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> It’s impossible to overestimate the depth of his influence on contemporary Japanese literature and culture, This is complete 100% pure grade A nonsense. It's
by resoluteteeth 8y ago
> It’s impossible to overestimate the depth of his influence on contemporary Japanese literature and culture,
This is complete 100% pure grade A nonsense. It's like saying "it's impossible to overestimate the depth of Dan Brown's influence on contemporary America literature and culture." Haruki Murakami has lots of obsessive fans, but he has had almost zero influence on Japanese literature or culture because nobody other than his rabid fans cares about his writing.
> Japan’s current literary and cultural scene takes in “light novels”, brisk narratives that lean heavily on sentimentality and romance and often feature visuals drawn from manga-style aesthetics, and dystopian post-apocalyptic stories of intimate violence, such as Natsuo Kirino’s suspense thrillers, Out and Grotesque.
This is also total garbage. "Light novels" are specific (terrible) genre of young adult novels with anime style illustrations (yes, illustrations, not just "aesthetics") that are probably aimed chiefly at middle schoolers. Natsuo Kirino’s books are not "light novels." This article is intentionally trying to conflate these completely different things in order to misleadingly suggest that actual Japanese literature has been influenced by "manga-style aesthetics."
> Music plays a prominent role in much contemporary Japanese literature; but it is not mere metaphor. Murakami...
Yes, Haruki Murakami loves to litter his books with references, Ready Player One style, but this is not something that is normal in Japanese literature.
> But there are larger currents at work that make today’s Japanese stories, poems, animations and manga so vivid as domestic cultural artefacts, and so ripely attractive to the rest of the world.
> Ten years ago I wrote in my book Japanamerica:
So basically, "Having written a book about the popularity of anime in the US makes me an expert on Japanese literature." Please.
- hudibras 8y agoAh, there it is. It wouldn't be an online discussion of Murakami without at least one person vehemently arguing that his work is garbage, that most Japanese people don't care about him, and that his novels don't reflect Real Japan.
- euske 8y agoI actually think that most people in Japan don't really care about him. Grew up in Japan as a native, very few of my friends actually read his novel. Everyone knows he's a famous author, but that doesn't mean his work is popular among the masses. I wouldn't say it's garbage, but I tend to think he's famous mostly because all the critics praise him.
- hudibras 8y agoI didn't mean that he was wrong, only that they were trite observations that somebody always mentions. Even the fact that his work is not popular among the masses doesn't add much to the conversation, any more than pointing out that the average American doesn't care about Jeffrey Eugenides, Toni Morrison, Jonathan Franzen, or Thomas Pynchon...
- jen729w 8y agoIn fairness you could say the same about most Western 'literature'. Most people don't read Steinbeck or Roth or Atwood. Most people read Dan Brown and their Facebook feed.