Thoughts? I finally finished it, took me almost two months.
Overall there were many parts I enjoyed but I also found the last few hundred pages extremely tedious because the same shit happens over and over just with different characters.
And maybe I'm just a brainlet but even with all the footnotes in my edition, keeping track of every character was basically impossible.
Where do I go from here? I'm strongly considering reading Journey To The West next.
Well done finishing it.
The translation of Chinese 18th century classic Dream of Red Chambers/Story of the Stone by David Hawkes is very readable. He translates the names of servants semantically and those of everyone else phonetically, which is a novel and effective solution to the problem of name memorisation.
Names in Japanese and in Chinese have both a meaning and a sound. When transliterated into English you take away the meaning component meaning they are less memorable. It's an unavoidable problem.
not op
Is dream of the red chamber easier to read than the tale of genji? I want to read one of the two
Hahaha stupid gaijin pig. You should stick with your own stupid books. Those are more your level.
I only flicked through a Genji translation a few years ago, but I think the answer is yes.
I think Dream of the Red Chamber has more memorable characterisation, and although DotRC is still kinda episodic and rambling by modern Western standards, the episodes are memorable, build on one another in a logical way and are not repetitive.
My impression of Genji is that there is just endless wooing of ladies, slipping poetic messages through silk screens etc.
Thanks, I will check that out.
I guess you read it in Japanese?
I'm studying it at uni, but I'm only familiar with a bit over 500 kanji. Would it be impossible-mode for me to read it?
I preferred Heike Monogatari.
If you want something like Genji but more salacious and shorter read Sei Shonagon.
Genji should be pretty much impossible for you to read. Even a native Japanese speaker would not be able to understand a most of it. For example, you try reading Basho's Oku no Hosomichi. The word choice is almost completely different.
Bump.
Murakami.
Ishiguro.
You would have to study Classical Japanese in addition to Modern Japanese, which is essentially a different language, although the two can be somewhat intelligible at times (and completely unintelligible at others).
For example (from Makura no Soushi),
>春は曙(あけぼの)。やうやう白くなりゆく山際(やまぎわ)、すこしあかりて、紫だちたる雲の細くたなびきたる。
Most of the words in this sentence are still used in Modern Japanese, and you can probably stumble through it just by looking up the few words you don't know. What is most different is the grammar (with verbs conjugating in different and more complex ways) and the orthography (e.g. やうやう is actually pronounced ようよう, きょう in Classical Japanese is written けふ).
I read the english translation on Genji (the one in the OP pic) and one of the things I didn't like about it is that in a lot of areas it just felt really plain, some of the same adjectives were used over and OVER ("distinction", "graceful") and some parts just seemed to go on and on and on like rambling almost.
Journey to the West is a good choice. Red Chamber, Water Margin, or Romance of the Three Kingdoms would be too. Tale of the Heike would be another one. Just pick anything in that vein; it's hard to go wrong.
...
The pillow bookr or w/e it called
Greatest book I have ever read. Sadly Veeky Forums is just /pol/ with books so you wont get many people to appreciate ToG's aesthetic writing. It's a testament to Murasaki Shikibu's wrong that even through two translations (one into modern Japanese then translated again into English) that her writing is still beautiful.
You will get zero discussion of this masterpiece here because it adds nothing to contemporary political debates.
>wrong
writing! Fucking autocorrect
What makes it beautiful to you?
read jin yong
Or perhaps there are just so many amazing books out there and only so many books to fall into this boards culture that it is inevitable that many great ones do not get talked about.
>because it adds nothing to contemporary political debates
As opposed to the Iliad?
bumping for an answer to this
>Water Margin
>Journey to the West
>Three Kingdoms
>Dream of the Red Chamber
which one should i read first?
Red Chamber may be the greatest of them, but you can't go wrong picking any one.
I know Shogun isn't actually a Japanese book but how is it?
I've only read the prologue so far and it seems alright but a little cheesy.