• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

The keitai genre is dominated by young women, often writing under one-name pseudonyms. Keitai novels often revolve around the themes of love and alienation, written in bleak abbreviated style and infused with techno-pop references. Japanese literary critics are fiercely divided over their merits: some deride them as the puerile musings of lovelorn adolescents, others celebrate them as the wondrous application of a new technology to an ancient art form. Whatever the case, one thing is certain: if Tolstoy were reincarnated as a Japanese 20-something, he’d have one helluva mobile-phone bill!

* * *

Although Mishima Yukio is probably the most controversial of Japan’s modern writers, and is considered unrepresentative of Japanese culture by many Japanese, his work still makes for very interesting reading. The Sailor Who Fell from Grace and After the Banquet are both compelling. For unsettling beauty, reach for the former; history buffs will want the latter tome, which was at the centre of a court case that became Japan’s first privacy lawsuit.

Ōe Kenzaburo, Japan’s second Nobel laureate, has produced some of Japan’s most disturbing, energetic and enigmatic literature. A Personal Matter is the work for which he is most widely known. In this troubling novel, which echoes Ōe’s frustrations at having a son with autism, a 27-year-old cram-school teacher’s wife gives birth to a brain-damaged child. His life claustrophobic and his marriage failing, he dreams of escaping to Africa while planning the murder of his son.

Of course, not all Japanese fiction can be classified as literature in high-brow terms. Murakami Ryū’s Almost Transparent Blue is strictly sex and drugs, and his ode to the narcissistic early 1990s, Coin Locker Babies, recounts the toxic lives of two boys who have been left to die in coin lockers by their mothers. Like Murakami Ryū, Banana Yoshimoto is known for her ability to convey the prevailing zeitgeist in easily, um, digestible form. In her novel Kitchen, she relentlessly chronicles Tokyo’s fast-food menus and ’80s pop culture, though underlying the superficial digressions are hints of a darker and deeper world of death, loss and loneliness.

Japan’s most internationally celebrated living novelist is Murakami Haruki, a former jazz club owner gone literary. His most noted work, Norwegian Wood, set in the late ’60s against the backdrop of student protests, is both a portrait of the artist as a young man (as recounted by a reminiscent narrator) and an ode to first loves. Another interesting read is his A Wild Sheep Chase, in which a mutant sheep with a star on its back inspires a search that takes a 20-something ad man to the mountainous north. The hero eventually confronts the mythical beast while wrestling with his own shadows.

* * *

Abe Kobo’s beautiful novel Woman in the Dunes (1962) is a tale of shifting sands and wandering strangers. One of the strangest and most interesting works of Japanese fiction.

* * *

Music

Japan has a huge, shape-shifting music scene supported by a local market of audiophiles who are willing to try almost anything. International artists make a point of swinging through on global tours, and the local scene surfaces every night in one of thousands of live houses. The jazz scene is enormous, as are the followings for rock, house and electronica. More mainstream gleanings are the aidoru, idol singers whose popularity is generated largely through media appearances and is centred on a cute, girl-next-door image. Unless you’re aged 15, this last option probably won’t interest you.

These days, J-pop (Japan pop) is dominated by female vocalists who borrow heavily from such American pop stars as Mariah Carey. The most famous of these is Utada Hikaru, whose great vocal range and English ability (she peppers her songs with English lyrics) make her a standout from the otherwise drab aidoru field.

Another headliner in Japan’s modern music scene is a 28-year-old African American singer who goes by the name of Jero (real name: Jerome White).