For some reason I am thinking about my college modern Japanese lit classes.

[snarp]

This is what they taught me:

Hey! Do you hate yourself? Do you hate your culture? Do you hate your parents' culture? Do you hate your parents? Do you hate Westernization? Resistance to Westernization? Educational institutions, uneducated people, people of your precise level of education, the young, the old, the poor, the middle-class, landlords? (See: hating yourself.) Do you hate the government? Do you hate industry, the labor movement, and other people who hate the labor movement? (See: hating yourself.) Do you hate your sexuality and that of your friends, enemies, and acquaintances? Do you hate female sexuality, which is probably not the same thing as far as you're concerned? Do you hate and fear women, and does their mere proximity cause you guilt? (Sub-question: Are you a guy? You should be a guy.) Does every single thing which gives you pleasure, be it physical or emotional, eventually come to contribute to the toxic yet ultimately-narcissistic atmosphere of guilt and despair from which you draw your every breath?

THEN YOU SHOULD TOTALLY READ SOME MODERN JAPANESE LITERATURE.

The kind we teach in this class, I mean. There might be some other kinds, but they're probably about like, stupid crap.

(I declare a Natsume Soseki and Tayama Katai moratorium. Educational institutions, I'm not talking to you guys until you comply with my demands here. Tanizaki is still allowed as long as you promise to make fun of him. You can keep all the Mishima stuff except Confessions of a Mask. Yeah, I know - the only one you actually wanted was Confessions of a Mask, because you're a jerk. Sorry, jerk! Not happening anymore!)

Comments

[salinea]

doesn't most of it that modern literature everywhere?

[eisen]

Having never taken a course in Modern Japanese Literature to provide a framework within which to experience some things, I think this puts a few questions I'd been pondering re: certain authors I have read into illuminating and useful perspective! (As well as putting my own ponderings within yet another perspective.)

I suddenly understand a great many more things than I did before. I feel enriched. (Far more, I suspect, than I would feel having taken this class for myself.)

[starlady]

Oh wait that's why I took the polisci classes on Japan instead. Give me Murakami Haruki over Natsume Soseki every day. (Though, okay, the Saka no Ue no Kumo Museum in Matsuyama is pretty damn cool and I want to go back. Ditto for the bathhouse.)

[torachan]

Oh man, I can't even remember what we read. We did read Mishima, but not that one. It was Kinkakuji, IIRC. And there was a novel about the war. And, um, Naomi by Tanzaki Junichiro. Oh, and this one looks familiar.

Also there is Yoshimoto Banana! See? Not all men! XD (Yeah, I'm pretty sure she was the only woman we read... D: And of a later period than the rest.)

I don't think my lit class actually did Soseki. I read part of Kokoro in a translation class (also Akutagawa Ryunosuke's Hana), but I don't remember him in my literature class.