Reading for Fun, Again
Sam Malissa (U.S.A.)

I started reading Japanese fiction because I enjoyed reading it, then I spent many years reading it to try to understand Japan, and now I’m back to reading it mainly for pleasure. Along the way I discovered that, at least for me, literature has more to say about humanity and its possibilities than about any particular culture. But more on that later.

It wasn’t until I was nineteen that I first read anything by a Japanese writer: an English translation of the short story “The Magic Chalk” by Abe Kobo, recommended by a friend. I thought it was wonderful, imaginative and darkly comic and somehow different-feeling than anything I had read before. I thought: this is interesting, and it’s Japanese, so let’s go read more Japanese fiction.

I read a bunch of Haruki Murakami, as so many do at the outset of their journey with Japanese literature. Then I moved to Japan on the JET Programme and read the books left for me by the previous JET in that town – Tanizaki, Banana, Ryu Murakami. I loved what I was reading, and I also thought it was strange that in a decent high school and college education I had never come across any Japanese fiction in translation. I developed the romantic notion that I would translate more Japanese fiction and help promote it in English.

To do that I would need to go beyond textbook Japanese and learn to read actual fiction. I started with two instructional books by Giles Murray, Breaking Into Japanese LIterature and Exploring Japanese Literature, which present modern short story classics by Akutagawa. Soseki, Kawabata, and Mishima in parallel text with language notes. These, along with the Read Real Japanese series by Michael Emmerich, are resources I would highly recommend to anyone looking to enjoy Japanese literature in the original.

I made steady progress. Soon enough the thrill of just being able to read fiction in Japanese gave way to a more analytical mode of reading. I was still interested in finding something worthwhile to translate, but I also had bigger questions. I felt like I had unlocked an important key to Japanese culture. Each new story or novel I read felt like a part of the puzzle, and if I could just put them together right I would be able to grasp the whole.

If I wanted to translate Japanese literature, I needed to know more about Japanese literature, so I went to graduate school. I did the thing that so many grad students do and told myself I was supposed to already know everything, even though the whole point of being there was so that I could learn more. Reading became like harvesting. I needed to have read more, and I needed to have conclusions about it. I was reading Japanese literature to answer the question, what is Japanese literature? And what is Japan? …As if I, or anyone, could answer those questions in any definitive way.

Now that I’m a few years removed from the particular pressures of academia, I have a different view. I think my initial instinct of seeing stories and novels as puzzle pieces was at least partially correct: there are linkages and connections where pieces fit together, but I no longer believe that there is a coherent whole.

I’m more and more inclined to approach a work of literature primarily as an example of one artist’s view. Each author is a person who has thought a lot about their world or who is reflecting one or more facets of it. Each work carries meaning, but that meaning isn’t an absolute category that can be cataloged. It comes through moments in time for individuals: for the author when they write it, for the reader when they read it, for the reviewer when they review it.

If there is an understanding of Japan to be found in Japanese-language literature, it is one of multiplicity. There is no single Japan, but many Japans, existing together in their resonances and contradictions. (I believe the same can be said for any national literature). Take a small sample of the wonderful authors writing in Japanese today: The absurdist echoes of our daily lives in Hiroko Oyamada, the kinetic crime comedies of Kotaro Isaka, the psychological portraits by Mieko Kawakami, the challenges to societal norms of Sayaka Murata, the hallucinatory journeys of Kyohei Sakaguchi… And these sound bytes for each author are only one flavor of the work they produce. There is so much more complexity.

But more than interpreting what these works say about Japan as a country and a culture, I find I derive deeper satisfaction and inspiration from considering what they can tell me about being a human being. The way relationships blossom then wilt. The way memory erupts into the present. Taboos that we wish we could transgress. The fact that you can never really go home. Some stories are rich with these nuggets of insight, some may have just one or two. Coming across them is always cause for quiet celebration.

Recently I’ve been reading a lot of Ono Masatsugu. I love how his work straddles real and surreal, and his meditations on family have meant a lot to me as a new father. I also had an occasion to read Aramaki Yoshio and it got me on a diet of sci-fi. I had a great time reading the recent translations of Izumi’s Suzuki’s SF, and I dug into a collection of Sakyo Komatsu’s stories I had on my shelf. I got a strong recommendation to read Yadokari no hoshi by Denpo Torishima and I look forward to exploring that world.

Over the years, my relationship with Japanese literature has become less hurried, and I find myself doing more observing than searching. Rather than trying to wrap my arms around all of it and fit it into a big-picture theory, I take it as it comes and allow myself to enjoy it more.

(Independent translator)