Contemporary Japanese literature and me: a personal journey
Alejandra Tapia (Mexico)

Nowadays, it is incredible to think on the enormous amount of translated Japanese fiction available in libraries and bookstores around the world, especially for those interested in contemporary literature.

There are plenty of reasons that could explain this phenomenon. However, I think its success is related to the fact that contemporary Japanese literature has portrayed a series of problems and situations that have proved to be very relevant for people who live in big cities in late capitalism, such as loneliness, the difficulty of stablishing meaningful interpersonal relationships, the lack of meaning in everyday life, and gender inequality, to name but a few. In other words, it is a literature that feels incredibly close and familiar, in spite of seemingly cultural and physical distances.

It is very hard to remember the first Japanese book I ever read. It was probably one written by Yasunari Kawabata, because at the beginning of the 21st century, when I was a curious university student of English literature in Mexico City, the only Japanese fiction books available, and that could be found relatively easily in libraries and bookstores, were those written by Kawabata and Yukio Mishima. What I read in those years, by those writers, their plots and the landscapes they represented felt distant in many senses, but strangely beautiful.

Some years later, and although it may seem a common place, I can say that a book changed my life. In 2007, when I was working as a copywriter in an advertising agency, a colleague and friend of mine lent me a book written by Murakami Haruki, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. She had read it in a fiction workshop led by a writer who considered this novel “pure literature”, one to be deemed as a classic with the passing of time.

That huge novel stayed in my bookshelf for many months to come, almost forgotten, until one good day I decided to give it a chance. Although a difficult book because of its rhizomatic structure, it caught my attention from the very beginning because of its acute sense of impasse, loneliness, and complex treatment and understanding of spirituality, history, and reality. I cannot remember how long it took me to finish it, but I clearly recall having thought that the future was there, in that Japanese novel written by someone barely known in Mexico. Although Murakami was already very famous in Japan, his journey in Latin America had just begun.

When that same friend gave me Sputnik Sweetheart as a birthday gift, I knew that I had found one of my favorite writers ever, and I decided to do a master’s degree on Japanese Studies at El Colegio de México, where I analyzed the centrality of the concept of death in Murakami’s novels. Yet, later in life, while looking at a painting of the Buddhist Wheel of Life in a museum of New York City, I had a literary epiphany and realized that desire was equally important in his work.

My time at El Colegio de México was very important for another reason. Professor Guillermo Quartucci offered a literature class focused mainly in female Japanese writers such as Kanoko Okamoto, Enchi Fumiko, Hayashi Fumiko, among others. This was a very enlightening experience because in other Japanese literature courses students rarely read women, and it was very enriching to learn their approach to literature, and to the topics they cared about, because in those narratives I found a new sort of connection.

Although, back then, Banana Yoshimoto’s fame eclipsed any other Japanese female writer, in his classes, professor Quartucci briefly mentioned another writer whose name was Yoko Ogawa. When I got to read her out of sheer curiosity, her novel The Housekeeper and the Professor opened a completely new phase in my enjoyment and study of Japanese literature, one that has lasted until the present day, and I am sure will continue.

My personal and professional fascination with contemporary Japanese literature written by women has been driven by the brilliancy of the works and voices of Natsuo Kirino, Hiromi Kawakami, Emi Yagi, Yūko Tsushima, Yū Miri, Sayaka Murata, Mieko Kawakami, Yōko Tawada, Mitsuyo Kakuta, Machi Tawara, Takako Takahashi, Kikuko Tsumura, Shion Miura, Mieko Kanai, Yukiko Motoya, Hiroko Oyamada, Kazumi Yumoto, Banana Yoshimoto, Tomoka Shibasaki, Natsuko Imamura, and a long and diverse etcetera.

I have been able to pursue this interest of studying contemporary Japanese literature written by women from a gender perspective because of my current job as a copy editor specialized in feminisms and gender studies at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and due to my collaboration with the University Program of African and Asian Studies, where me and my colleague Vania de la Vega Shiota organized the first International Seminar of Japanese Literature Written by Women in 2020. In this seminar we began reading works written in Heian and finished with a novel published during the last years of Heisei. All of this was carried out online as a result of the covid-19 pandemic. For both teachers and students this course turned into an emotional and intellectual lifesaver during the several months of social distancing, while it also contributed to reassure the sound presence of female writers in contemporary Japan. This significant activity was the seed of what came afterwards, namely, my exciting collaboration with Japan Foundation Mexico.

To conclude, I would like to add that the summer of this year, 2023, I was able to go back to Japan, after more than 10 years since my first visit. One of my first activities was to visit the Haruki Murakami Library at Waseda University, where I was able to see a replica of Murakami’s studio and drink an iced latte while listening to the jazz he loves so much. That very day I took the train to Kokubunji to search where Murakami’s bar, Peter Cat, operated several decades ago. It was very significant for me to visit those places personally. Another day, to finish this sentimental journey, I visited Koenji to look for the park where the protagonists of the 1Q84 trilogy, Aomame and Tengo, meet again. I do not know why I chose this place over others related to Murakami’s fiction. Maybe it is because this novel is one of the very few that includes a happy ending.

Although the park was rather lonely, ordinary, and I was extremely tired, I decided to sit there just to enjoy the sound of cicadas, and the way the neighborhood was enveloped by dusk. It was a beautiful moment, because after so many years I was finally in the city I had read and dreamt about so many times. The city where everything began.

(Academic and Copy Editor, National Autonomous University of Mexico)