Japanese Novels
Japanese Novels
I really enjoyed teaching a course on Japanese novels with my WEA students a few years ago, so you can imagine how pleased I was when my friend Chris, who had lived and worked in Japan as a teacher, sent me a text to say that The Guardian had just published an article about Japanese fiction. Reading through it I immediately hit upon one of the books we had studied - Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata. There was also an interview with one of the authors of another book that we had read - Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami - who says that he always likes to leave his readers with something to think about.
Chris and I, and a number of prospective students went to see Sayaka Murata talking about her book in February 2019 at The British Library, an institution conveniently situated near Euston Station and pictured here. There we heard Murata give a reading in Japanese from her book which Chris was able to understand, and this was followed by a reading in English from her translator, Ginny Tapley Takemori, who had accompanied her to the event. It is significant that more recently translators are given equal prominence with authors in relation to their books.
The course itself was, as I like to think, one of my most successful. We looked at Convenience Store Woman, Norwegian Wood, A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki and An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro. The first two were translations from the Japanese, while the others were written by writers who had a strong Japanese heritage. Ishiguro is one of my favourite authors and this WEA group had already studied Never Let Me Go (2005).
As is the WEA tradition, the group had had a strong input into the choice of books that we would read. The course had in fact been initiated by two students who had themselves visited Japan the year before. They were very keen to share their knowledge and my preparation had involved an exhaustive study of Japanese art, literature and political history so that I would be ready to follow up any questions that arose. One of my lines of enquiry dealt with the book The Tale of Genji, an enormous piece of work by Murasaki Shikibu, a lady in attendance at the Japanese court at the start of the 11th Century. It was completed about 1010 and is generally thought to be the world’s first novel.
The two novels on my course which were not original translations had other features to recommend them. Ruth Ozeki’s novel dealt with the Japanese Earthquake and Tsunami which occurred in March 2011 and left an indelible mark on the country. The semi-autobiographical story concerns Ruth who finds a plastic lunchbox containing the letters and diary of 16 year-old Nao. Ruth follows a Zen like path in order to find out more about Nao who like her has Japanese-American connections. Although most of the students enjoyed it, it was challenging and was described by one reviewer as ‘a vast churning basin of mental flotsam’ - much like the tsunami itself had left.
Ishiguro’s early novel, An Artist of the Floating World, however, was more accessible and concerned the imagined life of a celebrated painter, Masuji Ono, and his later regret about his involvement with Japanese militarism in World War II. After reading the novel, I read in his introduction how as he wrote, Ishiguro followed his narrator’s drifting memories and wrote ‘in the way an abstract painter might choose to place shapes and colours around a canvas’. It became a great favourite of mine and I used his ideas in an essay on 'Time Spaces and Selves' for an adult education conference in 2023.
Haruki Murakami’s novel, Norwegian Wood, held a special place for me as its title is also that of a favourite Beatles’ song from Revolver (1966). Murakami makes much of the revolutionary feelings amongst young people during the sixties as they sought to change the world. The story concerns the suicide of Nagao, one of a group of friends: I taught it, by highlighting the passage of letters in the novel between those whom Nagao had left behind to grieve, amongst them her boyfriend Watanabe.
One session from my course on this novel was observed and students’ comments noted: ‘I always enjoy reading something I would not normally read,’ said one. ‘It challenges me and keeps me thinking.’ I was pleased with such responses as I had introduced them to ideas on the value of reading, using,Why Read? (2004) by Mark Edmundson.
Returning to the book, Convenience Store Woman, with which I began, this proved to be the most contentious novel of the course. One of the students raised the question as to whether the central character was autistic and I found myself scrambling to discover something about autism and whether I thought it could apply. In The Guardian article referred, Ginny Tapley Takemori is quoted as saying that Murata did not necessarily intend the book to be one about autism ‘but she doesn’t mind people seeing it that way. She (Murata) shows us that what we take for granted as normal is not actually normal at all.’
The article to which Chris alerted me says that Japanese fiction is experiencing an ‘extraordinary boom’ at present and that it represents 25% of all translated fiction sales in the UK. On a recent TV programme "Between the Covers", Sarah Cox introduced a video of the author, Azako Yuzuki, talking about her novel, Butter (2024), a story of murder, food and misogyny. Back in 2019 the genre was inspiring both for me and my students and it contributed to one of the many Literature courses that I taught to them. ‘We were ahead of the curve,' Chris had said to me in his text. If you my readers know of any novels produced by Japanese authors and have a favourite, do tell me about them. I would love to know more.
The British Library
References:
The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu (C11)
An Artist of The Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro (1986)
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami, translated by Jay Rubin (2003)
A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki (2013)
Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata, translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori (2018)
Butter by Asako Yuzuki, translated by Polly Barton (2024)
Essay on Time, Spaces and Selves by Peter Leyland in ESREA Life, History and Biography Trondheim (2023)
‘Why Are Japanese Novels so Popular? You tell me’ by John Self in The Guardian, 23/11/24
Images from The British Library, Shutterstock
Comments
But what a fascinating course this sounds, ranging over a wide area of modern Japanese fiction (with references to much older stories... there was I, thinking Don Quixote claimed the title to the world's first novel in 1605 but the Japanese were 400 years ahead). Lots of books I should be reading here but I have to come clean and say I read Convenience Store Woman and found it very lightweight. I'd certainly have trouble writing about it. General agreement is that the main character is autistic but as the author herself implies, that's not important. Either way, the book left me cold. Am I missing something?