The Japanese literature canon?

[gustave dore]

Does anyone know the japanese literary canon?

[Lykren]

We've had coffee a few times, but I can't say I really know her.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_literature#Significant_authors_and_works

[EvoWarrior5]

Basho is very famous, he pretty much perfected the Haiku. I have a little book that contains a few of his works and with a good introduction on the history of the haiku and haibun. Very interesting.

[UlyssesE]

We've had coffee a few times, but I can't say I really know her.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_literature#Significant_authors_and_works

Thanks for pointing out this list. I have been going through a foreign literature phase and Japan seems like a great next geographic stop.

[JBI]

Depends, western critics tend to focus on late works, particularly fiction, whereas Japanese authors tend to be more conservative, focusing on traditional works, and even their Chinese sources. A scholar 100 years ago would not recognize the canon today, for instance.

That being said, we have much in great translation available in English, particularly novels and early poetry. Interest in buddhism, particularly Zen Buddhism has also led to an abundance of not so essential buddhist poetry making it into our language.

As for traditional education, however, the essential reading for a Japanese educated man would have been quite similar to that of the Korean, Chinese, or Vietnamese educated man. The first 4 histories of Ancient China, The Confucian Classics, The Selections of Refined Literature (Wen Xuan), and an assortment of later works by Tang Authors, in Japan's case particularly the works of Bai Ju Yi (Po chu-i). If you read any of the classics in Japan, the vast majority of the allusions and parallels, and even plots stem from these sources. For fiction, people were copying Chinese works and translating them into Japanese names and place names up until the 19th century. Ugetsu Monogatari, the source for the famous film by the same name, is actually an adaptation of several Chinese stories, most importantly (and the stories featured in the film), works by the Chinese vernacular pioneer Ling Mengchu.

Buddhist works - also written in classical Chinese as translated and adapted from the Sanskrit originals, or else fabricated by Chinese authors later. Even something like the Tale of Genji was written as an adaptation of various Buddhist and classical Chinese stories (in particular the Song of Everlasting Regret by Bai Ju Yi).

When we see things this way then, it makes sense that Japanologists of the first generation were first educated in classical Chinese, and then worked into Japanese. As modernism took over, and the Japanese themselves forgot how to read Chinese, the canon shifted to the back, and vernacular fiction became the norm - and what our scholars translate for us. The wealth of texts requiring a greater knowledge have, for the past two generations of scholars really, been neglected by Western translators. We have a selection, for instance, from the early histories of Japan, based on a Japanese abridgment and translation into modern Japanese of endless amounts of Chinese work.

So, to return to the question - well, nationalism cannot function in East Asia based on the current model. The wealth of texts are inaccessible even to Japanese readers without a long, arduous amount of education to prime them for it. The same is true of Vietnam, and Korea as well.