The Pleasures of Japanese Literature

An attractive little book, based on five extramural lectures about traditional (i.e. pre-Meiji) Japanese literature Keene gave in New York and Los Angeles in 1986-1987. They cover aesthetics, poetry (two lectures), fiction and theatre, in a very straightforward and accessible way, giving a kind of crash-course in what you really need to know about the most important forms, styles, and contexts from the 8th to the 19th century.

I picked up quite a few fairly basic concepts that I should have known about but didn't, in particular the importance of the distinction between the roles of vernacular and Chinese writing, which has some rough parallels to the role of Latin in European literature, but had an even more direct effect in medieval show more Japan: the high-status language was reserved for male use, so writing in the vernacular was dominated by texts either addressed to or written by women, in particular love poetry and narrative prose, a distinction that became so entrenched that for a long time no-one felt able to write anything else in Japanese. Also, Keene digs into the way the shape of the Japanese language itself meant that only syllabic form could be used for structuring poetry - there are no stresses, only five word-endings that could make rhymes, and classical Japanese did not have long and short vowels - and how syllabic structure only really works effectively for very short forms (waka, haiku).

I didn't get quite so much out of the lecture on drama - it's probably too complex a subject even to introduce in such a short space - but at least you come out with a slightly clearer idea of what distinguishes Nō, Kabuki and Bunraku.

Useful, and very agreeable to read. show less

«El aspecto más precioso de la vida es su incertidumbre». A partir de estas palabras de un monje budista del siglo XIV, Donald Keene, una de las mayores autoridades en Occidente sobre cultura japonesa, ofrece una elegante y sutil aproximación a la literatura de la era premoderna del imperio del Sol Naciente. Este delicioso ensayo acerca al lector a su poesía, su narrativa y su teatro, desde las que para Keene son las cuatro principales características del concepto nipón de belleza: irregularidad, simplicidad, caducidad y sugestión.

Cada capítulo propone además brillantes reflexiones que nos iluminan sobre aquellos elementos culturales que, herederos de una tradición milenaria, se han conservado casi intactos hasta nuestros show more días. Así, descubriremos por ejemplo que la reducida extensión de sus poemas era originalmente casi una necesidad, por qué en el kabuki los actores representan también los personajes femeninos, la razón por la que los más exquisitos templos están construidos en madera, la preferencia por la cerámica imperfecta o el desbordante entusiasmo de todo un pueblo por la efímera y delicada flor del cerezo. show less