JAPANESE LITERATURE

Early works of Japanese literature were heavily influenced by cultural contact with China and Chinese literature, often written in Classical Chinese. Indian literature also had an influence through the diffusion of Buddhism in Japan. Eventually, Japanese literature developed into a separate style in its own right as Japanese writers began writing their own works about Japan, although the influence of Chinese literature and Classical Chinese remained until the end of the Edo period. Since Japan reopened its ports to Western trading and diplomacy in the 19th century, Western and Eastern literature have strongly affected each other and continue to do so.

1. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND Early Japan borrowed much from Chinese culture but evolved its own character over time. a) Early Japans political structure was based on clan, or family. Each clan developed a hierarchy of classes with aristocrats, warriors, and priests at the top and peasants and workers at the bottom. During the 4th century A.D. the Yamato family grew to be the most powerful and imposed the Chinese imperial system on Japan, creating an emperor, an imperial bureaucracy, and a grand capital city.

b) The Heian Age was the period of piece and prosperity, of aesthetic refinement and artificial manners. The emperor began to diminish in power but continued to be a respected figure. Since the Japanese court had few official responsibilities, they were able to turn their attention to art, music, and literature. c) The Feudal Era was dominated by the samurai class which included the militaristic lords, the daimyo and the band of warriors, the samurai who adhered to a strict code of conduct that emphasized bravery, loyalty, and honor. In 1192 Yorimoto became the shogun or chief general, one of a series of shoguns who ruled Japan for over 500 years.

d) The Tokugawa Shogunate in the late 1500s crushed the warring feudal lords and controlled all of Japan from a new capital at Edo, now Tokyo. By 1630 and for two centuries, Japan was a closed society: all foreigners were expelled, Japanese Christians were persecuted, and foreign travel was forbidden under penalty of death. 2. RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS Two major faiths were essential elements in the cultural foundations of Japanese society.

a) Shintoism, or the way of the gods, is the ancient religion that reveres in dwelling divine spirits called kami, found in natural places and objects. For this reason natural scenes, such as waterfall, a gnarled tree, or a full moon, inspired reverence in the Japanese people. b) Zen Buddhism emphasized the importance of meditation, concentration, and self-discipline as the way to enlightenment. Zen rejects the notion that salvation is attained outside of this life and this world. Instead, Zen disciples believe that one can attain personal tranquility and insights into the true meaning of life through rigorous physical and mental discipline.

3.SOCIO-POLITICAL CONCEPTS Japan has integrated Confucian ethics and Buddhist morality which India implanted in China. The concepts of giri and on explain why the average Japanese is Patriotic, sometimes ultra-nationalistic, and lawabiding. Even seppuku or ritual disembowelment exemplify to what extent these two sociopolitical concepts could be morally followed. a) Giri Connotes duty, justice, honor, face, decency, respectability, courtesy, charity, humanity, love, gratitude, claim. Its sanctions are found in mores, customs, folkways. For example, in feudal Japan loss of face is saved by suicide or vendetta, if not renouncing the world in the monastery.

b) On Suggests a sense of obligation or indebtedness which propels a Japanese to act, as it binds the person perpetually to other individuals to the group, to parents, teachers, superiors, and the emperor. 4. POETRY Is one of the oldest and most popular means of expression and communication in the Japanese culture. It was an integral part of daily life in ancient Japanese society, serving as a means through which anyone could chronicle experiences and express emotions.

The Manyoshu or Book of Ten Thousand Leaves is an anthology by poets from a wide range of social classes, including the peasantry, the clergy, and the ruling class. There are different poems according to set forms or structures: Choka are poems that consist of alternate lines of five and seven syllables with an additional seven-syllable line at the end. There is no limit to the number of lines which end with envoys, or pithy summations. These envoys consist of 5-7-57-7 syllables that elaborate on or summarize the theme of central idea of the main poem.

Tanka is the most prevalent verse form in traditional Japanese literature. It consists of five lines of 5-7-5-7-7 syllables including at least one caesura, or pause. Used as a means of communication in ancient Japanese society, the tanka often tell a brief story or express a single thought or insight on the common subjects of love and nature. Renga is a chain of interlocking tanka. Each tanka within a renga was divided into verses of 17 and 14 syllables composed by different poets as it was fashionable for groups of poets to work together during the age of Japanese feudalism.

Hokku was the opening verse of a renga which developed into a distinct literary form known as the haiku. The haiku consist of 3 lines of 5-7-5 syllable characterized by precision, simplicity, and suggestiveness. Almost all haiku include a kigo or seasonal words such as snow or cherry blossoms that indicates the time of year being described. 5. PROSE Appeared in the early part of the 8th century focusing on Japanese history. During the Heian Age, the members of the imperial court, having few administrative or political duties, kept lengthy diaries and experimented with writing fiction.

The Tale of Genji by Lady Murasaki Shikibu is considered to be the worlds first true novel. It traces the life of a gifted and charming prince. And contains brilliant descriptions of court dress and manners.

The Pillow Book by Sei Shonagon contains vivid sketches of people and places, short anecdotes and witticisms, snatches of poetry, and 164 lists on court life during the Heian period. Shonagon served as a lady-in-waiting to the Empress Sadako in the late 10th century.

The Tale of Haike, written by an anonymous author during the 13th century was the most famous early Japanese novel. It presents a striking portrait of war-torn Japan during the early stages of the age of feudalism.

Essays in Idleness Tsurezuregusa ( ?, Essays in Idleness, alternatively: The Harvest of Leisure) by Yoshida Kenko was written during the age of feudalism. It is a loosely organized collection of insights, reflections, and observations, written during the 14th century. Kenko was born into a high-ranking Shinto family and became a Buddhist priest.

6. DRAMA a) Types of play Noh plays emerged during the 14th century as the earliest form of Japanese drama. The plays are performed on an almost bare stage by a small but elaborately costumed cast of actors wearing masks. The actors are accompanied by a chorus and the plays are written either in verse or in highly poetic prose. The dramas reflect many Shinto and Buddhist beliefs, along with a number of dominant Japanese artistic preferences. The No performers subtle expressions of inner strength, along with the beauty of the costumes, the eloquence of the dancing,

the mesmerizing quality of the singing, and the mystical, almost supernatural, atmosphere of the performances, has enabled the No theater to retain its popularity. Kabuki involves lively, melodramatic acting and is staged using elaborate and colorful costumes and sets. It is performed with the accompaniment of an orchestra and generally focus on the lives of common people rather than aristocrats. Jorori (now called Bunraku) is staged using puppets and was a great influence on the development of the kabuki. Kyogen is a farce traditionally performed between the No tragedies.

b) Atsumori by Zeami Motokiyo

is drawn from an episode of The Tale of the Heike, a medieval Japanese epic based on historical facts that tell the story of the rise and fall of the Taira family, otherwise known as the Heike.

The play takes place by the sea of Ichi no tani. A priest named Rensei, who was once a warrior with the Genji clan, has decided to return to the scene of the battle to pray for a sixteen-year-old named Atsumori, whom he killed on the beach during the battle.

7. NOVELS AND SHORT STORIES

a) by

Snow
YASUNARI

Country Kawabata

tells of love denied by a tokyo diletteante, Shimamura, to Komako, a geisha who feels used much as she wants to think and feel that she is drawn sincerely, purely to a man of the world.

She has befriended Yoko to whom Shimamura is equally and passionately drawn because of her virginity, her naivete, as he is to Komako who loses it, after her affair with him earlier. Kawabata makes use of contrasting thematic symbols in the title: death and purification amidst physical decay and corruption.

b) The House of Sleeping Beauties by ( ) YASUNARI Kawabata is a story about a lonely man, old Eguchi. Ironically, this old man who senses beauty and youth is incapable of expressing, much less of having it. Thus, the themes of old age and loneliness and coping become inseparable.

c) The Makioka Sisters by JUNICHIRO Tanizaki is the story of four

sisters whose chief concern is finding a suitable husband for the third sister, Yukiko, a woman of traditional beliefs who has rejected several suitors.

More important than the plot, the novel tells of middle-class daily life in prewar Osaka. It also delves into such topics as the intrusion of modernity and its effect on the psyche of the contemporary Japanese, the place of kinship in the daily life of the people, and the passage of the old order and the coming of the new.

d) The Sea of Fertility by YUKIO Mishima is the four-part epic including Spring Snow, Runaway Horses, The Temple of Dawn, and The Decay of the Angel. The novels are set in Japan from about 1912 to the 1960s.

Each of them depicts a different reincarnation of the same being: as a young aristocrat in 1912, as a political fanatic in the 1930s, as a Thai princess before the end of WWII, and as an evil young orphan in the 1960s. Taken together the novels are a clear indication of Mishimas increasing obsession with blood, death, and suicide; his interest in self-destructive personalities, and his rejection of the sterility of modern life.

e) The Setting Sun by DAZAI Ozamu is a tragic, vividly painted story of life in postwar Japan. The narrator is Kazuko, a young woman born to gentility but now impoverished. Though she wears Western clothes, her outlook is Japanese; her life is static, and she recognizes that she is spiritually empty. In the course of the novel, she survives the deaths of her aristocratic mother and her sensitive, drug-addicted brother Naoji, an intellectual ravaged by his own and societys spiritual failures.

f) In the Grove By ( ) RYNOSUKE Akutagawa is the authors most famous story made into the film Rashomon. The story asks these questions: what is the truth? Who tells the truth? How is the truth falsified?

Six narrators tell their own testimonies about the death of a husband and the violation of his wife in the woods. The narrators include a woodcutter, a monk, an old woman, the mother-in-law of the slain man, the wife, and finally, the dead man whose story is spoken through the mouth of a shamaness. Akutagawas ability to blend a feudal setting with deep psychological insights gives this story an ageless quality.

g) The Wild Geese by Mori gai ( / ) is a melodramatic novel set in Tokyo at the threshold of the 20th century. The novel explores the blighted life of Otama, daughter of a cake vendor. Because of extreme poverty, she becomes the mistress of a policeman,

and latter on of a money-lender Shazo. In her desire to rise from the pitfall of shame and deprivation, she tries to befriend Okada, a medical student who she greets every day by the window as he passes by on his way to the campus. She is disillusioned however, as Okada, in the end, prepares for further medical studies in Germany. Ogais novel follows the tradition of the watakushishosetsu or the confessional I-novel where the storyteller is the main character.

h) The Buddha Tree by Niwa Fumio ( ) alludes to the awakening of Buddha under the bo tree when he gets enlightened after fasting 40 days and nights. Similarly, the hero of the novel, Shoshu, attains selfillumination after freeing himself from the way of all flesh.

8. MAJOR WRITERS a) ZEAMI MOTOKIYO ( ) (1363-1443) also called Kanze Motokiyo ( ) Was a playwright and theorist of the noh theater. He is credited with about 90 (and most of the greatest) of the approximately 230 plays in the present repertoire of the no theater.

b) THE HAIKU POETS

1. MATSUO BASH ( ) (1644-1694), 1644 Nov. 28, 1694), born Matsuo Kinsaku ( ), then Matsuo Chemon Munafusa ( is regarded as the greatest haiku poet. He was born into a samurai family and began writing poetry at an early age. After becoming a Zen Buddhist, he moved into an isolated hut on the outskirts of Edo(Tokyo) where he lived the life of a hermit, supporting himself by teaching and judging poetry.

2. YOSA BUSON (1716-1783) or Yosa no Buson ( ) is regarded as the secondgreatest haiku poet. He lived in Kyoto throughout most of his life and was one of the finest painters of his time. Buson presents a romantic view of the Japanese landscape, vividly capturing the wonder and mystery of nature.

3. KOBAYASHI ISSA ( - )
(1763-1827)

He is better known as simply Issa (-), a pen name meaning Cup-of-tea. Issa was born and registered as Kobayashi Nobuyuki ( ), with a childhood name of Kobayashi Yatar ( ). Is ranked with Basho and Buson although his talent was not widely recognized until after his death. Issas poems capture the essence of daily life in Japan and convey his compassion for the less fortunate.

c)

YASUNARI KAWABATA (1899-1972) won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968. a sense of loneliness and preoccupation with death permeate much of his mature writing. Three of his best novels are: Snow Country, A Thousand Cranes, and Sound of the Mountains. He committed suicide shortly after the suicide of his friend Mishima.

d)

JUNICHIRO TANIZAKI (1886-1965) Is a major novelist whose writing is characterized by eroticism and ironic wit. His earliest stories were like those of Edgar Allan Poes but he later turned toward the exploration of more traditional Japanese ideals of beauty. Among his works are Some Prefer Nettles, The Makioka Sisters, Diary of a Mad Old Man.

e) YUKIO MISHIMA (1925-1970) is the pen name of Kimitake Hiraoka, a prolific writer who is regarded by many writers as the most important Japanese novelist of the 20th century. His highly acclaimed first novel, Confessions of a Mask is partly autobiographical work that describes with stylistic brilliance a homosexual who must mask his sexual orientation. Many of his novels have main characters who, for physical or psychological reasons, are unable to find happiness.

f) DAZAI OZAMU (1909-1948) It is believed that Ozamu had psychological conflicts arising from his inability to draw a red line between his japaneseness clashing with his embracing the Catholic faith, if not the demands of creativity. The Setting Sun is one of his works.

g) RYUNOSUKE AKUTAGAWA (1892-1927) is a prolific writer of stories, plays, and poetry, noted for his stylistic virtuosity. He is one of the most widely translated of all Japanese writers, and a number of his stories have been made into films. Many of his short stories are Japanese tales retold in the light of modern psychology in a highly individual style of feverish intensity that is well-suited to their macabre themes. Among his works are Rashomon , and Kappa.

h) OE KENZABURO (B. 1935) A novelist whose rough prose style epitomizes the rebellion of the post-WWII generation of which he writes, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1994. Among his works are: Lavish are the Dead, The Catch, Our generation, and Awake, New Man.

THANK YOU!