Why the hell is japanese literature so poorly written?

read the classics or Mishima,,Kobo-abe , Kenzaburo Oe, or anyone other than Murakami.

Jay Rubin is pretty good, too.

lost in translation

kys redditor

wasn't he a fag tho

No, just Greek.

>he doesn't appreciate rubin's god-tier translation of akutagawa

Motherfuckers can't even write the alphabet lmaoooo

Translation of any asian language works into english invariably often than not butchers them. There's a reason why it sounds so foreign.

niggas expect me to believe nietzsche was smart or some shit nigga couldn't even spell english lmao

Mishima? I’ve only Read “The Sailor Who Fell From Grace...” but it was legitimately well written (translation obviously). Felt like halfway between Faulkner and Hemingway.

Japanese is definitely one of those languages about which anti-translation autists are generally correct. It's stylistically so dependant on context and very hard to carry over all the meaning/maintain the flow of the prose. I was more impressed with Kokoro when I read it again in Japanese, at least. The Seidensticker and Keene translations I've read have been very enjoyable, though, and as other anons have said the quality of Mishima's works shines through regardless of the translator.

Because Japanese is a pathetically inferior bastard language

Don't listen to the cultural relativist neets itt and take it from someone who's actually lived in Japan: their literature is bland because they are emotionless borg people. There's nothing you're missing, there's no special meaning lost in translation, and it typically goes no deeper than the superficial level you see on the surface because the Japanese aren't naturally creative people and are merely aping western literary culture. East Asians aren't "ideas" people, they are copy and paste people. Their culture is superficial and they are almost to a literal degree drones who have little personality in the western sense. But that's just how they are. They have their upsides, they're polite and civil, but they evolved sans any kind of comparable individualistic sense like whites did, and their art reflects this.

You're a fucking moron. I pity any East Asian that has the misfortune of interacting with you.

Kawabata and Mishima are written and translated well.

wrong
t. fluent in japanese chinese and korean

I wonder if you've ever been. I'm not but in my experience he's right, for the most part. I highly recommend you study Japanese social history and maybe you can understand why things are the way they are. Marrying for love, for instance, didn't really even exist until just after the war. You might find it shocking that they don't actually care about tea ceremony, flower arranging, traditional dress, and so forth beyond it being a way to *show off*. Not saying this doesn't exist in the west of course but in my experience interests tend to be feigned in Japan.

t. guy who spent a fair amount of time there on many occasions

So was Plato and Wilde

t. annie may enthusiast

>East Asians aren't "ideas" people, they are copy and paste people
>what is the entire Chinese intellectual tradition

Every language is context specific if you want to get the most out of its literature. How can you read Basho if you haven't experienced the beautiful scenes of nature he writes about? How can you read Essays in Idleness without knowing at least some of the history the Buddhist and Shinto sects and about the lifestyle of the monks? How can you *really* enjoy Steinbeck without having been to some of those impoverished Californian (or at least Floridian) orange towns? What are Roosevelt's writings on hunting and the Nebraska badlands if you haven't immersed yourself in at least a smidge of the nature he has? Not saying you wouldn't enjoy those stories regardless, but it goes without saying that you don't get the whole picture unless you can identify with it in some way.

>Japanese
>Being nothing other than overt homosexuals with a small-dick complex
This is literally a Japanese imperialist propaganda poster during the Russo-Japanese war

>what is the entire Chinese intellectual tradition
An underwhelming showcase of missed opportunities due to a closed mindset you obviously don't know much about, much of which probably came from Indo-Europeans who settled in the East anyway.

The nigga on the left is likely Boddhidharma who *did* come from the west. They always made a big deal out of his red beard.

That's who it is. Goes back a lot further too. Slopes need to grant access to those pyramids they're covering up.

Minored in Japanese in college, so I took three years of language class, attended a Japanese university for one year (which included society and etiquette history courses), and have visited once a year since 2008. I'd say I have a not awful grasp on the culture and its people. Maybe it's just the type of people you've been exposed to. I've had great interactions with a number of Japanese people who've expressed interests and engaged in contemporary and traditional visual arts, music, literature, and theater. Just because you hang out with plebs doesn't mean the people are some kind of hopeless primitive monoculture.

The manlet faggot? If he were Greek, he'd been dropped down Kaiadas long before he would throw his first tantrum.

That's not what he means by context derived meaning. Languages fall on a spectrum from specific to vague. This has not informed by what the topic of discussion is. Of all the languages I know about Japanese is by far the vaguest language. Asides from the fact you say the most important parts of a sentence last and the least important first their sentences tend to miss even vitally important elements as a matter of course because of implied context.

I am not so concerned with your experience taking Japanese classes in the United States or wherever you are from. I have a similar level of experience at a Japanese university in Tokyo that I attended for two semesters with a year break in between to go back to the states. In the time hence I spent well over a hundred thousand dollars taking trips there because I was interested in establishing a grapefruit farm in Kyushu. Believe me, I know them.

And sure, there are many people there who have a bona fide interest in *something*. But for the most part I saw they're a bunch of frauds. From north to south. I blame the work culture and the language, personally.

the book of 5 rings was kino. I guess being an advice book made it easier to translate

Well yes but I think my point still stands. Japs tend to talk about a lot of stuff very specific to them (naturally, because Japan is just the entire world to them, isn't it?) that are difficult to relate to.

ITT: Buttmad Westerners
Just admit it, centuries of being cucked by Christianity has made you jealous of superior cultures who saw through your bullshit

Just wanted to give you some context, no need to be snippy about it. And actually, setting up a grapefruit farm sounds really dope. I would love to hear more about your experience with that.

Really confused by your use of fraud though. Doesn't really make any sense. And what does the language have to do with anything? Are you saying that Japanese lacks basic descriptors for high level concepts or something?

This board is pathetic.

That's a picture of Vitarka mudrā. He is not a European.

Xinjian is a region that boarders countries that have people who look like the people in your picture. It would be like being surprised you found people of Italian descent in Switzerland.
It's also not surprising you would find western artifacts in China. The Silk Road allowed China and Rome to trade with each other.
Showing a painting of a European doesn't mean anything by itself. Europeans have traveled to China in small numbers for almost 2000 years, not to mention the Jewish immigrant population that has existed in China for a thousand years.

Your Derenko source only claims that in the Eurasian steppe a long time ago the European genotype was common. Alone this does nothing to support your claim.
As for your Bennett, Casey et al source let me quote the very first page. "The Linzi population does seem to have some genetic affinities with the West as suggested by the original analysis, though the original attribution of "European-like" seems to be misleading. This study suggests that the Linzi individuals are potentially related to early Iranians, who are thought to have been widespread in parts of Central Eurasia and the steppe regions in the first millennium BC"
Neither of your sources as claiming what you say they are.

In my hometown in Florida about 90% of the white grapefruit grown is sent to Japan. Unless you go to Indian River or St. Lucie county you'll have a tough time even getting the fruit because it's almost always immediately sent over. It has become quite expensive to grow in the US so when I was on vacation in Kyushu a while ago I was shocked to see they have this *big*, **nice**, ***thicc*** trees. They looked like the trees one would find on the sand ridge in the middle of the state here. Really great trees. They were just scattered around in people's front yards and shit. I wondered why they would import fruit from Florida and California for half the year and then South Africa for the other half. Seems like nonsense.

Well, I found out that it's just typical Jap shit that bogs down the system. I'm sure you're familiar with the way the government does business. Very slow. Too cautious. Very xenophobic. Almost impossible to get a loan regardless of your credit in the US and I'm certainly not frontloading a bunch of cash over there in that failing state. Sad! I wanted to buy a Taisho house and have a big plantation. Would've been pretty aesthetic.

My use of fraud stems from their obsession with face. They tend to not do things purely for enjoyment... except in few instances. I met one guy who refused to be a salary man so he lived in the woods around the Izu peninsula. I met him when he was in this fallen-down house in Atami. Interesting guy. There's a few of them out there who are truly individuals. But you know as well as I that most people there can't deal with having the responsibility of being an individual. They need the protective embrace of their companies or their village or whatever. It is pathetic. They do not have the backbone to stand on their own. They remind me of high school boys.

And about the language. The language reminds me of some science fiction Fahrenheit 451/1984 shit. It is so vague and lacking that you could never have a Jap Heidegger, for instance. Their lack of very specific and technical language as well is one reason I think their architecture suffers. If you look around, all the shit they built from Meiji onward that was meant to imitate Western structures is very poorly done. It is not like they are bad workers or unskilled, not at all. It's just you can't translate the nuances to them. And they can never understand.

Well yes but I think my point still stands
I mean yea it does but your point came out of nowhere and had nothing to do with the first anons post and was based on a misreading of what he wrote. I was pointing out that it was a misreading and explained what he actually meant.

>naturally, because Japan is just the entire world to them, isn't it
China and Korea have been huge points of cultural import for the Japanese.

>Country cucked by Confucianism, Buddhism and eventually by its own homegrown Bushido ideology
>Country that is far more collective than the west
>Almost all of their culture was adapted from the culture of other countries
Sure the west has been cucked by Christianty but the Japanese aren't exactly bulls

Well yes without Korea and China, Japan would be nothing. Long history there. Try to tell that to them, though. They won't acknowledge it. For the longest time they even had a disdain for their own antiquities because they were too Korean. Go to the Tokyo National Museum ancient Jap antiquities section and you'll find Korean-style swords and armor that are far superior technically to the samurai woven bullshit 1000x folded nippon steel hohoho but it's Korean so they don't like it. It wasn't until Chamberlain while on a train saw a pile of dirt with vases and shit in it on the side of the railroad that they started to care. But again, to them, it's 100% Japanese. Nothing to do with Korea!

>early Iranians
Yeah, Aryans.

A possible relation of some people in a small part of China, a north province that has often been home to nomadic peoples at times, to people who were widespread in the steppe does not mean anything.

>Translation of any language works into English invariably butchers them
ftfy

Thank you for the story, user. This is actually quite fascinating and sorry it didn't work out. I have pipe dreams of farming in Japan but I know it'll never work out. And sure, I'm aware of Japan's bureaucratic nightmare and stifling xenophobia.

I guess we just have different perspectives. I really appreciate Japanese folks' emphasis on group support systems (though I recognize in the case of work environment, it can be and often is destructive). If there is a loss in individuality, it is at least accompanied with a lack of cynicism, pretentiousness, and anger. Calling them sheep seems too reductive.

I learned some technical Japanese terms for my field of study, so I know they have it. I won't comment on what Heidegger has actually contributed to the average person here in the West...

No, it means something; and more than the nothing you are for whatever reason trying to make others believe it means. There's a lot we don't know, but there's plenty of evidence on which we can speculate and draw certain conclusions.

You're welcome. Alright, forget about Heidegger. Take this to heart: there are no Japanese Witold Rybzcinskis, Christopher Alexanders, Rasmussens, Lewis Mumfords, or even Frank Lloyd Wright (his writings). They cannot write about buildings. No one in Japan besides maybe DT Suzuki (who was disregarded as a hack at different times by his peers) can write with clarity and competence about their own religions without being deliberately obtuse - so perhaps one can say there is no Japanese Robert Aitken who has committed himself to writing, at least. Perhaps Yamada Kuon fits the bill, I don't know. They have nobody that has written about philosophy even to the extent of the obscure memer Stirner. They, like their Chinese brethren, cannot write about the unseen qualities of these things. Their language doesn't allow for it. Perhaps their minds do now allow for it.

I agree that there's a lack of anger but the whole facade you see when talking to anybody in that country is 100% pretentiousness. And they're not sheep, they're marionettes, but they're all pulling the strings on one another. It's been that way forever. There's no center figure that you can point to and say he's the puppetmaster. Even the emperor has his strings pulled in this way and that way. It's a web with webs spun within the web. There's no room for the individual in that web. The shogun feared his advisors, even.

>No, it means something
Yea, it means that when a place is often home to people that people leave a genetic trace. The people referenced in that paper are related to the very same nomadic peoples who have conquered that place and lived there several times.

>for whatever reason trying to make others believe it means
What even is your position. You by your own admission say it's an open position and then you make some weird comment because I took a position on that question. You are saying that if you don't agree with me on open questions then you are a suspect person. But anyway I don't think that Chinese culture would be nothing without Caucasian influence is not an open question.

>but there's plenty of evidence on which we can speculate and draw certain conclusions
Unless of course we look at that evidence and draw a conclusion you don't like apparently.
You need to show me some of this evidence. So far I dismantled every single piece of evidence in this thread that has been presented.

Not sure what you expect after referring to Aryans as "early Iranians"; you outed yourself there as either ignorant or intentionally deceptive. I mean, the word "Iran" itself is literally derived from the word "Aryan."

You're not going to be taken seriously after something like that, so all I can say is try to be more honest in the future.

Edit: Removing double negative.
But anyway I don't think that Chinese culture would be nothing without Caucasian influence is an open question.

Early Iranian is literally the phrase used in the very paper being used as evidence.

Except Kaiadas was a myth, fellow Greekbro.

I have to admit that now you've gone over my head. Architectural theory isn't in my wheelhouse but if it's philosophical matters in general or just more scholarly takes on more abstract concepts, why not take Zeami's treatise on theater or Minae Mizumura's writings on language or Seiji Ozawa on music. Sure, they're not Brecht, Chomsky, or Prokofiev but you can't say they're not capable of that kind of thinking.

Can't comment on your marionette remarks as I'm not sure what they're signifying but I'd take smug pretension over genuine anger and rage anyday. I just think Japanese individualism takes a different form that sure, may have its caveats but we have problems in the West with hyperindividualism anyway.

Well, I didn't post or link to any paper. I merely criticized your use of, originally or through PC mimicry, a bullshit term used to disassociate Aryans from eastern settlement, exploration, and influence.

You didn't post to it but it's what we are talking about. Also the term Aryan isn't very useful because it is too broad. Early Iranian means someone from a place, Aryan does not mean any sort of geographic location. They are both correct terms, the one I used is more precise as well as being related to the language of the paper. You are critising me for using a better term. It would be like criticising someone for calling someone an Italian rather than a European.

There are individuals who put out one very good work in their whole oeuvre but there's not many, like I said. You could add Junichiro Tanizaki to that list for his essay 'In Praise of Shadows' which to me is the definitive essay on pre-Meiji Japanese aesthetics. Nothing else written over there comes close to it that I've encountered. But again, one case. There are thousands of examples that are just as good in Western writings.

Exactly this, mater of a fact, I can read Japanese and while it helps with comprehension of sentences, the general ideas being conveyed still escape me, or at least seem terribly superficial

That is because they are deliberately obscurantist.

It's not a better term and fails in both longevity of use and accuracy.

I'm not aruging anymore over the use of a single term. We both understand what the terms mean. If you want I'll use the term Aryan for the remainder, but I still have rebutted all the evidence provided and am waiting for more.

I see. I'll give that one a read. I think we'll just have to agree to disagree on this. I'm not well-read enough to counter your claims but I feel you're being a bit uncharitable. This has been a really interesting discussion though and I've enjoyed your point of view.

Japanese culture is stunted and stutter-stepped by 50-500 years depending on the area of interest so you have a situation where they have many modern concepts in a superficial capacity and they never really worked through the classical concepts of the west.

I shouldn't have said classical. Old, rather.

Now let's connect the dots... English is a shit language!

It actually is.

> who's dazai osamu
> who's mishima

Although, a light novel Ko Ransom did a pretty decent translation for the Monogatari series.

>a clown who committed suicide
>a fag who attempted a coup d'etat and then committed suicide

>be japanese
>commit suicide

This

This

Kawabata says hi you fag

Not that I agree with you that they are poorly written, but for most of Japanese history poetry was the focus.

why are you fluent in all 3?

I have a hunch that people here are overestimating their Japanese abilities.

The translation thing goes backwards too. Books translated into Japanese are terrible. Translation is often done by retired people as a hobby. I have read some real atrocities.
Reading Japanese novels in Japanese is great. There are some brilliant works that don’t come across well in English.