What's the Top 5 look like for Japanese literature?

tale of genji
soseki
basho
kawabata
mishima

OP here. Thanks a lot. Really good.

Pretty much irrelevant-tier writing. There are many Japanese writers and few of them have had any influence beyond their country, even Veeky Forums's beloved Murakami and Mishima. You're better off watching their cinema which is quite relevant.

This desu

But op, don't go picking up Genji as you're probably not ready for it

Veeky Forums's beloved murakami and mishima are, respectively, irrelevant and second-tier in japan

oe and kawabata won nobel prizes. inoue was very close to winning one. they're very much relevant on the international literary stage.
>inb4 "muh nobel is irrelevant" meme
only parochial Veeky Forumsards believe this.

issue with murasaki and shonagon is that though they're influential in a sense, they're part of a very distinct literary tradition. their place is akin to a less important beowulf and, to a lesser extent, the canterbury tales, in that the language used is completely different. the modern japanese novel stems from a very distinct tradition as courtly japanese literature, due in part to the artificial changes made to the japanese language and the impact of the meiji restoration

I had an english professor who said japanese lit is so beyond other kinds that probably 20 of the top 50 novels of the last century are japanese

>SAO
>>/trash/

1. murakami is japan's vonnegut
not irrelevant, but top-pleb tier
irrelevant from a lit-circle standpoint, but this is also the case in the west

2. mishima is considered second-tier in japan, but only because everyone would be too embarrassed to admit that the last great writer they had was a public nutjob (private is fine)

3.he asked for top 5 j-lit, not top 5 modern japanese novels

There are loads of irrelevant writers who won Nobel Prizes. Can you acknowledge a single relevant western writer who was influenced by "Oe" and "Kawabata?"

Ace list.

Nowadays in Japan, Dazai is enjoying a kind of renaissance; opinions on Ningen Shikaku are pretty divided , but virtually everyone who reads here loves Shayou and his other early works. Every time I ask someone about Mishima I'm always met with winces or explanations of why he was a fuck up.

Sadly, based Akutagawa and Abe seem to have fewer readers

how is this book?

The Japanese Iliad would be the the Tale of Heike, not Tale of Genji.

favorites from this publisher?

I really like haruki murakami. You should read some of his books if you are in the mood for something entertaining.

Worth its own thread teebeeaitch

"The Long Ships" by Frans G. Bengtsson
"A Time of Gifts" by Patrick Leigh Fermor
"Seven Men" by Max Beerbohm

How dare you

Did you shout "weaboo, weaboo" from the back of the room?

as someone who studies japanese can i just tell you how fucking hard it is to read genji in nihongoooo
fucking christ why didnt i stick with spansih

Mishima just became an embarrassment to the Japs. It really has nothing to do with his writing and everything with his suicide.

Sounds like the japanese are a buncha women

william faulkner went to fort benning dressed as colonel sanders in 1960 to give a rambling speech about how it was time to declare confederate independence anew. when laughed at (who is this moustache?), his 5'5" frame leapt from his perch in the mess hall shaking with rage. he and his five equally colonel-sandersed boyfriends start demanding duels with various servicemen on account of besmirchment. the deranged man brings on suicide by pointing a gun at a random lieutenant.
william faulkner writes very good books. but only those who are comfortable defending that fact will admit that this is the case.

Yeah and hes considered a great author anyway because americans arent pussies

I thought Mishima was also thought to be in reasonably strong contention for the Nobel but then Kawabata won it? Or is this just his fan club?

If its true that mishima's books dont get the recognition they deserve in japan because he like acted shamefully, that actually pisses me off. Thats like national passive aggression.

one of the oldest books that is still read is Tale of Genji
Soseki's "Kokoro" is well regarded

you can't learn japanese

That didn't happen friendo.

He was certainly disrespected by the public afterwards and not mentioned for out of shame but he was already well recognized before the incident and is coming back in fashion now with the shame being forgotten.

they do among people who care about literature, but your average educated person will not avoid him without even knowing
like how people avoided nietzsche pre-1970s

Lmao, shame. What a retarded culture.

meant "will" obviously

>you can't learn japanese
What makes you say this?

Not it's not. It's master morality. Mishima challenged that which was set out by the nobles of Japanese society and lost. He is thought of the same way the Greeks thought of beta males.

Outside of Tokyo, Japan has no counter culture. Nerds unironically hate other nerds for being nerdy.

Japan is a Confucian country, and has no will to truth. The consequence of that is that no one cares how good you really are at something unless you behave like someone who's good at it.

A Japanese author on the world stage must act like a representative of Japan or he will be promptly dropped.

he tried and failed
this is somewhat true (if exaggerated), but it's not that it natively doesn't exist, but rather than almost everyone both peculiar and clever ends up in tokyo
complete dogshit; the vast majority can't stand nietzsche or faulkner for fort benning , it's the same thing

>people reading translation

Disgusting.

Mishima was an unashamed Nationalist who saw America and creeping Western cultural imperialism as the greatest threat to Japan. In Post-War Japan, this was too much for a society cuckolded by American occupation and consumerism. Trust a gay dude to be one of the few japanese who wanted to bring back its honourable virility

Religiously motivated homophobia was introduced by the Westerners, his sexuality isn't really in conflict with conservatism since homophobia isn't deeply ingrained in Japanese traditions.

I've only read Shusaku Endo and he is really great. It was a translation so it didn't read aesthetically on a very high level, but he deals with themes which I personally found strong and he crafts pretty solid characters. One of my favorite writers now, if anyone can find something that isn't Silence, Kiku or that play I would appreciate it a lot.

I would rate Mishima higher than that, but that's a fairly good list.
Soseki's later work is in a different league from any of them.

Yea actually, you basically don't talk about your sexuality in public here, it shows a lack of modesty.

Also nationalism is, and has been since ww2, a hugely controversial subject here. Mishima was simply too western. In many ways he's the polar opposite of Murakami- he has the goods but he couldn't fit himself into Japanese society.

Japanese literature after the 1900s is western literature

Tale of Genji is more like if the Ithaca chapters of the Odyssey were stretched out 1,000 pages

Japan after the 1900s is a western nation

There is no will to truth here. They don't like Nietzsche because they can't make sense of him. Academics seem to think Japan is the west like Mishima-kun, but Japan never had a value-changing event akin to Christianity, and as such, maintains a society closer to that of the ancients than probably any other place on earth. Even the Kyoto school's view of nihilism is quite different though they think it's the same.

Try it. Come to Japan. No one cares how good you are at anything outside of business, and regular people will expect you to be a model foreigner. Foreigners should act like foreigners (I.e. Atsugiri Jason or people on you ha nani shi ni Nippon he), like teachers should act like teachers and doctors like doctors.

You can even see it in anime, movies and books. It's all exactly as Nietzsche describes ancient society. Empathy is rare and pity is the main way people help each other. Men have a high amount of pride and their interactions are thus guided by custom.

It's fascinating when you realize that this is the source of the "politeness" people find in Japan that dries up quickly when you're no longer a guest. You're essentially a suitor in Odysseus' house.

YOOOOOOOOOOOOO

I never knew the Greeks had a concept of beta males.

>They don't like Nietzsche because they can't make sense of him
i meant in the west
talk about reading nietzsche to your average, see what look you get if there's any recognition
japan is not an outlier on the "will to truth" spectrum (merely more naked)

Dazai
Abe
Oe
Mishima
Soseki

it would help if you actually read them, a large portion deals with kleos

mishima was probably on the lists but there's a 50 year delay before nomination/process is publicized. he was on the 1964 long list of nominations (but not the 1965) but wasn't on the shortlist.

also on the long list were junzaburo nishiwaki, and kawabata who won it 4 years later.

tanizaki was actually on the final shortlist for 1964 and barely lost out to sartre

actually i lied he was on the 1965 long list (and 1963 as well) by the same person as 1964 (harry martinson, who was on the academy and won the prize himself in 1974 amidst some controversy; he generally championed japanese authors on the committee, and was responsible for the bulk of kawabata/tanizaki/mishima/etc. nominations)

tanizaki was fairly consistently nominated, every year from 1958 - 1965 (when he died), minus 1959, and by a pretty wide variety of people

This is very good, I would Second Kawabata and put Endo and Mishima to top tier too.

I have a hard time accessing Soseki :/

see
My favorites are
The 30 Years War
Mehmed my Hawk
Stoner

could you point me toward somewhere on the internet that discusses this event? I can't find it on google

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