Japanese literature thread

What kind of a meme list is this? There is only a single pre-modern writer and only one other writer who wrote a significant amount before WW2. We have Murakami twice (why is he even there once?) and we have no poets or playwrights.

Murakami isn't a good writer. He is the picture perfect middle-brow author. Not awful, not terrible, but bland and lacking in any sort of greatness. Easily the worst of the many Japanese writers I have read. Skip him. If you are looking at writers born around the turn on the 20th century and earlier, and if you avoid more modern Japanese writers who have written manga or crime novels you will not find a writer who is worse.

>we have no poets or playwrights.

It says right there it's a top japanese NOVELS list you i/lit/erate.

And we are to differentiate from the mixed prose/verse works by the poets from novels how? Basho's longer works are better than almost anything on that list.

>mixed prose/verse works by the poets

you answered your own question

English is the worst language to read a translation. It is very much limited compared to Japanese, German, French, and Spanish.

The only reason to read an English translation is if you're reading a business book.

Can any other patricians read Japanese here? I picked up these the other day. I'm pretty sure Otsuichi has actually been pretty extensively translated into English.

>It is very much limited compared to Japanese, German, French, and Spanish.

Explain? I'm an English native speaker who can read Japanese pretty well.

reading 憂国 by mishima and struggling because of the vocabulary (physical copy)

also trying to get into 辻邦夫 but 花のレクイエム was pretty shit

>favorite writers
Soseki
Kawabata
H. Murakami

I was wondering the same thing, actually. I'm planning to read Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World but I don't know if I should read it in Spanish or English.

Maybe some kind user can help me? :3

I’m probably not going to read it in a while, but what is the easiest (in terms of vocabulary & grammar) of the great Japanese novels? 雪国?

Nothing funnier than a purist who's probably read like 8 books in his life

Why do some people who've read a fair amount of japanese lit like H.Murakami and others who seem to not read any other japanese authors hate him? Is disliking him literally a meme spread by people who don't read books?

>others who seem to not read any other japanese authors hate him?
On one hand, it might be because he's more or less the GGM of the 21st century -- a fashionable, boogiepop author that is both good and popular.

On the other, if you strongly dislike Murakami because of the simplicity of his prose, there's a chance that you might dislike Japanese literature in general, as it tends to be pretty straightforward in terms of prose.

>random chart
>Dance Dance Dance but none of the other books

You weren't kidding random.

Probably something Souseki

I read this review (Japanese) about Murakami. The reviewer basically said that Murakami's books are like BGM music -- they're nice to consume and easy to understand but most of it is just fluff and has no real deep meaning. It's just easy to read.

>if you strongly dislike Murakami because of the simplicity of his prose, there's a chance that you might dislike Japanese literature in general, as it tends to be pretty straightforward in terms of prose

No. Only Murakami does this. Most of the famous writers write with much more varied vocabulary than Murakami.

Some of the translations in spanish are... weird or just poorly made. Weird in the therm of sometimes they mix the words and means something else and poorly because they skip information. I had a problem with the spanish version of Kitchen by Yoshimoto and some parts are ripped off. Like why the fuck do you need to know this? and in the future theres a little reference about it.

I mostly read english versions, I think they're better.

oh shit, a japanese review said that? pack it in guys, we've heard from the source

Murakami is a fucking joke, I've read 2 of his books and will never waste time on any more.

I've enjoyed works from the well known authors, Abe Kobo, Akutagawa Ryunosuke, Dazai Osamu, Kawabata Yasunari, Mishima Yukio, Soseki Natsume. I quite liked all of them except for Kawabata's Snow Country, I guess it went over my head but the novel seemed really empty even when I tried to look at from the eyes of someone who understands Japanese culture.

The Lord of the Rings have songs in them. Does that mean they aren't novels?

Where did you learn about Japanese Culture?

i've read 4 murakami books and i still couldn't conclude: is he YA or real literature?

He's not YA Jesus.

>Only Murakami does this
No. I can't speak about the original Japanese text (I've only heard that Hear The Wind Sing was a bit experimental), but Japanese prose, at least translated, is very straight forward and to-the-point. You can't even argue when it comes to guys like Mishima (who's also more or less reviled in Japan from what I've headd). Akutagawa, Dazai, Kawabata, Abe, etc. are no better in translation (at least in that regard).

Soseki and Oe do stray away from the typically simple Japanese prose. But even then, their stuff is not hard to read at all.

>who's also more or less reviled in Japan from what I've head

News to me. Most people haven't read him extensively (or not at all since high school or college). They know about the "Mishima Incident"

whats this incident my nigga

Where he tried to incite a coup to restore the emperor and committed sudoku.

Then the translation is shit. Mishima's prose is far from straightforward.