The Chinese influence
Playing with a comparison as hazardous as it is explicit, Chinese was for Japan what Latin was for Western Europe: a tool (at first reserved for the initiated) which allowed administrative and legal acts to be fixed in writing, and then soon became a liturgical language when Buddhism was exported to a country which until then had practiced Shintoism. In fact, when the 4th century saw the first rapprochement between the mainland and the archipelago, the latter did not have a writing system. Although it was not so simple to transpose faithfully the Japanese pronunciation with Chinese signs(kanji), and the alphabet was going to evolve considerably (in kanas, which themselves are broken down into katakanas, in particular for foreign words, and into hiraganas, i.e. sounds obtained by the agglomeration of kanji), writing was experienced as a real revolution. It also constituted for the representatives of the imperial power the possibility of imposing themselves, in particular by diligently collecting legends from the oral tradition in which their divine origin left no doubt. This is how the empress Genmei commissioned the storyteller Hieda no Are to write a collection: the Kojiki (Chronicle of ancient facts). Completed in 712, written in Japanese but with Chinese signs, this collection is considered the oldest text in Japan and will be followed a few years later by the Nihon shoki, written in Chinese. Despite the "divine genealogy" that they are supposed to trace, these documents remain an invaluable source of historical information because they evoke real facts. Still in the interest of inventory, the 8th century also saw the composition of fudoki which were interested in geography and local traditions, but it is above all its poetic anthologies which mark a literary turning point. Thus, at least mention should be made of the Man'yōshū, which contains nearly 5,000 Japanese poems(wakas, not to be confused with the Chinese form, kanshi, which was the subject of another anthology at the same time, the Kaifūsō) and provides the keys to the tanka, whose metric (31 "feet" on five unrhymed "verses") will be prized for a long time.
A quick statement
Japanese literature was thus nourished by Chinese influences, and even more distant ones according to some researchers who believe that the oldest Japanese narrative text, The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter (to be discovered at Picquier jeunesse), is inspired by a Tibetan story. However, very quickly genres that are specific to the archipelago appear, such as the monogatari (story) and the nikki (diary). As vast as these categories are, in the first we could nevertheless classify Le Dit du Genji (Verdier), in the second Notes de chevet (Gallimard), fundamental texts attributed to two court ladies of the early eleventh century, respectively Murasaki Shikibu and Sei Shōnagon. In the following century, Japan entered into a civil war which gave rise to another type of narrative, war chronicles(gunki moogatari) based on proven historical facts, which distinguishes them from the usual epics although they share their heroic character. This new form of literature first spread orally thanks to the biwa hōshi - often blind priests who accompanied themselves with music and maintained an art developed earlier by the bhikkhu (Buddhist monks) in China and India - before being fixed in writing, sometimes in multiple versions as was Le Dit des Heike (Verdier), one of these most famous epic cycles.
This text will also feed an art which is then in full evolution: the Noh theater which is gradually shedding the magical or religious connotation of primitive dances - such as for example the kagura (Shinto rite) or the "agrarian dances"(ta-ue: rice transplanting dance). These new theatrical forms complemented the entertainment imported from the mainland - including gigaku (dance with masks) from Korea - but did not replace it. But, here again, the term Noh is generic because, as in all Japanese arts, the subtleties are so numerous that it would take entire books to discover the multiple categories. Nevertheless, a text by Zeami (1363-1443), published by Gallimard under the title La Tradition secrète du Nô, will allow us to grasp the principle as it was theorized at the time. From the 13th century, a literature written by Buddhist monks finally emerged. Its beauty has survived the passage of time and we have the chance to read it in French(Notes de ma cabane de moine by Kamo Chômei at Bruit du temps, Les Heures oisives by Yoshida Kenko at Gallimard...). Always fertile and abundant, literature will put the centuries to come to good use, refining and - as usual - organizing. Thus, the Otogi-zōshi references more than 300 short texts from the medieval period, the Shinshokukokin wakashū becomes a poetic anthology, the Literature of the Five Mountains encompasses the production of the monasteries of the Rinzai branch of Zen Buddhism, and the Nijō poetic school ingenuously compiles wakas..
The Edo period
After this period of consolidation, the Edo period - which stretches from the beginning of the 17th century to the middle of the 19th century - brings about new developments which, more globally, concern Japanese society as a whole. Indeed, although it kept trade relations with its neighbors, the country refused any contact with European countries (except for the Netherlands which had a trading post on Dejima), a withdrawal which was felt in the language with the disappearance of the learning of kanji and which was tinged with a spiritual orientation: Fujiwara Seika (1561-1619) created a neo-confucian school, Christianity was forbidden following the Shimabara rebellion (1637-1638). At the same time, the urban way of life developed: this was the appearance of the "floating world" that Asai Ryōi explains in Ukiyo-monogarari by the observation of the brevity of existence, which encouraged people to take advantage of every amusement offered by the present moment. Far from its original Buddhist meaning, by which it designated a world of illusions and sorrows, the ukiyo of the time rather depicts the atmosphere of houses of pleasure or entertainment, a universe that gave rise to a literature (sometimes erotic), theUkiyo-zōshi, in which Ihara Saikaku (1642-1693) excelled, whose L'Homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer can be read with great delight by Picquier. Among the renowned authors of the time, we should also mention Bashō (1644-1694) - a great master of the poetic form called haiku (three verses of 5, 7 and 5 syllables in succession) - whose posterity augurs that of Buson (1716-1783) and Issa (1763-1828) after him. In the field of theater, the playwright Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653-1725) first wrote his plays for puppets ( jôruri genre, future bunraku) before transposing them for the kabuki stage (epic theater at the beginning performed by prostitutes).
The translation into French may be surprising as it corresponds to a generally accepted idea, but it was also during the Edo period that "reading books" appeared, with very few illustrations, unlike the kibyōshi ("yellow cover") which were very popular at the time. This category, known as yomihon, is probably intended for a public that does not deplore the absence of prints from the floating world(ukiyo-e), nor the moral that often closes these stories directly inspired by the supernatural legends of the Chinese oral tradition. It will be possible to form one's own opinion by comparing, for example, the Tales of Rain and Moon by Akinari Ueda (1734-1809) published by Gallimard and the picaresque novel Walking on Tokaido by Ikku Jippensha published by Picquier.
Opening, expansion and manga
By entering the Meiji era in 1868, Japan experienced a real upheaval which was felt at all levels, political, religious, industrial, economic... and of course cultural. After a period of isolation, the country opened up to the world and to modernity. These changes lend themselves to philosophical reflections if one is to believe the works of Nakamura Masanao (1832-1891), Fukuzawa Yukichi (1835-1901) or Chōmin Nakae (1847-1901), but they are not always without divergence. Thus, the political novels of Tōkai Sanshi (1853-1922) - such as Chance Encounters with Beautiful Women - as well as the essays of Inoue Tetsujirō (1856-1944), advocate a certain nationalism and respect for tradition, which appeals to a wide audience. However, some writers decided to let themselves be influenced by Western literature, following an argument developed by Tsubouchi Shōyō in Shōsetsu Shinzui(The Essence of the Novel) which he published in 1885. In this critical essay, he argues in favor of realism and the psychological approach, which he puts into practice the same year in Tōsei Shosei Katagi, considered one of the first modern Japanese novels in the same way as Ukigumo (1887), which his friend Futabatei Shimei nevertheless leaves unfinished. Natsume Sōseki (1867-1916) observes this transitional period in Je suis un chat (Gallimard), a first novel that heralds an important work. Finally, the books of Tōson Shimazaki and Katai Tayama, respectively Hatai and Futon (Cambourakis editions) mark the appearance of a new type of novel, the Watakushi, which combines realism and interior point of view, and of which Osamu Dazai (1909-1948) will be a worthy representative(The Decline of a Man, One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji).
Marked by numerous tragedies and by the atomic bombings of 1945, the 20th century was nonetheless one of expansion. In literature, this is reflected in the growing number of translations of a very abundant and varied production, when we think, for example, of manga, which it is impossible not to evoke or to reduce to a simple Japanese version of comic books as we know them, especially since this very particular genre has its roots in times as far back as the Nara period (between 710 and 794 A.D.!) when painted scrolls already appeared, telling a story, emakimono. If, at the beginning, the text and the drawing were clearly separated, and the latter was confined to illustrating the subject, soon the balance would tip in favor of the image which would even exist in an autonomous way under the brush of Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) who earned his reputation not only with his prints (including his famous Great Wave of Kanagawa, commonly known as the Hokusai Wave) but also with his life sketches, the "Hokusai manga" which met with great success even in the West and from which the name of today's manga (literally : entertaining, derisive drawing).
From the pleasure of sketching to that of caricaturing, there is only one step that the press took at the end of the 19th century, inspired by English satirical newspapers and the pencil strokes of a few Europeans, including the British Charles Wirgman (1832-1891) who spent the last thirty years of his life in Japan, and the Frenchman Georges Ferdinand Bigot (1860-1927), better known in the Land of the Rising Sun than in our latitudes, even though his political caricatures ended up in threatening him with imprisonment. However, it was an Australian, Frank Arthur Nankivell (1869-1959) who formed the first "mangaka" in history, Rakuten Kitazawa (born Yasuji Kitazawa in 1876 in Ōmiya-ku), who indeed took up the term used by Hokusai. He would eventually leave the magazine Box of Curios where he had been initiated, join the Jiji shimpō and then launch his own title, the Tokyo Puck, in 1905. Rather biting towards the power, he will become more discreet after the massive arrests of 1910. In the same way, after having drawn his inspiration from the Western imagination - his first humorous comic strip, which is therefore the first manga in history in the strict sense of the term and which was published in 1902, took up the theme of the sprinkler from the Lumière brothers' short film -, he imagined Japanese characters such as Nukesaku Teino, "wooden head, idiot", or Tonda Haneko, a real tomboy.
After the Second World War, Japan was occupied by the Americans, who were fond of comic books, which also had an influence on the evolution of manga, but it was Walt Disney's cartoons that a young man born in 1928 in Toyonaka, whose father owned an overhead projector, which was very rare at the time, had been drinking. Osamu Tezuka enjoyed a large audience as soon as he published The New Treasure Island in 1947, an adventure manga that sold over 400,000 copies! Until his premature death in 1989, from stomach cancer, he was to enjoy a succession of successes and awards, earning himself an undisputed and undisputed reputation as the "god of manga". His production is just like that: innovative and considerable! He composed more than 700 works with a wide international influence, most of which are published by Glénat: Astro, le petit robot, Le Roi Léo, Black Jack... A prize now bears his name and has been awarded every year since 1997 to an outstanding mangaka, confirming the importance of this particular sector of Japanese publishing, governed by codes and a very long tradition. A growing enthusiasm that can be felt even in our bookstores, if we believe the sales of series such as One Piece, Dragon Ball or Akira.
Contemporary literature
In literature stricto sensu, a milestone towards international renown was reached in 1968 when Yasunari Kawabata (1899-1972) became the first Japanese to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. He was followed in 1994 by Kenzaburō Ōe, born in 1935, and in 2017 by Kazuo Ishiguro, who was born in Nagasaki in 1954, but in 1983 requested the nationality of the country where he grew up, England. By imposing a necessarily draconian choice on themselves, many writers provide an interesting gateway to modern Japanese literature. We could mention Jun'ichirō Tanizaki (1886-1965), notably for his novels published by Gallimard(Quatre sœurs, Le Goût des orties, Svatiska), Masuji Ibuse (1898-1993), whose Pluie noire evokes Hiroshima, Yasushi Inoue (1907-1991), whose Le Fusil de chasse is a definitive classic, and the spellbinding Kōbō Abe (1924-1993), who leaves no one indifferent with La Femme des sables (Le Livre de Poche), but also Yukio Mishima, who committed suicide by seppuku in 1970 and whose work is representative of Japanese literature, yet accessible(Confessions d'un masque, Le Pavillon d'or, Dojoji), as well as his younger brother by two years, Akira Yoshimura (1927-2006), who left us some magnificent texts(Le Grand tremblement de terre du Kantô, Le Convoi de l'eau).
Closer to home, Haruki Murakami, Yōko Ogawa and Ito Ogawa have become household names. It's hard to miss the first, born in Kyoto in 1949, whose books sell millions of copies worldwide (and have been translated into over 50 languages!). As an English translator, he makes no secret of the influence of the American authors he has loved, from Chandler to Brautigan, from Vonnegut to... Franz Kafka, for this eclectic reader does not hesitate to add a touch of the fantastic to his realistic works, an atmosphere that fits in well with the profession of bartender in a jazz club that he exercised during his youth. Winner of the Gunzō Prize for his first novel, Écoute le chant du vent (1979), he made a name for himself with La Course au mouton sauvage (1982 in Japan, 1990 in France), followed three years later by La Fin des temps (The End of Time), La Ballade de l'impossible (The Ballad of the Impossible), Danse, danse, danse (Dance, Dance, Dance), Au sud de la frontière, à l'ouest du soleil (South of the Border, West of the Sun)... as many titles as widespread successes! Barely 20 years separate them, but Yōko Ogawa has followed much the same path, drawing her inspiration also from American literature, and also likes to punctuate her atmospheres with a note of strangeness, while tackling "from the sidelines" such difficult themes as violence, confinement.. A fertile body of work that can be discovered through her novels(Le Musée du silence, Parfum de glace, Hôtel Iris...) or by dipping into her many collections of short stories(La Piscine, La Grossesse, Les Abeilles...), an art in which she excels. Her near namesake Ito Ogawa, born in 1973, is currently best known for her first novel, Le Restaurant de l'amour retrouvé, but this has provoked a wave of enthusiasm that continues unabated, even though it was published as long ago as 2013. In 2021, in France, Tant que le café est encore chaud (Toshikazu Kawaguchi) will meet with great success.
French publishers are making no mistake, giving novels translated from Japanese a prominent place in their catalogs, with a joyful abundance of titles that arouse curiosity about a country so different from our norms, as well as an attraction to a Japan that combines subversion and tradition like no other. Actes Sud's Lettres japonaises collection is a fine breeding ground for more or less well-known writers, from Yōko Ogawa to Akira Yoshimura, while offering the pleasure of discovery, which is rarely trivial, let alone innocent: Mieko Kawakami(Heaven, Seins et œufs), Seikô Itô(Radio imagination), Ko Machida(Punk samouraï, Tribulations avec mon singe)... However, those who are drawn in by a Japanese passion will know that the essential publisher remains Picquier, which has specialized in books from the Far East since 1986. Its editorial line not only helps readers find their way among the classics and keep up with the new generation, but also offers nuggets such as Le Chrysanthème et le sabre, a book written by American anthropologist Ruth Benedict in 1944 at the request of the Pentagon, to help the G.I. understand Japanese culture and its particularities, in order to better prepare for the occupation. It was a best-selling "bible" that she wrote... without ever having set foot on Japanese soil. An anecdote that undoubtedly says a lot about the fascination that Japan can definitely exert.
