Reading Japanese Literature: Six Writers, Different Beginnings

David Lapadat | Music PhD

2 hours ago

4 min read

Begin with the kind of story you want to spend time inside. A young man tries to understand an older friend in Kokoro; an advertising man follows a mysterious sheep across Japan in A Wild Sheep Chase. Between those choices lie the invented history of a warlord, an encounter in a mountain resort, and two very different accounts of a life spent concealing oneself.

Sōseki, Tanizaki, Kawabata, Dazai, Mishima, and Murakami offer six entrances into modern Japanese fiction. You can read them in any order. The useful question is which book makes you want to turn its first page.

Spoiler note: These recommendations avoid major plot revelations. The linked critical essays and character maps discuss their books in full, including endings.

Six places to begin

Natsume Sōseki — Kokoro

An unnamed young man befriends an older man he calls Sensei. Their closeness grows around things Sensei is reluctant to explain. Choose Kokoro if you like fiction in which a friendship becomes more difficult to understand as it becomes more important to the people involved.

Give the young man's curiosity time to develop. Trying to settle Sensei's character too early would remove one of the pleasures of following him. Afterward, the Kokoro review considers loneliness, guilt, and the distance between generations.

Jun’ichirō Tanizaki — The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi

For a less decorous beginning, try The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi. Tanizaki gives a sixteenth-century warrior a secret history of sexual obsession, presented through invented documentary sources. The scholarly manner and the grotesque material make a peculiar combination. Expect sexualized violence; the pleasure here includes watching how solemnly the narrator handles it.

The close reading of Lord of Musashi follows the narration's uncertain evidence and the extraordinary precision of individual scenes. Save it until you have read the novella: its argument depends on those scenes.

Yasunari Kawabata — Snow Country

The opening of Snow Country gives you a useful test. On a train, Shimamura watches a woman's reflection in the window as the landscape moves behind it. His fascination tells us much about his attention; his knowledge of the person he watches remains limited.

Continue if you want to linger over that difference. Shimamura's visits to a mountain hot-spring resort and his involvement with Komako, a geisha, give the novel its central encounter. The publisher's opening excerpt lets you try Edward G. Seidensticker's translation before choosing the book.

Osamu Dazai — No Longer Human

In No Longer Human, Ōba Yōzō plays the clown to disguise his difficulty with other people. The interest lies partly in listening to someone explain the gulf he feels between his public behavior and his private experience. Choose Dazai when you want a troubled account of the self and are willing to remain close to its speaker.

The Dazai section of The Wound the Modernists Named concentrates on social performance and shame. Read it afterward for a comparison with Dostoevsky, Kafka, Camus, and Hesse.

Yukio Mishima — Confessions of a Mask

Confessions of a Mask follows a young man's efforts to conceal his attraction to men. He is drawn to a male classmate and tries to court a schoolfriend's sister; violent fantasies also enter his account.

Read it alongside Dazai if the relation between a private life and a performed one interests you. Keep the narrators distinct: Yōzō's clowning and the courtship in Mishima's novel give you different actions to attend to, even before you decide what to make of their explanations.

Haruki Murakami — A Wild Sheep Chase

An advertising man uses a photograph containing an unusual sheep. Someone powerful wants the animal found. That errand sends him from Tokyo toward northern Japan in A Wild Sheep Chase.

This is the starting point recommended in How to Read Haruki Murakami. Choose it if a pursuit will keep you reading while the nature of what is being pursued becomes stranger. The guide supplies a longer sequence through the novels, with branches for other preferences. Once you have a particular book or problem in mind, the Murakami reading page directs you to reviews, close readings, and the 1Q84 character map.

Two routes beyond a first book

For relationships and self-disclosure: read Kokoro, then No Longer Human, then Confessions of a Mask. The sequence moves from a younger man's effort to understand someone else toward narrators occupied with explaining themselves. Let each book establish its own terms. A question you can carry between them is who the speaker imagines might understand him—and what he feels able to tell that person.

For a change after Murakami: choose Lord of Musashi if the authority of an improbable story interests you. Try Snow Country if a remembered image matters more to you than the pursuit that carried you to it.