print | close Contemporary Voices in Japanese Literature

The following writers are the three most well-known Japanese novelists writing today. Each of these writers has a distinctive style which reflects a different aspect of contemporary Japan. Many of their works have been translated into English and have received critical acclaim.

Kenzaburo Oe

Oe is the most accomplished, but also the most difficult, of contemporary Japanese writers. In 1995 he became the second Japanese person to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. His novels, short stories, and nonfiction grapple with the most difficult political and social problems that have faced Japanese society - such as the treatment of minorities, the Japanese role in World War II, and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. His sensibility is strikingly unique and his imagery is often grotesque and frightening. Among his finest works of fiction in English are A Personal Matter, The Silent Cry, and Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids.

Haruki Murakami

Murakami is the best-selling Japanese author in the West since Yukio Mishima. His novels are eccentric and humorous, and make more references to jazz, fast food, and other emblems of mass consumer culture than to Japanese tradition and history. For instance, his most popular book in Japan is entitled Norwegian Wood, after the classic Beatles' song. Among his best books are The Wild Sheep Chase, the short story collection The Elephant Vanishes, and his latest novel The Wind-up Bird Chronicle.

Banana Yoshimoto

The writings of this young female author are as easygoing and idiosyncratic as her curious pen name. Kitchen, her most popular book, has been widely translated and was even made into a movie in Hong Kong. Like Murakami, she writes in a very hip and contemporary style which separates her generation sharply from those preceding it. Among her other best-selling novels in English are Lizard and NP: A Novel.

Exercise

1) Read one book by one of these authors. How do you think it fits in with the tradition of Japanese literature? How does it break or differ from this tradition?