Originally posted by Maciamo

I don't pretend knowing all the Japanese literature, nor even that of any other country (that would be near impossible, especially at my age). What's more, I believe it's always better to read books in their original version to really understand them. A translation is another book. It has happened so many times that a writer unpopulat at home becomes very popular abroad or in a particular country, because the translation was better than the original. I read French author in French, Italian ones in Italian, do my best to read German ones in German, Spanish-speaking ones in Spanish, so as to be fair towars the author.
Just as an example of how translation can influenced popularity, I've been wondering whether Banana Yoshimoto's Italian translators were so gifted, as she seems so popular in Italy, but otherwise moderately or not at all in other Western countries.
Yeah, it can be pretty disheartening at that moment when you begin to first notice the liberties that translations have to or anyway usually do take. As far as Japanese-English translators, quite often it is the lesser known ones that read most naturally, that are better crafted and carefully drawn, so it will be fun next time I'm in Japan to finally get a good selection of these in the original. Regarding the highs and lows of Snow Country in Japanese with Seidensticker's version, for instance, as that's what I'm working through at the moment: a few parts appear outright wrong or highly misleading, the dialogue is quite stiff, but most troublesome is probably the overall narrative where qualifiers and flourishes and impressions have been inserted at will (somehow, seemed as if it were, of course, something in her manner, etc) to compensate for the intonation and speech patterns that can never really be recaptured and just give it a more elegant flow in English. But which also has the effect of adding levels of abstraction and distance from the reader while the original (I'm fairly confident) would come across to a native reader as much more intimate and direct. Even his choice of verbs is a lot more standard and less colorful for some reason (when both would work equally well in English).
I know of course it depends mostly on personal taste whether you'd be interested in what authors or types of books in the first place, but as far as I'm aware this is the most widely circulated version in the US so I can't help but think it must have had some marginal effect on Kawabata's standing or popularity here.


Personally, I am more of a historian than a literati. That's why I am just overviewing here the number of prominent writers in each country/region through the history and assess their popularity by how famous they are world-wide, epecially outside their own country. Doing this, I found "Genji monogatari" to be the ultimate classic Japanese book (like Don Quixote in Spain, which also lacks world famous authors). After that, there is a long "blank", possibly because of the military regime since the Kamakura period that didn't see literature as an estimable form of art, and this lasted until the end of the Edo Shogunate.
Obviously this is a continual development, but I've always understood it was actually during the Edo period that this literary revolution first began to take hold (at least the output then is much more well-documented, such as the beginnings of haiku, bunraku, kabuki, genroku, Ihara) when you have a nascent market economy, with a merchant middle class that makes literature more marketable, higher literacy rates, etc leading to a more formal publishing industry as well as other closely tied institutions, such as theater and art houses.

As far as these "blank periods," undoubtedly there are a host of reasons and I've never really gotten a cohesive story on such an uneven development of the literature -- how widely brilliant productions could came along so occasionally but never followed through on or carried forward as a genre or school. Some factors that probably came into play, though, were as you say the late start of writing, and when kana was finally standardized in the 9th C of course it was thought only suitable for women (most of the best and extant writing is of so-called upper class courtiers, just below the highest ranking nobility, for the most part related to provinical administators or ladies in waiting) while the men labored under a Chinese prose that was by that time centuries old even in China. The lack of anything like a professional writing class, the tanka and uta, for instance, being so pro forma and integral to virtually all Heian courtier communication that even much of what's in Genji, the Tale of Ise, Tosa and Lady Sarashina's Diary etc is remarkably bland and unremarkable. Other reasons there wasn't more output during this time might have had to do with the emulatation of Chinese styles and forms that didn't fit Japanese, the mindboggling efforts put into retranscribing Chinese classic texts into Japanese (both before and after kana) and probably many other things as well.
Then during the kamakura period, a lot of the handling (storage, copying, editing etc) of these classical manuscripts was done under subterfuge in Zen monastaries -- much of which was apparently misunderstood, lost or bungled in one way or another (such as Lady Sarashina's Diary, (As I Crossed A Bridge of Dreams) which was only recovered and the textual confusion cleared up in the 18th C by great and laborious detective work).

So.....taken from a couple of web sites, this is pretty much my thumbnail knowledge of the 10th-13th C major classical works as well. The following four hundred years, from the Ashikawa through Sengoku (Muromachi) and into 1688 with the start of the genroku I've never really come across anything on outside of collective endeavors such as Noh and renga.

Mid-Heian (905-1000) Prose Literature

A. Nikki "Diaries"

1. Tosa nikki by Ki no Tsurayuki (assumed female identity)

2. Kagero nikki (Gossamer Years)

a. authoress identified as "mother of Fujiwara Michitsuna"

b. laments her husband's infrequent visits

3. Murasaki Shikibu nikki (Diary of Lady Murasaki)

B. Monogatari "Novels"

1. Taketori monogatari (Diary of a Bamboo Cutter)

2. Ise monogatari (Tale of Ise, early 10th)

a. based on poems of Ariwara no Narihira (825-80)

b. narrative weaves the poems into fiction

c. trivial content, but praised as a masterpiece

3. Genji monogatari (Tale of Genji, ca. 1000)

a. Murasaki Shikibu, a "lady-in-waiting"

b. often praised as the greatest work of Japanese prose

c. Genji monogatari emaki (Picture Scroll of the Genji)

i. illustrations of court life, attire, architecture

ii. classic expressions of Yamato-e (Japanese paintings)

C. Zuihitsu "Miscellanies"

1. Sei Shonagon's Makura no soshi (Pillow Book)


before 1190 Sankash・ The Mountain Hut Collection (Saigy・

1205 Shin kokin wakash・ A New Collection of Ancient and Modern Japanese Poetry

1212 Hi An Account of My Hut (Kamo no Chei)
ca. 1212 Mumyh・ A Nameless Selection (Kamo no Chei)

before 1219 Heike monogatari The Tale of the Heike