A map to tour the charm of Japanese literature

He Wave of Japanese literature Sounds with renewed force in the Recent translations of authors, which are more or less consecrated, cause the pleasure of entering another vision of the real. That is, it is not only the literature of a distant territory, but its writings embody A way to build and inhabit the body, links, the world.

Some of them like Yasunari Kawabata, or the most recent Banana Yoshimoto and Haruki Murakami Some time ago they circulate with the admiration of its readers. So much so that his works are A bridge to other less known authorswith a kind of secret cult for Japanese writing.

With the impact that only the classics reach, The years of waiting, of the writer Fumiko Enchi It is one of the great works of the twentieth century. And today it can be read in a crystalline, direct translation of the Japanese, made by Matias Chiappe ippolito.

The story follows the life of volume, A character inspired by the author’s grandmother. And he tells the experiences of a traditional wife of the late nineteenth century that through his strict sense of justice and a thorough intelligence leaves the view of the weight of tradition over Japanese women. Her husband is a senior government official and she is willing to satisfy him, even when that implies bending.

The novel begins when I take, after years of marriage, she is forced to look for her husband a concubine, to receive her at home, and accept coexistence as something natural. Of course, it will not be the only sacrifice that is going through, the scenes delve into the family routine, especially, he says The power links that are woven within the most intimate breastand is projected in the society of the time.

The elegant enchi writing captures the psychological complexity of the characters; Link the narration with a sensitivity capable of discovering all the dimensions of an experience crossed by the rigidity of the mandates.

The style in layers of meaning leads to think of another contemporary Japanese author, the extraordinary Minae Mizumura that rereads the tradition of your country, and conjugates it with the western classics to achieve stories as moving as the exciting A real novel.

In it deepens in the history of a love that transcends the timesthe classes, the prejudices, play with the points of view in a caleidoscope of senses that touches the deepest of the spirit.

These days, by the way, the first work of Mizumura calls Light and darkness. A continuation (2025, A.hache). The writer took the challenge of imagine a possible end to Light and darknessthe novel that Natsume Sōseki (1867-1916), one of the most important novelists in modern Japan, left unfinished with his death.

In Japan a long time was speculated about What could be the end of the slow destruction of Tsuda and O-Nobu’s marriage that tells the original story. The continuation, which can be read independently, is set in a mountain town in 1920, which the protagonist retired to recover. There he meets his first love.

Another masterpiece that has a new edition in Spanish is the famous The sand castlea key story of one of the great authors of the Japanese black novel, Seicho Matsumoto.

Originally published in 1961, It tells the adventures of the Imanishi Police Inspector who faces a disconcerting case: In a Tokyo station the corpse of a man with his face disfigured appears. Thus the inspector has to leave his bonsais and haikus to enter the case. And after weeks of following false indications, they close the case, only that he does not resign and insists. Through the protagonist and his wife, Matsumoto shows the Japan of the twentieth century, gastronomy, art, society and culture in a landscape of towns and cities.

To them is added Dorayakithe novel of Durian Sukegawa That seems to talk to us in a low voice, and for the first time can be read in Spanish. Prima facie It seems to tell a minor storyIt is enough to advance reading to discover that it proposes a delicate path towards the deepest issues of human existence.

Sentaro is a lonely man who takes care of the Dorayaki cake business, to pay with his work a debt. Everything seems mechanical in that doing, until he meets Tokue, a very special old woman who proposes to be her employee. The encounter, of course, transforms the life of sitting in a gradual and deep way. It is a story that embodies, delicately, a philosophical look capable of exciting.

In the brief genre, they can be read The disturbing stories of Children’s huntingby the Inquietante Taeko Kōno. They are a series of stories that portray disturbing details of everyday life, with an irreverence capable of talking about the discomforts that the rejection of motherhood, the relationship with death, sexuality outside the norm or child trauma. All of them issues that travel their work with cruelty that does not admit contemplations.

Con more secret authorsbut equally significant the publisher also the snail allocates the “Bamboo Forest” collection exclusively to Japanese authors. Among them, two books of fundamental stories stand out that renewed the way of writing Japanese: Spring arrives in a horsepower car y Heads and bellyambos de riichi yokomitsu (1898-1947).

The writer He was a Kawabata teacherso and everything, it still remains practically unknown. Their stories speak of their own conditions, sometimes caused by oneself, and also of others, and at the same time, exposes the fragility of a territory and a culture in transition to the alleged progress.

While these authors are not all those that circulate in the country today, They show as a whole the richness of a tradition that contains a diversity of voices, genres and aesthetics that exceed any preconcept for the oriental. At the same time, they incarnate in their reading the possibility to extend the limits of our reality towards other ways of living full of the wealth of the unknown.