Letters to the Editor
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Alternate Alternates - reading Japan
No mention of Kobo Abe, whose Woman in the Dunes and The Ruined Map are excellent introductions to post-war Japanese literature – existential, surreal, and comparable to anything by Handke, Beckett, and Grass. Shusako Endo's novels provide a different perspective on Japan. Endo, a Catholic, writes from the position of the outsider in society, giving Western readers a taste of their own position concerning Japanese culture – see particularly The Sea and Poison. Western writers on Japan – start with Richard Brautigan's Tokyo Montana Express – Brautigan's whimsical style has influenced Haruki Murakami (take a look at short story The ‘Year of Spaghetti’ in Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman). Cyberpunk narratives such as William Gibson's Neuromancer, Idoru, and All Tomorrow's Parties, highlight Japan’s obsessive technological postmodernity. I’m particularly looking forward to David Peace’s Tokyo Trilogy – Tokyo: Year One (hopefully published June 2007), Tokyo: Occupied City, and Tokyo: Regained.