Check out Episode 11 of the Read Japanese Literature podcast.
Today, we’re talking about the I-Novel—the highest form of literature in Japan in the 1910s and 20s.
It’s a genre one American scholar describes as “perhaps the most striking feature of modern Japanese literature.”
And it’s a genre Haruki Murakami claims to have an allergy to.
We’ll also be looking at the life and work of Osamu Dazai and asking, “What does it take to get disqualified as a human being?”
Content warning: This episode addresses addiction, rape, suicide, and misogyny.
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No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai, translated by Donald Keene
More by Dazai:
- Blue Bamboo: Japanese Tales of Fantasy
- Early Light (new release for July 2022)
- A New Hamlet
- Otogizhoshi: The Fairy Tale Book of Dazai Osamu
- Return to Tsugaru
- Schoolgirl
- Self-Portraits
- The Setting Sun
- A Shameful Life
- Wish Fulfilled
More to read:
An I-Novel by Minae Mizumura, translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter
Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata, translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori
Life Ceremony by Sayaka Murata, translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori
Find Out More
A review of An I-Novel by Minae Mizumura
An interview with Sayaka Murata
Plans for a secondary-school literature class on the I-Novel
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The History of Japan Podcast, hosted by Isaac Meyer
Understanding Japan: A Cultural History by Professor Mark J. Ravina. Produced by The Great Courses, 2015.
“Literature” at Japanese Wiki Corpus
Japanese Literature at Facebook
Sources
–. “The I-Novel” in Dawn to the West: Japanese Literature of the Modern Era—Fiction, 4th ed., 1999.
Lyons, Phyllis I. “‘Art Is Me’: Dazai Osamu’s Narrative Voice as a Permeable Self” in Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 1981.
Murakami Haruki. “Introduction” in The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories, ed. Jay Rubin, Penguin, 2020.
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