A Momentary Taste of Being

10 Japanese Writers you should know--or not Well, at least contemporary--it would seem a shame to ignore Soseki, Kawabata, Tanazaki, Basho, Shonagon, Murasaki, Issa, and countless others--but this is a nice short photo guide to 10 who might be worth your interest.  Ryu Murakami gave rise to a book that in turn gave rise to one of the most disturbing of all of the Japanese or Asian horror films-- Audition .  Hmm, but what of a list that does not include Yoko Ogawa?

Haiku Treasury

Feiyu and Oe among those on the Man Booker Asian Prize List.

A Little Treasury of Haiku II

IQ-84 due out in October

A Little Treasury of Haiku part I

The Silent Cry reviewed

Spring Snow reviewed The author of the post asks at the end how you feel about "balancing the canon,"  and suggest a canon without at least five Japanese authors on it is a pale and weedy thing. I disagree. A canon should not have quotas--people should not be included by nationality, but by worthiness of book.  Should the canon feature works from Asian authors?  Undoubtedly.  But then it would be world Canon, not a western Canon.  Do I think a world canon has a place in education--yes, in college.  But one of the things I find wrong with education now is that lack of a basis in any foundational literature makes access of other literatures more difficult.  That is a way of saying that the Western Canon has proven a worthwhile pedagogical device for precisely the literary intelligence it inculcates.  My acquaintance with it has made accessible to me literature from a diverse group of peoples and cultures.  So, should the Western Canon be...

Silence by Shusaku Endo reviewed If you're anything like I was, I had heard about the necessity of this book for years before I picked it up.  Having picked it up, I feel like I will never put it down.  It has become emblematic for me.  I push it upon anyone who will listen long enough for me to get through my spiel. But, I do know, if you want to split a roomful of Catholics faster than lightning--toss this book in the room and then ask them whether what the protagonists does at the end was right or wrong.  Guaranteed, you'll split that room--perhaps not right down the middle--but there will be at least two groups each adamantly holding to their point.  I know, been there, done that.  I'm with the group that agrees with the Priest and with the voice from the fumie .  But to quote an American Literary Figure recently in the news, "without you having read it, you ain't gonna know what I'm talking about."  If you haven't done so, this is one...

The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea reviewed Though in some ways Yukio Mishima is a better writter than some Japanese authors (or perhaps translates more easily into what seems better writing in English), I often find encounters with him strangely disorienting--as though I've brushed by the essence of madness.

Fifty-Seven Damn Good Haiku reviewed

Norwegian Wood reviewed

First, a warning to those who would pick up the elegant, poetic, and powerful new translation of this most important novel of one of Japan's finest novelists: read the preface last, except for perhaps the last page in which the translator explains the meaning of kokoro and how she chose to translate it.  The rest of the preface is stuffed full of major spoilers.  But this was the only flaw I could find with the novel and wiht the translation. The plot isn't precisely a page-tuner, but the reader is engaged every step of the way, from the narrator's encounter with the otherwise nameless Sensei to the very end. In a nutshell, a young man leaves his family to go to Tokyo for school. While there he encounters and "falls in love with" an intriguing, mysterious man whom he comes to call Sensei. Falls in love with should not be read to imply a homosexual affair, but as the translator rightly notes, a kind of erotic intellectualism.  There is no sense of passion here, ...

from Guns and Steel Yukio Mishima This antinomy rested on the assumption that I myself from the outset was devoid of flesh, of reality, of action. It was true, indeed, that the flesh came late to me at the beginning, but I was waiting for it with words. I suspect that because of the earlier tendency I spoke of, I did not perceive it, then, as "my body." If I had done so, my words would have lost their purity. I should have been violated by reality, and reality would have become inescapable. Interestingly enough, my stubborn refusal to perceive the body was itself due to a beautiful misconception in my idea of what the body was. I did not know that a man's body never shows itself as "existence." But as I saw things, it ought to have made itself apparent, clearly and unequivocally, as existence. It naturally followed that when it did show itself unmistakably as a terrifying paradox of existence that rejected existence--I was as panic-stricken as though I had ...

from Guns and Steel Yukio Mishima Let the reader not chide me for comparing my own trade to the white ant. In its essence, any art that relies on words makes use of their ability to eat away--of their corrosive function--just as etching depends on the corrosive power of nitric acid. Yet the simile is not accurate enough, for the copper and the nitric acid used in etching are on a par with each other, both being extracted from nature, while the relation of words to reality is not that of the acid to the plate. Words are a medium that reduces reality to abstractions for transmission to our reason, and in their power to corrode reality inevitably links the danger that the words themselves will be corroded too. It might be more appropriate, in fact, to liken their action to the excess of stomach fluids that digest and gradually eat away the stomach itself. (p. 8-9) Hmm, and this reader finds himself asking if it is true?  It is undeniably true that Mishima viewed words and his craf...

Reviewing Japanese Literature The list is good, very good indeed; however, the commentary and demurral on Endo's Silence seems odd.  The reader suggests that it is the religious theme rather than the power of the work that makes this appear on so many lists, and yet how does one separate one from the other?  It would be like saying that The Power and the Glory or The End of the Affair or Brideshead Revisited is not worthy of consideration as great work because it has a principally religious theme.  Endo's work is powerful and translates well out of the religious life into the dilemma's of every day life.  How often is one called upon to sacrifice a core belief in the desire not to cause harm to others? 

Haiku of the Japanese Masters

More about Tea--more than you'll ever need, but, perhaps, not more than you'll ever want

Okakura's Book of Tea What is most notable about Okakura's book and the like is the way it raises the quotidian to the spiritual.  The approaches he advises infuse ordinary actions with extraordinary presence and creates a spiritual place in the middle of the ordinary waste of life.  Indeed, "a momentary taste of being. . . "

Silent Flowers : R. H. Blyth Translations