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/lit/ - Literature

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14950591 No.14950591 [Reply] [Original]

Pretty much all modern Japanese novels read like a bad adaptation of Dostoevski’s “Notes from Underground,” which is a minor work in his canon.
>Quick pop quiz: name one single highly memorable character from a Japanese novel.
You can’t because they don’t exist.
There is no Falstaff, no Hamlet, no Raskolnikov, no Oliver Twist, no Fagin, no Gatsby, no Addie Bundren, no Bigger Thomas, no Captain Ahab. It’s all just the nameless anonymous voice of Dostoevski’s Underground Man, constantly voicing his existential woe, rootless in the face of the Western onslaught.

>> No.14950621

Japan has manga, not novels

>> No.14950640

>>14950591
>>Quick pop quiz: name one single highly memorable character from a Japanese novel.
Kafka from Kafka on the shore.

>> No.14950673

>>14950591
>name one single highly memorable character from a Japanese novel.

Yukio Mishima

>> No.14950698

>>14950591
Genji.
Anyway are some of Mishima's most famous novels not examples otherwise?

>> No.14950707

>>14950591
i guess it's the culture. japs must value human struggle and spirit above his personality, which makes their lit so universally relatable despite its foreign setting.

>> No.14950717

>>14950591
Anime and manga are some of the most widely consumed form of literature in the world.

>> No.14950730

>>14950591
I think it's weird how neurotic most characters in japanese /lit/ are when asian people in general have a much weaker sense of self and self-awareness that is usually the underlying cause of neurotic disorders. Could that lack of awareness in relation to their selves be the cause for their lack of memorable characters, though?

>> No.14950732
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14950732

>>14950717
>Literature

>> No.14950781
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14950781

>>14950732
Rent free
Anime>Books

>> No.14950804

>>14950673
oh shit
it's been almost 10 years since the last time I saw you around, Deepgy.

>> No.14950814

>>14950591
Nobunaga proves you wrong.

>> No.14950823

>>14950640
He's identical to every Murakami protagonist.

>> No.14950829

>>14950591
Sensei from Kokoro.

>> No.14950864

>>14950591
Miyamoto Musashi

>> No.14950880

Jackie Chan

>> No.14950939

>>14950804
Awesome, let's both hope we don't see each other again in 10 years

>> No.14950972

>>14950730
interesting take. I wish I I were asian,

>> No.14951039

>>14950972
I promise you, you don't

>> No.14951064

MINOR WORK IN HIS CANON?????

>> No.14951151

>>14950730
>asian people in general have a much weaker sense of self and self-awareness
Source?

>> No.14952206

>>14950730
>asian people in general have a much weaker sense of self and self-awareness
Bump for Source.

>> No.14952544
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14952544

Kimitake Hiraoka in Confessions of a Mask

>> No.14952639

>>14950591
I think you're mistaking the fact that Doystoyevsky's Notes from Underground embodies the principle of all modern novels. The modern sense of uneasiness or angst. People must draw inspiration or reliance from their time. And Japs peaked in novel writing in the 20th century.

There are no memorable characters because Japanese don't write like that, have an entirely alternative relation to the world. There are only memorable books.

But who knows, maybe they have their own memorable characters but Western/Eastern memorable fictitious character only go one way around the world so we don't see them as memorable, Ryuji Tsukazaki was pretty memorable.

>> No.14952816

>>14950591
Eren Yeager.

>> No.14952825

>>14952816
Based AoT-Chad.
Manga is the new literature.