The Rise and Fall of Modern Japanese Literature

Not what I expected at all, and yet it is a remarkable book. Instead of doing something chronological or even author by author, Treat presents key moments in which Japanese Literature reached some sort of cumulative point and then leaped forward. Thus, Soseki's wonderful I Am A Cat, is more than just that great author's introduction and best seller, Treat shows how it built on longstanding, popular and often oral forms. He begins each chapter with an incident from real life to highlight some element of that Asian culture that will then be reflected or transformed in the subject, material or form of the book(s) he discusses. At times Treat goes way beyond literature into politics, psychology and philosophy and at times it was above my head. But he always comes back to earth. He certainly puts Banana and Harukami in their place --and shows how their work represents a new kind of literature -- The Global Dull Novel. I'm not 100 percent certain whether his final chapter's discussion of the book about the future of the Japanese novel -- Yapoo, the human cattle -- is completely on the level or if he is putting us on. But it is highly entertaining. When's the last time a critical text was entertaining?

The author chooses a small group of authors and novels (no discussions of poetry or drama) to argue for a different kind of literary history in an era where he believes few people read literature any more. This is an interesting and instructive experiment in cultural history. The book places fiction into a broad cultural context, thus demarcating the author’s domain of interest. This works for much of the fiction he discusses—His analysis of Murakami Haruki’s novels is exemplary. It is true that a smaller segment of the Japanese public read literature than hitherto, but that still leaves many many readers of fiction, which in Japan still amounts to hundreds of novels published every year. The author admits that he is following the canon determined by the Japanese literary establishment, who he cites often to establish his cultural context. This is an excellent move and will assist readers who know little about modern Japanese literature to a greater understanding of the larger picture. The weakness of such an approach is that most Japanese writers, and their works, are ignored in favour of the select few the establishment has singled out for inclusion in the canon. But can any literary historian writing in English do otherwise? Has any foreign reader of Japanese fiction read anything but a fraction of works published? These are intractable problems that do not admit easy solutions. I personally regret the exclusion of poetry and drama from the book, as both genres have produced outstanding works in the 20th and 21 st centuries. But in a single volume history such an approach can be justified. The author has read much, and cogitated much on his subject, and has produced an extremely readable volume. Well worth reading.