some confusion with the OTHER Murakami (Ryu). Definitely seems to me to be more influential in that style. The more famous Murakami (Haruki) tends to remind me of Lewis Carroll in many places.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
You think the goatse troll was quality? Hmph! Kids these days, thinking all it takes is being a big enough asshole.
You want to see a *real* troll, look up MEEPT!!
God, I miss that guy...
Thanks for answering the OP. I had no idea who Murakami was (is?) so I too was trying to figure out why this was on Slashdot. Any particular works / translations of his you recommend?
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not entirely sure about the universe - Einstein
1Q84 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... (ichi kyu <- 'Q' hachi yon)
Kafka on the Shore - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
In one interview, Murakami mentions that once he was asked to write some book reviews for a literary magazine. He didn't want to do it, but finally he agreed (because he owed a favor to the editor). He was able to choose the book, so he ended up writing a book review about a book he completely made up, by an author who didn't exist.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
His books are heavily influenced by Kafka, which is a problem because Kafka isn't very good. It got so bad, that I re-wrote the end of Metamorphosis for fun. Wasn't hard to make it better.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I'm sorry, I'm trying to correct my own mental dissonance here.
Is this talking about Murakami's influence on the Light Novel scene? I don't think it's a good comparison at all, to be honest.
Just to put things into context: the entire scene isn't as great as the article makes it out to be. It's like those cheap one-shot or multi-part short stories you find in a corner of the bookstore which mostly have romance plots. It's probably similar to the Young Adult scene in the West.
Most of them focus on plots like "isekai" ("other world" or where "character x lands up in another world where he happens to be superior") or your standard "harem" plot. It's mostly wish fulfillment condensed in around 300 pages.
There are exceptions to the rule, of course, but these are very rare.
I miss hot grits, and naked and petrified Natalie Portman...
I'm old. I miss a lot of things.
but article is about the "after Murakami" world ....so....???
literally uneducated Western literary criticism crowd reads one book, and then labels a whole culture with it, because they don't know anything else...
And it was the worst book (well, set of 3) I've ever finished. Starts of well, but he has no idea where to go with it and it dribbles out in a pile of wasted ideas and characters that go nowhere. Classic example of a mainstream writer thinking that fantasy must be easy because there's no rules and then demonstrating that it isn't and there are.
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
That is how he repaid the "favor"?
By being an asshole and making the editor look like a clueless fool?
With friends like that ....
Or is that more of another culture I just don't "understand"
Newsflash: Some cultures are better than others. Japan's seems to suck on many levels.
They just gave the Nobel for literature to Kazuo Ishiguro, Oe Kenzaburo got the prize in 1994, so there won't be another winner from Japan for at least 10 years.
The nerds love Ishiguro because he wrote about clones in Never Let Me Go. It is too bad, really, because it was a dumb book for boring people. Ishiguro is an obvious hack, he is more about market research, more of a screenplay writer than anything else. His characters are all mindless drones, endless variations of Anthony Hopkins as a simpleton, as an autistic butler, Emma Watson as a feckless whore.
So your argument is that spam is as sturdy and pervasive as cockroaches?
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
>I'm not sure I would credit Murakami with being that influential.
Kobo Abe, Kendzaburo Oe were before and more influential. Murakami came after that to my life in the form of sarcastic mentions of superficial _intelligentsia_ addicted to his writings.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
>He was able to choose the book, so he ended up writing a book review about a book he completely made up, by an author who didn't exist.
How original /sarcasm.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Who else has done it?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Welcome to Slashdot, where the rarified air of high discussion demotes Japanese literature to the level of "spam".
TSIA. Look, I come to /. for TECH related news. I don't want a general news aggregator, there's already far too much heat to light here already.
On a side note, only a poet could make a statement so sweepingly & simultaneously narcissistic and oblivious as "The American poet Louise Gluck once said that younger writers couldn't appreciate the shadow cast over her generation by T. S. Eliot."
-Styopa
I'm confused. Aren't all degrees written on something? Why do you feel the need to tell us all your degree is in writing? Do some colleges record degrees on video?
Perhaps you are delusional.
That title is held by Hayao Miyazaki.
#DeleteFacebook
Or just, you know, science fiction?
Just saying.
Man, I'd say Wind-Up Bird and Hard-Boiled Wonderland are his best. Start there
Borges tended to continually allude to works that didn't exist. Some of his stories were very explicit in this way
is the best book I've read this year. It has it all: sex, politics, monsters, encryption.
That japanese are great at foreplay, but lousy at finishing it off.
This applies to their literary works, manga, and anime equally. 9 out of 10 series, if not more, start off with an excellent plot concept and amazing characters. But rather than picking a complete storyline arc and going from one end to the other, they fall into the pit of trying to sensationalize the next bit of plot. Great for keeping viewers attached to ongoing works, but when the work wraps up, lousy for the finished works staying power, as by the end of it the story has no substance, the ending feels hackneyed, and the sense of fullfillment when you read an excellent piece of literature that has a clear, believable ending and resolved story arc doesn't exist (note: I didn't say resolved story because it can very easily trail off, leaving you to dream about the future they face.) In many cases however they build up so far that only a Deus ex Machina can resolve the plot, and in the process of doing so you are left to wonder what was the point of all the character building, losses, and plotpoints if it was all predestined to end a certain way anyway.
Stanislaw Lem as well. I liked his critical reviews of made up books more then Borges', for obvious reasons.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
There was also Kilgore Trout.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.