Dismissed as popular and decadent during the Edo period compared to "classical" works, the Japanese novel would, under the impetus of reformers following the Meiji Restoration, definitively establish its literary credentials. From that moment on, it would cease to unveil an unsuspected wealth, an incredible dynamism, and an often daring eclecticism that English-speaking readers can verify through the numerous translations of its works.

It was at the end of the 19th century that Japan became aware that literature, or Bungaku, a term once used to designate the study of Chinese writings, could be national. The novel began to be seen as an art of language in its own right, subject to its own laws—an idea notably championed by Tsubouchi Shôyô in The Essence of the Novel (Shôsetsu shinzui, 1885), a veritable plea for the reform of Japanese literature, capable of henceforth nourishing itself from foreign influences.

Following this critical essay came what is considered the first modern Japanese novel, Drifting Clouds (Ukigumo, 1887), a work steeped in realism left unfinished by Futabatei Shimei.

Supporters of a classical language enriched by Western lessons, Ozaki Kôyô, Yamada Bimyô, and Kôda Rohan, with his novel The Five-Story Pagoda (Gojû no tô, 1891), also contributed to the emergence and emancipation of a new literature.

As in Europe, several currents emerged: the naturalists, defenders of a "portrayal of private life" represented among others by Tayama Katai and Shimazaki Tôson, opposed the symbolists, who had as their leading figures two remarkable writers of the early 20th century: Mori Ôgai and Natsume Sôseki.

Initially versed in autobiographical fiction, the former turned mid-career toward historical narrative; his Sanshô the Steward (Sanshô Dayû, 1915) is most remembered, which became the subject of a film adaptation by Mizoguchi Kenji in 1954.

A writer for the daily newspaper Asahi Shimbun, Natsume Sôseki devoted himself to describing with humor and precision the collision of Western and Japanese civilizations. His first novel, I Am a Cat (Wagahai wa Neko de Aru, 1905), is a delightful satire of society viewed through the eyes of a talking feline speaking of itself in a pompous first person and using the Tokyo dialect in writing rather than ordinary literary style. Modern language would indeed be at the heart of all the novelist's works, from Botchan (Botchan, 1906) to the unfinished Light and Darkness (Meian, 1916), before becoming established as the norm among all authors of the archipelago.

From "pure" literature…

The decade following the end of the Russo-Japanese War in 1905 saw the emergence of a plethora of writers, notably Tanizaki Junichirô and Akutagawa Ryûnosuke. Known as the first to have transposed into modern Japanese The Tale of Genji (Genji Monogatari, 1939-1941), Tanizaki left above all a series of novellas and narratives that are both remarkable, such as his sprawling novel Snow on the Road (Sasameyuki, 1947), and controversial, combining eroticism and dark subjects as in The Key (Kagi, 1956).

For his part, Akutagawa prided himself on being more a poet than a prose writer, often drawing inspiration from old Japanese legends to give birth to modern and incisive texts dominated by the strange and the marvelous, the finest example being his Rashômon (1915), brought to the screen in 1950 by Akira Kurosawa. Too sensitive, he took his own life at 35, perhaps feeling incapable of further sublimating his personal experience in his writings.

A prize bearing his name, the Akutagawa Prize (Akutagawa-shô), was established in 1935; equivalent to the Prix Goncourt, extremely prestigious and the only one with real impact on novel sales, it is awarded twice a year to promising young literary talents and has revealed authors such as Inoue Yasushi with Bull Fight (Tôgyû, 1949), the psychological novel specialist Abe Kôbô, or more recently Ogawa Yôko with The Pregnancy (Ninshin karendaa, 1990) or Horie Toshiyuki with The Bear's Stepping Stone (Kuma no shikiishi, 2000).

…to mass literature

With the years preceding World War II, the historical novel became a major genre—Yoshikawa Eiji achieved enormous success with The Stone and the Sword (Miyamoto Musashi, 1935-1939)—while the detective novel, led by the master of the genre Edogawa Ranpo, author of the unsettling The Prey and the Shadow (Injû, 1928), captured public favor.

Emerging in the 1920s, proletarian literature as promoted for example by Kobayashi Takiji with The Factory Ship (Kani kôsen, 1929) disappeared under the pressure of political censorship, and it was not until after the war that new authors emerged attempting to account for their experience of the conflict. This was the case with Dazai Osamu, who evoked with his autobiographical novel The Setting Sun (Shayô, 1946) the problems of youth.

At this time, literary trends had never been more numerous. Kawabata Yasunari plunged his roots into the Japanese character and delivered grandiose "tragedies of human sentiment," such as his masterpiece Snow Country (Yukiguni, 1935-1947), which earned him the distinction of being the first Japanese author to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968.

Mishima Yukio, meanwhile, attempted to renew the novel and intertwined beauty, the morbid, voyeurism, and narcissism in the phantasmagoric Confessions of a Mask (Kamen no kokuhaku, 1949). Winner of the Akutagawa Prize in 1958 and the Nobel Prize in 1994, celebrated for his "imaginary world where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting portrait of the delicate contemporary human situation," Ôe Kenzaburô finally devoted his work to current or social facts, speaking without restraint, after the birth of his mentally disabled son, about maladjustment in childhood, as in Agwii, the Monster in the Clouds (Sora no kabutsu Agui, 1964).

Today freed from taboos and conventions, modern Japanese literature continues to astound. From the surrealist and melancholic sensibility displayed by Murakami Haruki—Wild Sheep Chase (Hitsuji wo meguru bôken, 1982)—to the science-fiction themes launched by Hoshi Shinichi, from disenchanted novels, barely caricatural reflections of current society, by Murakami Ryû—Coin Locker Babies (Coin Locker Babies, 1980)—to the fantasy work for young readers and adapted into manga and animated film Brave Story, written by crime novelist enthusiast Miyabe Miyuki, libraries overflow with small treasures of Japanese writing, increasingly accessible in English to the general public.

Marks your pages, get set, read!

Culture and Tradition