Word: kawataba
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Mishima's abrasive career ended in seppuku (disembowelment, then decapitation by a member of his private "army"). Kawataba and Dazai were not given to such self-dramatization, but they too died by their own hands. Indeed, it is no mere verbal swagger to define contemporary Japanese writing as a matter of life and death. In the '70s one Tokyo scholarly journal devoted an entire issue to "The Writer and Suicide." There is a death wish operating through Japanese literature. Says Masao Miyoshi, a Japanese lit erary scholar (Accomplices of Silence...
...life beset with the hazards of suicide and silence, commercialism and inattention? Or does it take place in an unusually literate arena, where new works are still given an avid and intelligent reception? The evidence is conflicting. To be sure, every year, potentially serious readers turn from Kawataba to Mighty Atom. But every year fresh contestants enter poetry and fiction competitions. If some serious publishers have closed their doors, others offer a profusion of monthly, bimonthly and weekly magazines, about...
...took almost a thousand years for The Tale of Genji to reach the West. In this century, the works of Kawataba, Abe, Mishima and their colleagues took only a few years to reach across two oceans. Today Japanese literature, like everything and everyone else in the country, is in a greater hurry. Translations are being feverishly prepared; America and Europe will see some 50 unfamiliar novels and histories in the next year. Whether those volumes make their way into foreign mainstreams remains to be seen, read and discussed. What is certain is that Japanese literature, which has earned only...
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