Five Modern Japanese Novelists
Five Modern Japanese Novelists
Donald Keene
Copyright Date: 2003
Published by: Columbia University Press
Pages: 144
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7312/keen12610
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Book Info
Five Modern Japanese Novelists
Book Description:

The New Yorker has called Donald Keene "America's preeminent scholar of Japanese literature." Now he presents a new book that serves as both a superb introduction to modern Japanese fiction and a memoir of his own lifelong love affair with Japanese literature and culture. Five Modern Japanese Novelistsprofiles five prominent writers whom Donald Keene knew personally: Tanizaki Jun'ichiro, Kawabata Yasunari, Mishima Yukio, Abe Ko¯bo¯, and Shiba Ryo¯taro¯. Keene masterfully blends vignettes describing his personal encounters with these famous men with autobiographical observations and his trademark learned literary and cultural analysis.

Keene opens with a confession: before arriving in Japan in 1953, despite having taught Japanese for several years at Cambridge, he knew the name of only one living Japanese writer: Tanizaki. Keene's training in classical Japanese literature and fluency in the language proved marvelous preparation, though, for the journey of literary discovery that began with that first trip to Japan, as he came into contact, sometimes quite fortuitously, with the genius of a generation. It is a journey that will fascinate experts and newcomers alike

eISBN: 978-0-231-50749-3
Subjects: Language & Literature
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  1. Front Matter
    Front Matter (pp. i-iv)
  2. Table of Contents
    Table of Contents (pp. v-vi)
  3. Preface
    Preface (pp. vii-xii)
  4. Tanizaki Jun’ichirō (1886–1965)
    Tanizaki Jun’ichirō (1886–1965) (pp. 1-22)

    Before arriving in Japan in 1953 I knew the name of only one living Japanese novelist, Tanizaki Jun’ichirō. It was by no means unusual at that time for a non-Japanese to be unfamiliar with contemporary Japanese literature, but I should have been better informed. I had studied Japanese literature as a graduate student at Columbia and Harvard and had taught Japanese for five years at Cambridge. I had published three books, including an introduction to Japanese literature that contains a chapter, “Japanese Literature Under Western Influence,” in which I discuss several works by Tanizaki but none by any other living...

  5. Kawabata Yasunari (1899–1972)
    Kawabata Yasunari (1899–1972) (pp. 23-44)

    I first met Kawabata Yasunari in 1953. He was only fifty-four, but he struck me as being very old and delicate, and photographs taken of him at the time, confirming this impression, suggest in their expression a deer frightened by a sudden flash of light. Yet I knew that he had another side. Far from being a recluse shut off from the harsh realities of the world, he had served since 1948 as the president of the Japanese PEN Club, a position that entailed not only skill and patience in maintaining peace at a time when political differences among the...

  6. Mishima Yukio (1925–1970)
    Mishima Yukio (1925–1970) (pp. 45-64)

    Outside his own country Mishima Yukio is probably the most famous Japanese who ever lived. Europeans and Americans who would have difficulty naming even one Japanese emperor, politician, general, scientist, or poet are acquainted with Mishima’s name, if not his works. In large part, of course, this is the result of his spectacular suicide, but even before this event he was the only Japanese chosen by Esquire magazine in its selection of one hundred leading figures of the world, and the only Japanese who appeared on internationally televised programs.

    Mishima’s death on November 25, 1970, came as a shock to...

  7. Abe Kōbō (1924–1993)
    Abe Kōbō (1924–1993) (pp. 65-84)

    I first met Abe Kōbō in the autumn of 1964. He had come to New York in connection with the publication by Knopf of the English translation of his novel The Woman in the Dunes (Suna no onna). I forget why he decided to visit Columbia University, but I distinctly remember his arrival in 407 Kent Hall. He was accompanied by Teshigahara Hiroshi, the director of the celebrated film made from this novel, which had won the Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival that year. With them came a young Japanese woman. I confess that I was rather miffed...

  8. Shiba Ryōtarō (1923–1996)
    Shiba Ryōtarō (1923–1996) (pp. 85-100)

    I don’t really remember when I first met Shiba Ryōtarō. Quite possibly it was between 1953 and 1955 while I was studying at Kyoto University and Shiba was working as a reporter at the Kyoto office of the Sankei shimbun. Foreign students were something of a rarity in Kyoto, and it would not have been strange if Shiba, like other reporters I remember more clearly, had interviewed me, if only to ask my impressions of Japan.

    In those days I was frequently asked, by virtually every reporter in the city, whatever had made me learn Japanese and if I did...

  9. Supplemental Readings
    Supplemental Readings (pp. 101-106)
  10. Index
    Index (pp. 107-114)
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