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Japan: POWER OF THE WRITTEN WORD

WITH ITS DIVERSE LITERARY HERITAGE, JAPANESE WRITERS HAVE ESTABLISHED THEMSELVES ON THE GLOBAL CULTURAL FIRMAMENT

Japan has a rich literary tradition. While Japanese writing can be traced back to more than a millennium, the world got a much better understanding of Japanese writers after World War II. This was a time when Japanese writing began to be translated into English. Among the early writers to gain worldwide attention include Haruo Umezaki, whose works like Sakurajima talked about Japan during and after the Great War. Literature that followed the war often touched upon topics like disaffection, loss of purpose, and coping with defeat.
The Setting Sun, a powerful book by Osamu Dazai, one of Japan's most celebrated writers, details the story of a soldier returning from the Manchukuo province. A brilliant take on the social and philosophical problems of that time, Dazai was followed by noted authors like Shohei Ooka whose novel Fires on the Plain about a Japanese deserter going mad in the Philippines jungle won huge acclaim.
Writers like Kenzaburo Oe brought Japanese literature firmly under the international spotlight. His 1964 masterpiece A Personal Matter - a story about a man struggling to come to terms with the birth of his mentally disabled son - won him the prestigious Nobel Prize in Literature. The Nobel Prize committee hailed Oe for creating "an imagined world, where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament today."
Kazuo Ishiguro is one of most well-known Japanese writers globally who explores the themes of dignity, social constrains, memory and perspective. His 1989 novel The Remains of the Day won the Man Booker Prize for Fiction. The book was made into a critically acclaimed film starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson, which went on to be nominated for eight Academy Awards.
Among contemporary Japanese writers, Haruki Murakami has legions of fans. Murakami has been controversial, genre-defying, humorous and surreal in most of his works. Arguably the most experimental contemporary Japanese novelist, some of his best-known works include Norwegian Wood (1987) and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1994-1995). With book sales in the millions worldwide, Murakami has come to occupy the space between realism and fable. Known for his allegorical writing, the author's body of work includes classics such as Kafka on the Shore. It was however books like The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle that fans enjoyed most. Apart from getting him international recognition, the work solidified Murakami's reputation as one of the literary world's most important post-modern novelists.
No mention of Japanese literature would be complete without Banana Yoshimoto. A household name for her manga style of writing, Yoshimoto is known for her focus on dialogue (resembling the script of manga) that often revolves round the themes of love, friendship and loss. She shot to fame with her 1988 work Kitchen - tale of a young female who deals with the loss of her grandmother. The book's powerful fusion of the protagonist's loss on the one hand, and her closeness with a cross-dressing friend, was hailed for its warmth, funny and moving prose. Yoshimoto's book The Lake was subsequently long listed for the Man Asian Literary Prize (2011).
-sadiq@khaleejtimes.com