/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.17567293]

Has Japanese literature conpletely outgrown its classical Chinese inspirations both in form and substance?

[Sagerino No.17567302]

>>17567293
Bumperino

[Anonymous No.17567343]

idk

[Anonymous No.17567344]

>>17567293
Chinese culture and history was completely destroyed by the mid 70's, so yes.

[Anonymous No.17567348]

>>17567302
to boomp or not to boomp. . .

[Anonymous No.17567411]

>>17567344
I mean if we specifically look into the acknowledged achievements of Chinese culture, like Du Fu, Li Bo poems, four classical novels etc.
They're amazing, and rightfully served as an example for Japanese authors. However, once you're familiar with Japanese literature (even middle age poetry antologies, great read btw), the Chinese works begin to look... bleak

[Anonymous No.17567429]

>>17567293
Cultural creations are born within the culture that forged them, to say any artistic tradition is like another artistic tradition is wrong on the face of it, for Japanese art to be just like Chinese art Japan would have to be just like China.

[Anonymous No.17567433]

>>17567293
I hope you are not asserting than Murakami and similar faggots are in any way compatable to the classics
Even Hitomaro, Tale of Genji, Chikamatsu pale in comparison with the colossal Chinese tradition

[Anonymous No.17567466]

Interesting question; bump

[Anonymous No.17567471]

>>17567433
Murakami is low brow pulp fiction, I sincerely doubt anybody save for weebs would think otherwise.
But how does everything else pale in comparison? How does the breathtaking, majestically minimalist Japanese prose pale before this chinese vulgar WORDS WORDS WORDS BIG WORDS? How are those lines of three repetitive adjectives after every fucking noun beautiful? What's wrong with your taste?

[Anonymous No.17567510]

>>17567293
Bump

[Anonymous No.17567519]

>>17567293
Yes. Japan looked to Europe during the Meiji restoration. Your question is like 100+ years out of time.

[Anonymous No.17567723]

>>17567293
Since Basho, yes

[Anonymous No.17567762]

>>17567519
Europe is giga cringe

[Anonymous No.17568100]

Bump

[Anonymous No.17568106]

>>17567411
what's amazing about them?

[Anonymous No.17568135]

>>17567519
Absolutely pozzed

[Anonymous No.17568227]

>>17567471
read Zhuangzi (the greatest collection of literature ever written) and repent

[Anonymous No.17568803]

>>17568106
What's amazing about books in general?

[Anonymous No.17568928]

>>17567293
it's up there yes, you can still perceive some similarities but the sense of aestetic is and has always been so completely different that the gulf is by now substantual

[Anonymous No.17568939]

>>17568803
you said they were amazing, i thought you might have a reason

[Anonymous No.17569117]

Japan not only takes Chinese culture to the whole different level, it does so with whole human culture

[Anonymous No.17569126]

>>17568939
Once again, what's amazing about literally any literary work? You know, the story, the characters, aethetic merit, author's thoughts, and of course most imporatntly the quality of prose. Isn't that obvious?
Chinese prose is great, but is it really better than Japanese?

[Anonymous No.17569135]

>>17569126
>Chinese prose is great
why is it great?

[Anonymous No.17569170]

>>17569135
Do you want a mechanical formula with functions and logarithms?

[Anonymous No.17569184]

>>17569170
you listed the things you think make a work good, that included prose as the most important factor. you then said chinese prose is great. i want to know why you think it's great.

[Anonymous No.17569357]

>>17569184
Good taste, ability to sense beauty, creativeness. Enjoyable to read, original, good non-obvious comparisons and overall writing (considering its 6+ centuries old of course), no colorless banalities, no platitudes. That's like the basic requirements for any literary fiction

[Anonymous No.17569383]

>>17569357
very tempted to ask you what good taste is, but i'll leave it there...

i could tell you what i liked about confucius and hated about xunzi and mozi quite easily.

[Anonymous No.17569426]

>>17569383
Go on then, tell it

[Anonymous No.17569479]

>>17567293
A lot of Japanese literature from the 19th and 20th century grappled with Western themes and an increasing sense of West-like identity. Japanese literature from several centuries before grappled with a uniquely Japanese sense of identity. They fought several wars with the Chinese after all. In spite of the shared literature and linguistic roots, equivocating Chinese and Japanese literature is, in my opinion, a bit like equivocating French and German literature, which something I think most people would not do.

[Anonymous No.17569519]

>>17569426
>>17569426
what i liked about confucius was the prose, it was good.

j/k. the analects is enjoyable because of its concision, even the best translators can never match its brevity. but the later philosophers are a chore to read. Mencius is readable but provides nothing new, just a longer retread of Confucius without the wit. Xunzi and Mozi use, idk wtf it's called, parallelism or whatever, w/ long stretches where the same structure and same phrases are repeated over and over again, it's awful.

[Anonymous No.17569543]

>>17569479
I'm sorry in this universe France and Germany both appeared from Charlemagne's empire, and France didn't teach Germany writing system, science and laws, and French literature wasn't viewed as a paragon of quality for 1000+ years

[Anonymous No.17569571]

>>17569519
Yeah, I liked Analects too, but strictly from artistic perspective. His philosophical ideas are plain demagoguery

[Anonymous No.17569598]

>>17569571
which ones?

[Anonymous No.17569604]

Japaneseness was very short lived and it is surely dead now. Japanese culture is perhaps the the biggest rape victim of Westernisation.

[Anonymous No.17569679]

>>17567293
The ability to readily incorporate loan words and form neologism organically (and represent them) with a parallel phonetic system with wide colloquial usage in commerce and by otherwise katakana illiterate masses

[Anonymous No.17569901]

>>17569604
I just totally disagree. I read that Lost Japan book where this is basically the author’s thesis and it just sounds to me like a materialistic western whiner who wanted a bunch of pretty, exotic things to look at and collect. I notice that very often, for Westerners living in Japan, this is the primary reason they end of feeling this way. They have materialistic notions of what Japanese culture should be and they bring those dissatisfaction back to everyone else. From there, the trope snowballs. It’s a materialistic attraction and repulsion from start to finish. That’s why they don’t get it.

[Anonymous No.17569919]

>>17569543
Then France and Italy, Italy and Britain. It doesn’t matter. The idea that they’re somehow one in the same is just not true. It’s a weird trope that exists to either discredit Japanese literature or overvalue Chinese literature.

[Anonymous No.17569934]

>>17569901
I don’t remember getting that impression. Lost Japan just seemed to be the Japanese version of someone saying “Damn it sure sucks that poetry isn’t popular anymore” or something.

[Anonymous No.17569960]

Japanese culture is very similar to Nordic culture imo. Strong cultural cohesion and collectivism which produces certain individuals with an extreme sense of anomie, and all their literature shows it quite succinctly.

Murakami's literature is mostly about being an angsty teenager that struggles with their identity and with women and 90% of Mishima's literature is literally about being a neurotic bisexual in a culture that doesn't accept neither neuroticism in men nor any kind of sexual expression other than traditionalist mating.

In this sense Japan is actually more Western than it is traditionally Japanese.

[Anonymous No.17570072]

japanese literature these days is shitty fantasy LNs and web novels

[Anonymous No.17570090]

>>17569604
>Japanese culture is perhaps the the biggest rape victim of Westernisation.
this is such a cuck myth. go to japan and try to speak english, see how far that'll get you.

[Anonymous No.17570457]

>>17569960
Most of Murakami’s protagonists are mid 30s, not teenagers.

[Anonymous No.17570463]

>>17570090
>go to japan and try to speak english
I did. I got by just fine.

[Anonymous No.17570506]

>>17570072
Nobody's talking about pop-culture cringe, which surpasses all borders and ages

[Anonymous No.17570510]

>>17567343
i chortled. have a gold my friend :)

[Anonymous No.17570524]

>>17570457
Fair enough, but that really only proves my point even more.

[Anonymous No.17570871]

>>17569960
I couldn't see an identity problem in Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Toru Okada had a problem to fit in, but he was in peace with himself.

[Anonymous No.17571211]

>>17569960
>literature is mostly about being an angsty teenager that struggles with their identity and with women and 90%
>literature is literally about being a neurotic bisexual in a culture that doesn't accept neither neuroticism in men nor any kind of sexual expression other than traditionalist mating
You just described a lot of lit from anywhere.

[Anonymous No.17571239]

>>17568227
wumao fud

[Anonymous No.17571252]

>>17567471
Any recommendations for good (modern) nip writers? Murakami is about all anyone recommends for active writers.

[Anonymous No.17571267]

>>17571252
Kenzaburo Oe