Some Japanese novels to read
Life is better when you read beautiful things that don't have an agenda, a clear lesson, or any connection to what's happening in the news today.
Some say the world is ending. Others know it never ends. In the meantime, H. and I are headed to Japan next week, then Korea for a wedding in Seoul.
Having had this trip planned for a while, I’ve been using the past few months to “educate” myself by reading as many Japanese novels as I can.
Below are the ones I’ve enjoyed the most, all of which I’d recommend.
My favorite novels from Japan (so far)
1/ Some Prefer Nettles, Jun'ichirō Tanizaki (1921)
A novel about a perfectly decent couple trying to end their perfectly decent marriage in the most amicable way they can. It’s a mix of Virginia Woolf, Ingmar Bergman and Milan Kundera, with some beautiful meditations on the importance of tradition (in this case, traditional puppetry). It feels contemporary in a way that will stun you. I don’t mean that it’s “relevant” to modern times – I mean, you could read this and think it was published last year.
2/ Confessions of a Mask, Yukio Mishima (1949)
The most famous novel on this list, by one of the most incendiary figures in Japanese history. Mishima has a Wikipedia unlike any other: a sure-fire winner of the Nobel Prize, he committed Seppuku (ritual suicide) in 1970 after a failed coup to re-install the Japanese emperor as the true head of state. He was only 45. (Ironically, when he was younger, he almost married a woman who would go on to be the wife of the emperor of Japan. She’s still alive.)
Confessions of a Mask is a lightly fictionalized account of Mishima’s own difficulties as a closeted homosexual, as well as an examination of his profound belief in the erotic unity of beauty and death. Any compliment I give to this book will feel flimsy and cheap. It’s original, haunting, precise and evocative. It takes you inside the mind of a one-of-a-kind historical figure in a way that only a book can do.
If that’s not enough of a recommendation, how about this paragraph from Mishima’s Wikipedia:
In 2014, Mishima was one of the inaugural honourees in the Rainbow Honor Walk, a walk of fame in San Francisco's Castro neighbourhood noting LGBTQ people who have "made significant contributions in their fields".
3/ The Sailor Who Fell from Grace With the Sea, Yukio Mishima (1963)
A boy admires a sailor his widowed mother falls in love with, until that sailor gives up chasing the (imagined) glories of the sea and decides to settle down with this woman and her son. It’s a novel about young men’s suicidal love of the “Grand Cause” and the rapturous glory they believe is always waiting for them elsewhere; it’s about giving up one’s pursuit of the horizon in order to settle for the banalities of family and commerce. A lesser novel would offer more of a clean-cut agenda; this one pits differing ideals against each other without declaring a winner. I’m not sure its ending will ever leave me.
4/ The Rainbow, Yasunari Kawabata (1951)
A novel “about” three half-sisters, but more broadly about the culture of post-war Japan. Very focused on loss and shame, but surprisingly light on guilt (in contrast to post-war Europe) and apocalyptic thinking (Cold War US). A clear sense that the world has changed irreversibly, but never any fear that it’s all about to end.
Honorable mention: The first two thirds of Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84. It’s utterly brilliant, but then falls apart. I don’t need a book’s conclusion to be perfectly neat and tidy, but when you leave this many pieces out on the board, it’s clear the subject was too much for its author — not that he’s secretly playing 3D chess.
Some big picture thoughts
Reading these books made me realize just how narrow my sense of 20th-century literature was.
It’s not that I didn’t know people were writing books in Japan (or Iraq, or Puerto Rico, or anywhere else in the world) while American expats were frolicking in Paris. It’s just that I was surprised how much these books felt in conversation, stylistically, with the European and American traditions I’m more familiar with. Not separate, but entangled, in a way that brings new life to that ridiculous century.
One key difference (and it’s something I want to further mull): there’s something of a conservative avant garde at work here, especially in Kawabata and Tanizaki. Theirs isn’t a literary modernism trying to “break away” from inescapable tradition, but rather a modernism that mourns a past it knows was imperfect but can’t be retrieved.
James Joyce called history the nightmare he was trying to awake from. In these books, the attitude seems to be closer to: “History is always twisting and turning, and right now we’re all caught in one of its turns. Better cling to what we can, and hope for the best. There’s nothing to awake to, anyways.”
Bonus: some favorite movies, as well
Same deal. I love all these films.
Drive my Car (2021): Outrageously refreshing and fun. Someone once said of Dostoevsky: it’s hard to believe he wrote such great books given he never penned a beautiful line. In a similar vein, it’s hard understand how a film can be this gorgeous, without a single still frame that makes you go “wow.”
High and Low (1963): A perfect crime thriller. In contrast to the film above, there are some shots in this film that will blow you away in their detail, abundance, and coordination. A reminder that the greatest filmmakers can work in any genre.
Rashomon (1951): Inescapable if you take enough film studies classes. It’s structure may seem gimmicky (multiple characters sharing contradictory accounts of a murder), but I promise, it holds up.
Tokyo Story (1953): A classic, and rightly so. Elemental and moving.
Sans Soleil (1983): A one-of-a-kind travelogue documentary that is quite literally a genre unto itself. Not exclusively based in Japan, but it will re-invigorate your idea of what it means to travel.
In the end, I really think books in translation and films with subtitles are among the richest pleasures life has to offer. The sense of discovery and recognition you feel engaging with another culture’s genius is hard to replicate elsewhere. It may not help you navigate Tokyo’s subways, but I wouldn’t want to prepare for a trip any other way.