Japanese literature

Prose, poetry, and drama of Japan. Characteristic of the classical literature is the intermingling of prose and poetry, the forms of the latter being determined by the number of syllables. The Tale of Genji (c. 1005) by Murasaki Shikibu has been called the world's first novel. Modern novelists include Yukio Mishima and Jun-ichirō Tanizaki.

The court era Oral poetry and ritual formulas were handed down from earlier times, but the first surviving written works include two chronicles of myth and history: Kojiki/Record of Ancient Matters late 7th century and Nihon shoki (720), both of which include some poetry. The 8th-century Man'yōshū/Collection of a Myriad Leaves was the first of a series of influential poetry anthologies commissioned by the imperial court. The principal form represented in it is the tanka, a five-line stanza of 5, 7, 5, 7, 7 syllables, and the principal poets include Kakinomoto Hitomaro (died 708/15). The 8th-9th centuries saw the change away from the phonetic use of Chinese characters and the first literature written in the indigenous syllabary. In the late 10th and early 11th centuries, not only Murasaki but also several other ladies attached to the court produced great works of psychological fiction, diaries, and the Makura no sōshi/Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon, a collection of reflections whose influence carries into the present day.

The war-torn era Saigyō (1118-1190) and Fujiwara Teika (1162-1241) are regarded as two of Japan's greatest poets. During the 14th century the Nō drama developed from ceremonial religious dances, combined with monologues and dialogues. Zeami in the early 15th century wrote many classic plays as well as manuals and theories of Nō. Tsurezuregusa/Essays in Idleness (1330-31) by Kenkō (c. 1283-1352) is a short prose work still read today. The epic Heike monogatari was written in the 14th century. Sōgi (1421-1502) was an outstanding exponent of renga, linked verse on the tanka pattern, subject to complex rules and often written collaboratively by two or three people. Beginning as a pastime, it became an art form in the 12th century. The origins of haiku lie in renga.

The Tokugawa era The 17th century brought such scholars of Chinese studies as Arai Hakuseki (1657-1725), who became adviser to the shogun and wrote an autobiography. This period also saw the rise of kabuki, the popular drama of Edo Japan, of which Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653-1724) is the chief exponent (he also wrote extensively for the bunraku puppet theatre); of haiku (the stanza of three lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables), whose foremost practitioner was Bashō; and of the modern novel, as represented by Ihara Saikaku (1642-1693), whose main themes were sex and money, set among the urban middle class. Ueda Akinari (1734-1809) drew on Chinese classics for the stories in Ugetsu monogatari/Tales of Moonlight and Rain (1768). Among those reacting against Chinese influence was the scholar and poet Motoori Norinaga (1730-1801).

The modern era The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw the replacement of the obsolete Tokugawa style as a literary medium with the modern colloquial language; the influence of Western and Russian literature (usually encountered through English translations) produced writers such as the realist Tsubouchi Shōyō (1859-1935), author of an important study of the novel 1885-86, followed by the naturalist and ‘idealistic’ novelists, whose romantic preoccupation with self-expression gave rise to the still popular ‘I-novels’ of, for example, Osamu Dazai. A reaction against the autobiographical school came from Natsume Sōseki, Nagai Kafū (1879-1959), and Tanizaki. Shimazaki Tōson (1872-1943) introduced Western-style poetic trends, including Symbolism, but the traditional forms of haiku and tanka are still widely used. Western-style modern drama, inspired by the Scandinavians Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg, has been growing since the turn of the century, and the avant-garde flourished in the 1960s with such playwrights as Shūji Terayama (1935-1983), but the strength of Japanese theatre generally lies in the performances rather than the scripts. After World War II, the experience of cultural dislocation and problems of identity were addressed by a new generation of often leftist writers such as Kōbō Abe, using narrative and dramatic techniques developed from Western modernism. Two Japanese novelists have won the Nobel Prize for Literature: Yasunari Kawabata (1968) and Kenzaburō Ōe (1994). Writers popular in the 1990s include Haruki Murakami (1949- ), author of such surrealist adventures as Hitsuji o meguru bōken/A Wild Sheep Chase (1989), and Banana Yoshimoto (1964- ), whose short, sensitive novels include Kitchin/Kitchen (1991).