Is Manga Literature?! In Conversation with Professor Deborah Shamoon on Japanese Literature
Japan ranks among the top travel destinations for Singaporeans, but how much do you know about Japanese literature?
We speak to Professor Deborah Shamoon, Associate Professor in the Department of Japanese Studies at the National University of Singapore about literary works from the Land of the Rising Sun.
In September, Professor Shamoon will be conducting a series of four talks that will introduce readers to Japanese literary classics both old and new. Read on to find out about what inspires Professor Shamoon and get some book recommendations for you to dip your toes into the realm of Japanese literature!
1. How did you fall in love with Japanese literature?
When I was very young, I was a fan of Japanese manga and anime. I knew I wanted to major in Japanese Studies in university. However, most universities in the United States don’t have a department of Japanese Studies like at NUS where you can take any subject on Japanese culture. Instead, most offer a Japanese language and literature programme.
I started reading translated Japanese literature as part of my undergraduate studies. While I had always enjoyed reading English literature in secondary school, I found reading and analysing literature from a different culture to be exciting. I enjoy the challenge and creativity of literary studies, and this subject also allows me to study manga, anime, and film using similar intellectual skills.
As an undergraduate, my favourite author was Tanizaki Jun’ichiro. His writing is funny, subversive, and shocking. I liked the way he experimented with different types of narration and his unreliable narrators.
2. Your lecture series begins with The Tale of Genji from the Heian Period. Why is this such a foundational text? What do you think modern readers might enjoy or be surprised by in this 11th-century work?
The Tale of Genji is, in many ways, the first novel ever written. It is prose fiction, not poetry, nor a record of military victories or an oral legend written down.
Another feature that’s startlingly modern is how the author, Murasaki Shikibu, represents the inner psychology of the main characters, something we don’t typically see in most novels until the 18th or 19th- century.
The Tale of Genji is a love story with big emotions such as passion and jealousy that are highly relatable. The poetry is also masterful, which comes across even in translation. A bit like Shakespeare’s legacy in English, the phrases, images, and characters have been referenced so often that they are now a central part of Japanese arts, not just literature, but also fine arts and popular culture.
To give a bit more detail, modern readers are sometimes surprised that the author is a woman. Although women did not have direct political power in the 11th century, they had tremendous cultural power. Murasaki Shikibu did not write in secret like Jane Austen. She was a high-ranking member of the imperial court and her writing was celebrated even in her lifetime.
Readers are also sometimes surprised at the role of the supernatural in the novel. Even though The Tale of Genji is a realistic novel, ghosts, hauntings, and spirit possession are a major part of the plot. There is an eerie tone to many of the chapters. Today, it fits quite well with the popularity of the supernatural.
3. There are many invisible factors that influence a book’s publication and reception, particularly with literature that requires translation. Could you speak about some of these forces at play in the assimilation of Japanese literature into world literature?
This will be the main topic of my third talk on Snow Country by Kawabata Yasunari.
Although Japan has a literary tradition that stretches back more than a thousand years, it really only became part of world literature in the 1950s, with the translation of Snow Country into English by Edward Seidensticker in 1956, and subsequently with Kawabata becoming the first Japanese author to win the Nobel Prize for literature in 1968. But these things don’t just happen.
The promotion of Japanese literature was very deliberate in the Cold War context, and Snow Country was chosen because it fit what Americans expected to read in a Japanese novel. The way we think and study about Japanese literature in translation is still affected by these choices, as I’ll explain in my talk.
4. One of your upcoming talks is on the manga Rose of Versailles. Some might wonder if manga counts as literature — what would you say in response?
Of course, manga is literature! This is very well-recognised in Japan now. Remember that many things we consider classics today were lowbrow popular entertainment back in their day, including kabuki, ukiyo-e woodblock prints, and even Noh theatre in its earliest forms. This is true of many cultures, not just Japan.
One way of determining a literary classic is something that has stood the test of time, that is still read years after it was written. This is definitely true of The Rose of Versailles, which is as widely read now as when it was first published fifty years ago. The themes it represents, of yearning for social and gender equality, still resonate today.
It is odd that some people do not consider comics or manga to be literature, as if having pictures alongside text disqualifies it. Why are only books without pictures considered serious today? This was certainly not always the case in Japan or in other cultures. It’s a strange quirk of 20th century Western culture, an idea that we can leave behind as our contemporary culture becomes more visually oriented again.
Combining text and image in comics can be highly sophisticated and nuanced, and tell stories in different ways compared to novels, just as film is an expressive, complex visual medium.
5. For an interview on this subject, I invariably need to mention Haruki Murakami. Do you enjoy his fiction? Or more broadly, why do you think his works have struck a chord with international readers?
I have to admit I don’t particularly enjoy Murakami. I know many people are fans of his novels, and he has had a tremendous impact on trends in Japanese literature even to this day. Part of the reason he has been so popular outside Japan is that he references a lot of cultural touchstones from the 1960s that are well known everywhere. This makes his novels more easily approachable than some older novels where the cultural references are a bit more obscure.
But I think his Boomer nostalgia has not aged well.
For example, I used to teach his novel Norwegian Wood in my classes. The language is quite beautiful and the story of first love is touching and relatable. But the attitudes about sex, sexuality, and political activism are very much of the 1980s when he wrote the novel. I decided to cede the limited space in the syllabus to other authors who are a bit more self-aware.
6. Finally, what is one underrated Japanese book you would strongly recommend?
I have so many recommendations! If you want a different, perhaps surprising view of Japan in previous decades, I recommend two lesser-known titles, Confessions of Love by Uno Chiyo, and School of Freedom by Shishi Bunroku.
Confessions of Love is from the 1920s, about the “modern girls” who broke conventions at the time. It’s a racy tell-all based on a true story.
School of Freedom is a satire of the years just after WWII as men and women tried to find new identities, and it’s also quite funny.
If you want to read more premodern classics, The Tale of the Heike is also well worth reading. If you want to read more literary manga, Ooku: The Inner Chambers by Yoshinaga Fumi is highly recommended. It’s a gender-swapped alternative history of the Edo period with female shoguns.
Professor Shamoon will be delivering four introductory talks on Japanese Literature Old and New for NLB’s “A Bridge to the Classics” series. Find out more and register here: https://go.gov.sg/abc3!
Text by
Alex Foo
National Library Board
