I personally believe the reason for non-western fiction gaining so much mainstream traction is quite simple: it provides a perspective almost entirely seperated from the reality most people face.
Even simple scenarios, like running a small store or living life in a rural village, are so different from our usual experiences that it provides a way for our brains to release some of the pressure that comes from our busy day-to-day lives.
The "isekai" genre (being transported to a different world, usually after dying an unfortune death) is an extreme take on this, where almost all connection to reality is removed entirely.
Compare those stories to most (not all) modern mainstream western fiction, and you'll find that a lot of it tends to take place within our existing world instead.
> The "isekai" genre (being transported to a different world, usually after dying an unfortune death) is an extreme take on this, where almost all connection to reality is removed entirely.
> Compare those stories to most (not all) modern mainstream western fiction, and you'll find that a lot of it tends to take place within our existing world instead
When people draw conclusions like this it often seems like they're making apples to oranges comparisons. Most "isekai" stuff is light novels. The appropriate comparison with stuff published in the US would might be YA books which also have lots of stuff that does not "take place within our existing world".
I think there might be some confusion about how common different types of fiction are in Japan because people are comparing US literary fiction with Japanese genre fiction because Japanese "pure literature" fiction doesn't tend to receive attention in the US, but in reality I'm not sure the US and Japanese fiction markets are that different overall.
This article is directly talking about Japanese pure literature, I think some posters just took off from the title only?
You're right that if we are comparing the wider body, there isn't really a distinction between "Western" or "Japanese", at least for enthusiasts, what matters alot more are the individual authors.
Literary fiction is a genre with tropes of its own. It's just one that its fans get extremely snobby about. But doesn't Murakami count as literary fiction?
Biggest reason is simply quantity, Japan churns out hundreds of animated stories from new authors every year, the west do barely anything in comparison.
When you create that much content some of them do become hits, and it also encourages more authors to create more content, while western studios only invests in franchises they can control themselves to create another marvel, while Japan just churns out content while the authors retain the rights.
Edit: Many western authors writes about other worlds etc, they just don't get anything animated since it is so hard to get anyone to invest in your story.
There seems to be some progress in the western animation scene. Dungeon Crawler Carl and Cradle are both getting animated adaptations.
The biggest tragedy is that even incredibly popular authors like Brandon Sanderson don't get a chance of having their own animated series. Mistborn would work perfectly as an anime adaptation.
Marvel and DC historically created way too much consolidation which really limited creative output. And by this point people seem pretty fed up with 'capeshit'. Western comics are also incredibly hostile towards new readers, especially when compared to managa where you can just pick up the story and binge read the whole thing without having to pick up a million other things.
Western comics are also incredibly hostile towards new readers
In my experience, it is easy to just pick up a trade paperback, one shot, subscribe to a limited series, etc. Even if you want to just jump in to an ongoing series, the writing and storylines are simple enough that you can usually pick it up in a few issues or just wait for a new arc.
>Western comics are also incredibly hostile towards new readers
I agree with this if we are talking American superhero comics, but the European scene is decidedly different. Franco-Belgian comics are usually very pick-up-and-go, as are a great many of the homegrown UK ones. I think we're coming off a decade-ish where the massive investment in Marvel/DC 'verses have been eating up all the oxygen in the room for large comic book adaptions. Or just for general public consciousness attention for comics.
I am pretty confident that it's gonna turn around, but it might take a while on the large scale projects.
The Cradle adaptation is only an animatic, sadly. Best case scenario is that it generates enough buzz for a Netflix or an Amazon to pick it up for a full series, but then I'd be worried it would get butchered like Rings of Power or Wheel of Time have been.
None of the japanese literature in this article is being adapted into animation, we're talking about literary fiction here as opposed to more pop fiction like light novels which exist more as mass commercial enterprises.
No, I don't think somebody getting into Re-Zero is going to start reading VNs like Umineko someday, let alone progress to literature, in the same way as how somebody watching the MCU is unlikely to progress to Infinite Jest.
Geographical distinctions don't really make sense in deciding preference, you start with genre elements and pick from there, regardless if it's Western or Japanese. Ignoring a work because it comes from X country would just be bizarre. As a sci-fi or fantasy fan I don't make distinctions between Japanese or Korean or Western works, nor do I see other fans doing so. For example, I wouldn't be comparing Satoshi Hase's Beatless in the context of "Japanese" works, I'd be comparing it to other AI works. The only limiting factor is translation.
But cross-genre pollination doesn't really happen nowadays, most shounen readers will never go or even avoid mecha, and so forth. Otaku culture especially is much more fragmented today than in the early 2010s.
> No, I don't think somebody getting into Re-Zero is going to start reading VNs like Umineko someday
You realize Umeniko got an anime? Yes, some of the people who watched that anime probably went to read the books, is that really so hard to believe? Authors who got their works animated see a lot more book sales as well. Then as they read those books they might want more so they look for adjacent books, fueling the entire industry.
No, not all start as light novels. In many cases the light novels come afterwards as a way to capitalise (eg Demon Slayer, the manga finished a while ago, so while the anime is still running light novels are coming out).
Apothecary Diaries started as a light novel, but JJK, AoT and many others start as Manga
Also, the article is about animes as well. Makato Shinkai’s She and Her Cat is an anime, not a book, for example. It talks a lot about books, but it isn't only about books. I thought that was obvious.
> No, not all start as light novels
Many are though, many of the animes that came out for a few years I had already read the LN for. That so many novels becomes animes is likely a big reason why there are so many novels being written along those styles.
There's a ton of great western fiction that does the same thing, it's just not usually gonna show up on traditional channels. Heck, that's not even entirely true since Travis Baldree's slice of life Legends & Lattes won Nebula and Hugo awards last year.
If you go on Royal Road there's tons of great fantasy stories. The West is just missing the Japanaese pipeline of web serials -> light novel -> manga -> anime -> live action movie. Although there's companies like WebToons that seem to be trying to get such a pipeline going by making comics based on popular western web serials.
I've read my fair share of both Western and Japanese light novels, and you can definitely find quality content everywhere. In Japan they just do a better job at capitalizing on success by giving every slightly popular light novel series a try with an anime season or two. As someone who usually checks out 1 or 2 episodes of most seasonal anime, I can tell you that most of it ends up being barely memorable slop though.
It's worth noting that the West seems to be catching up, a few popular series are getting animated series. Two big ones that come to mind are Cradle by Will Wight, and Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman.
Murakami's works, at least, feel quite westernised. They are filled with references to western music and other art, the protagonists generally have jobs that are also common in the west, and (not sure whether this is down to Murakami or his translator) the characters always sound very American in dialogue. Nothing about them feels particularly alien to a western reader, except the surrealism itself (and, perhaps, certain aspects of his portrayal of women that is sometimes considered problematic in the west).
I think most attempts to rationalize why media from an entire culture is popular are going to fall short, and while this is better reasoning that usual it's still overthinking the problem. At the end of the day, every culture produces media, some percentage of that is going to be really good, and sometimes other groups end up really enjoying it because of quality and novelty.
Video games, yes, but anime (aside from a couple things that played on normal channels, like dragon ball—seeking out more, though...) and especially manga were things only certain kinds of dorks enjoyed, among those whose high school years were in the '90s and '00s. Toward the veeeeery end of the '00s (as the kids right behind that group started reaching high school) it was changing, and what's remarkable now is how entirely normal it is, even manga. It's no longer unusual for the popular kids to like it.
It was kinda hard to even get anime in that time period, if it wasn't one of the few played on TV. Hell, even US TV shows had only recently started coming out as complete DVD sets, most still weren't available that way, and publishers were all over the place on what they thought a season was worth. You pretty much had to be into Internet piracy to be a fan, or know someone who was and would get stuff for you.
>it provides a perspective almost entirely seperated from the reality most people face.
The entirety of western entertainment seems to have forgotten that the whole fucking point of leisure activities is to escape from the hellscape that is life and reality. Japanese entertainment by and large is precisely that escape, the pressure valve to let loose and be just happy for a while.
A lot of people here take offense when western entertainment is called "woke", with a common rebuttal being that "woke" isn't well defined. Well tell you what, I'll help define it: "Woke" entertainment is entertainment that incorporates or outright is real life and particularly specific facets of real life, often with no reason for that incorporation or nature insofar as leisure is concerned. The obligatory black man or the obligatory powerful(?) woman to check the boxes, for some examples.
Japanese entertainment has none of that bullshit, even if it otherwise is rife with tropes. Entertainment that constantly shouts at you about real life is shitty entertainment.
Conversely, Japanese entertainment would die overnight if literally anyone else produces decent and simply enjoyable entertainment. Japanese entertainment is devoid of innovation now, a lot of it is rehashes upon rehashes and the isekai genre being as long-lived as it is is a huge symptom.
I don't know if that was your intention, but I basically understand from your comment that black men and powerful women are two components of reality that are bothering you to start with. Yes all new British and American productions are ticking these two boxes, but it's not shouting at all of us.
I suspect for the Japanese women who are putting in perspective the extreme conservatism on gender roles prevalent in their country, most Japanese fiction shouts at them about real life too.
>I basically understand from your comment that black men and powerful women are two components of reality that are bothering you to start with.
They were just examples, I'm deeply annoyed at anything concerning acute political/social activism in entertainment because it's simply not what I wanted to spend my leisure time on.
Isn't being annoyed at something sociopolitical and expressing that feeling, sharing your concerns with anyone who will listen, itself a sociopolitical act?
Because it is.
I'm not trying to gaslight you, insofar as reason itself agrees with my proposition.
I agree, it's a sociopolitical demand to stop shitting up my leisure time.
There's a good way and a bad way to have elements in entertainment. Using the "black man" example again, a good example are the Redguards in The Elder Scrolls games. I wasn't annoyed, the Redguards were a natural and very good part of the world building and lore and served to better entertain me.
A bad example on the other hand is literally any of the "obligatory black man" now seen everywhere. He doesn't serve any purpose other than to say that there's a black man.
I want more Redguards in my entertainment, not obligatory black men.
I'm not Elon Musk or Donald Trump. Sending your complaints of mainstream culture to me will not result in your political representation and its voice being heard. I am unable to effectively sponsor and defend your proposed alternative dynamics.
But! If I am like a techno-angel sent from the Heavens above, then what I can do is suggest to you that exit, as opposed to voice, is a sociopolitical act that you should consider. Exit from the mainstream culture is your best bet.
The token characters and checkboxes are a symptom of design-by-committee corporate culture anyways and even without them, the quality isn't going to be any better because again, it's corporate slop.
This only means that there's a pervasive cultural synagogue/cathedral that has infected behavior through pedagogical means. Namely, education itself has been made to serve the interests of all possible economics that can occur within the borders of global liberal democracy.
This also only means that any sociopolitical exit from the zombie invasion must at least be as high as considering a departure from common epistemology.
That is about as uneducated a take as one could possibly have.
Keep in mind "isekai" as a genre also exists in western entertainment; A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and The Chronicles of Narnia are some prominent and famous examples. Are those specifically for shut-ins and nerds too?
When we talk about isekai in modern contexts we do commonly refer to the post 2015 Narou-Isekai where one certainly draws a distinction between isekai before 2015 or after.
The thing about "old" isekai is that they exist more as fantasy stories with specific messages and themes, where Narou-Isekai can be specifically placed in the context of the latest evolution of the Otaku after the failure of sekai-kei and the increasing self-indulgence from CGCDT, Battle-Harems all the way to Isekai.
Sorry if I struck a nerve, I was being slightly hyperbolic, but why do you think I'm uneducated? I also should have said I was specifically referring to anime since I think that's what most people think of when they hear "isekai".
> the whole fucking point of leisure activities is to escape from the hellscape that is life and reality
To claim that escapism is the sole purpose of art is certainly a bold statement. Why bother reflecting on human society when we can just do our best to jam our fingers in our ears and ignore it?
If capitalism wasn't the leviathan that it was, then I wouldn't blame anyone for trying to escape the life that capitalist neo-colonialism has brought into existence. Pretty soon, at this rate, life itself will be a subordinate of the democratic global capital project.
This take is in the "Why did they put politics into my Metal Gear?!" category. Japanese fiction continues to win over people precisely because it's more than just pure entertainment. Japanese creators still manage to challenge audiences intellectually, politically, even aesthetically. Metaphor: ReFantazio, probably one of the best Japanese game releases this year is very political, not shying away at all from tackling class, race and even the literal point of this post, media dumbed down to escapism.
Maybe you don't realize it, but we're on the same side.
Japanese entertainment isn't In Your Dumb Face about things unlike western entertainment, it respects your intelligence and sheer common sense. You're not being talked down to, your ability to just pick another (better) product to be entertained with and walk away is respected; and it's an escape from the rest of the world shouting at you about something.
"the whole fucking point of leisure activities is to escape from the hellscape that is life and reality"
I get that you don’t like woke, but that is too blanket a claim. There has just been too much popular literature across America and Europe that has directly dealt with dire social and political trends of the day. Even when it comes to the issue of American race relations and the impact of slavery, Uncle Tom’s Cabin was one of the bestselling books of the 19th century, so fiction readers clearly weren’t interested only in escape.
> Murakami and Yoshimoto have something else in common: both were criticised in a 1990 essay by Kenzaburō Ōe, the Japanese Nobel prize-winning author. Their works, he said, “convey the experience of a youth politically uninvolved or disaffected, content to exist with an adolescent or post-adolescent subculture”.
I don't know the context of the quote and this wouldn't be the first time the Guardian puts a weird spin on something, but is there a problem with politically uninvolved protagonists?
When I'm at the used bookshop, I always look for a Murakami book, Haruki or Ryu. I especially recommend Haruki's Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World for this crowd, as data encryption plays a role. Ryu is probably best known for his horror novel Audition because it was adapted for film by Miike Takashi. Both would be classified as surreal. Haruki's novels famously always have a cat in them, but not always in a major role.
Mishima's Sea of Fertility tetralogy was excellent. The second entry in the series, Runaway Horses, is in my opinion the 20th century's best novel. The fourth, with its surprising conclusion, was also astounding.
Much to my surprise, I've found that the books actually read better in English translation than they do in Japanese. Mishima was inordinately fond of using complicated, and sometimes archaic, Chinese-style (kanji) characters that even native Japanese readers have trouble with. His books flow a little bit more smoothly in English, and they don't seem to lose much in translation.
It has been years since I read the Sea of Fertility, but I remember one Western scholar of Japan claiming that the fourth volume was a shoddy work compared to the previous three, written hastily as Mishima was preparing for his death. Since the English version didn’t obviously strike me as so flawed, I wondered if the translator had done some rescue work. Sadly, I’ll probably never be able to read the book in its original Japanese.
I saw nothing wrong with the fourth book -- and I preferred it to the first, which was perhaps a little bit too saccharine and tinged with nostalgia for a lost world, and the third, which was a little bit too sedate. (Especially after the wild vitality of the second.)
Public opinion turned on Mishima after his death. Westerners, by and large, took offense at his final actions. The Japanese found it embarrassing and endeavored to forget all about it. I'd venture a guess that your critic could be influenced by feelings that have nothing to do with the book as a thing in itself.
I've read a few of Murakami's books (including Wind Up Bird) and enjoyed them. They certainly have their flaws and if you ever browse through a thread in a books subreddit, they will be pointed out with glee by one person after another. The primary complaint seems to be how he writes women.
You'd think a books subreddit would be a place for people to celebrate books and writers but it mostly seems to be a place for people who dislike particular books in particular ways to vent and rant. They don't like book X and they don't want you to either.
Thanks for the recommendations. I'm going to check them all out.
The primary complaint I have seen about Murakami in internet books forums, is how repetitive his writing ultimately became. His treatment of women that strikes many as problematic, is just one of the things that get repeated.
They aren't trojan horses for activism and ESG scores (yet, they are working on it). Just look at the closest comparable western equivalent, comics compared to mangas. The difference in sales numbers and impact on pop culture even in the west is monumental.
I'm not a search engine but ESG is basically corporate and government funding to include current year real world activism into media which is the antithesis of fiction.
Alright, so the search engine told me that "ESG" is a set of criteria to rate sustainability of corporations/investments, where E stands for environment (ressource efficiency/non-pollution, ...), S for social (worker safety, non-discrimination, ...) and G for governance (risk management, compliance, anti-corruption). Please correct misconceptions.
You are suggesting that government pays writers to show those kinds of sustainability in a overly positive way?
How would western media look if it wasn't a trojan horse? Would it show slavery, environmental pollution and feudalism in a much more positive light? How can you be sure that the mismatch here is from goverment/corporate influence on writers, and not simply a difference in ethical values between the average writer and you?
Authors especially comic ones are usually part of big publisher like Marvel or DC that own the IP and call the shots. They also have ESG scores and they decide which activism to include that increases the score and raises more investor or government funding.
expecting corporate publishing to be a source of good art is a mistake. of course a corporation will adapt to the market. seems like you have a problem with the free market which is exploiting the desire for wokeness in culture.
Comics have a huge impact on pop culture. They form the basis for some of the biggest budget TV shows and movies which last for a long time in our collective consciousness: The Dark Knight series, Watchmen, the Avengers, etc.
Several just on their own are huge cultural juggernauts: Calvin and Hobbes, Peanuts, XKCD, Penny Arcade, etc.
I don't know why you think comics are. Trojan Horse for ESG/activism. Like all media, they seek to reach wider and wider audiences, for a good chunk of time, the best perceived way to do that was to diversify those offerings. Even if that didn't end up working (assuming your POV in good faith), that doesn't mean it was a "Trojan horse for activism" anymore than the rise and fall of the shonen genre in manga was a subversive attempt to inject masculinity into the populace.
What you term as ESG and all is not a shadowy cabal to force people to think a certain way. It's just companies trying to do what sells. You forget that in the beginning it did work, which is why it caught on.
Reminds me a bit of the latest video of Chris Niebauer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_Dq5512MIE where he talks about the mind wandering upgrade through smart phones and social media. with the help if these tools the brain can offload the task of simulating/imagening things into the real world.
Some time ago somebody pointed out to me how the superhero genre really took off after 9/11 and I can't stop thinking about that because I think it says a lot about how people think, what they want and also how consent is manufactured.
9/11 pierced America's sense of safety. Perhaps Pearl Harbor was similar. Historically the Gauls sacking Rome in the 4th Century BCE was probably similar. So people were attracted to media where somebody would save them, protect them.
At a higher level, the superhero genre feeds into pushing an idealism narrative. Idealism here simply means some people are the good guys and other people are the bad guys. Inherently. Compare this to materialism, which is a philosophy that there is a feedback loop between a person and their environment, of each affecting the other. There is no good or evil. People simply respond to their circumstances. A Song of Ice and Fire (the books more than the TV show, particularly the later seasons) is a superb example of materialism in fiction.
So what does the rising popularity of Japanese literature (note: the article is about that and not about anime as I think some who simply read the headline assume) say about society?
I think we have a crisis of despair in society. The cost of living, particularly housing, is out of control. You have a generation who thinks they'll never own a home or ever be able to retire. They don't feel like they have the security to have children. Is it any wonder that escapism thrives when the real world seems so bleak?
I see this as yet another symptom of the crisis in capitalism. Sure there's a fascination with Japanese culture. This isn't new. But why? We're also seeing more Chinese fiction (eg Three Body Problem). It's hard for me not to see this trend as anything other than a failure in our society to provide hope to people whose dreams are very mundane.
I personally believe the reason for non-western fiction gaining so much mainstream traction is quite simple: it provides a perspective almost entirely seperated from the reality most people face. Even simple scenarios, like running a small store or living life in a rural village, are so different from our usual experiences that it provides a way for our brains to release some of the pressure that comes from our busy day-to-day lives. The "isekai" genre (being transported to a different world, usually after dying an unfortune death) is an extreme take on this, where almost all connection to reality is removed entirely.
Compare those stories to most (not all) modern mainstream western fiction, and you'll find that a lot of it tends to take place within our existing world instead.
> The "isekai" genre (being transported to a different world, usually after dying an unfortune death) is an extreme take on this, where almost all connection to reality is removed entirely.
> Compare those stories to most (not all) modern mainstream western fiction, and you'll find that a lot of it tends to take place within our existing world instead
When people draw conclusions like this it often seems like they're making apples to oranges comparisons. Most "isekai" stuff is light novels. The appropriate comparison with stuff published in the US would might be YA books which also have lots of stuff that does not "take place within our existing world".
I think there might be some confusion about how common different types of fiction are in Japan because people are comparing US literary fiction with Japanese genre fiction because Japanese "pure literature" fiction doesn't tend to receive attention in the US, but in reality I'm not sure the US and Japanese fiction markets are that different overall.
This article is directly talking about Japanese pure literature, I think some posters just took off from the title only?
You're right that if we are comparing the wider body, there isn't really a distinction between "Western" or "Japanese", at least for enthusiasts, what matters alot more are the individual authors.
> This article is directly talking about Japanese pure literature,
No it isn't, did you even read it? It mentions animes as well, not all of the works mentioned are books.
Makato Shinkai’s She and Her Cat is an anime, not a book, for example.
Edit: They adapted that anime to a book, but a book adapted from an anime is hardly "pure literature", it is definitely pop literature.
Literary fiction is a genre with tropes of its own. It's just one that its fans get extremely snobby about. But doesn't Murakami count as literary fiction?
Biggest reason is simply quantity, Japan churns out hundreds of animated stories from new authors every year, the west do barely anything in comparison.
When you create that much content some of them do become hits, and it also encourages more authors to create more content, while western studios only invests in franchises they can control themselves to create another marvel, while Japan just churns out content while the authors retain the rights.
Edit: Many western authors writes about other worlds etc, they just don't get anything animated since it is so hard to get anyone to invest in your story.
There seems to be some progress in the western animation scene. Dungeon Crawler Carl and Cradle are both getting animated adaptations.
The biggest tragedy is that even incredibly popular authors like Brandon Sanderson don't get a chance of having their own animated series. Mistborn would work perfectly as an anime adaptation.
Marvel and DC historically created way too much consolidation which really limited creative output. And by this point people seem pretty fed up with 'capeshit'. Western comics are also incredibly hostile towards new readers, especially when compared to managa where you can just pick up the story and binge read the whole thing without having to pick up a million other things.
Western comics are also incredibly hostile towards new readers
In my experience, it is easy to just pick up a trade paperback, one shot, subscribe to a limited series, etc. Even if you want to just jump in to an ongoing series, the writing and storylines are simple enough that you can usually pick it up in a few issues or just wait for a new arc.
>Western comics are also incredibly hostile towards new readers
I agree with this if we are talking American superhero comics, but the European scene is decidedly different. Franco-Belgian comics are usually very pick-up-and-go, as are a great many of the homegrown UK ones. I think we're coming off a decade-ish where the massive investment in Marvel/DC 'verses have been eating up all the oxygen in the room for large comic book adaptions. Or just for general public consciousness attention for comics.
I am pretty confident that it's gonna turn around, but it might take a while on the large scale projects.
The Cradle adaptation is only an animatic, sadly. Best case scenario is that it generates enough buzz for a Netflix or an Amazon to pick it up for a full series, but then I'd be worried it would get butchered like Rings of Power or Wheel of Time have been.
None of the japanese literature in this article is being adapted into animation, we're talking about literary fiction here as opposed to more pop fiction like light novels which exist more as mass commercial enterprises.
> None of the japanese literature in this article is being adapted into animation
This is wrong btw, I looked up one and "Makato Shinkai’s She and Her Cat" was an anime. This is about animes as well, not just books.
Anime gets people started, then they start reading other things from Japan. The west doesn't have such a pipeline to make casual persons into readers.
Edit: Anyway, the culture of celebrating authors in general rather than trying to create franchises helps a lot for all sorts of books.
No, I don't think somebody getting into Re-Zero is going to start reading VNs like Umineko someday, let alone progress to literature, in the same way as how somebody watching the MCU is unlikely to progress to Infinite Jest.
Geographical distinctions don't really make sense in deciding preference, you start with genre elements and pick from there, regardless if it's Western or Japanese. Ignoring a work because it comes from X country would just be bizarre. As a sci-fi or fantasy fan I don't make distinctions between Japanese or Korean or Western works, nor do I see other fans doing so. For example, I wouldn't be comparing Satoshi Hase's Beatless in the context of "Japanese" works, I'd be comparing it to other AI works. The only limiting factor is translation.
But cross-genre pollination doesn't really happen nowadays, most shounen readers will never go or even avoid mecha, and so forth. Otaku culture especially is much more fragmented today than in the early 2010s.
I agree with your points, but to be honest Bungo Stray Dogs got me interested in Osamu Dasai and Akutagawa...
> No, I don't think somebody getting into Re-Zero is going to start reading VNs like Umineko someday
You realize Umeniko got an anime? Yes, some of the people who watched that anime probably went to read the books, is that really so hard to believe? Authors who got their works animated see a lot more book sales as well. Then as they read those books they might want more so they look for adjacent books, fueling the entire industry.
Did you even read the article?
churn animated stories? WTF has that do do with an article about fiction books - NOT manga? or even anime?
You realize most of those stories were originally books? They turn books to mangas and then to animes.
No, not all start as light novels. In many cases the light novels come afterwards as a way to capitalise (eg Demon Slayer, the manga finished a while ago, so while the anime is still running light novels are coming out).
Apothecary Diaries started as a light novel, but JJK, AoT and many others start as Manga
Also, the article is about animes as well. Makato Shinkai’s She and Her Cat is an anime, not a book, for example. It talks a lot about books, but it isn't only about books. I thought that was obvious.
> No, not all start as light novels
Many are though, many of the animes that came out for a few years I had already read the LN for. That so many novels becomes animes is likely a big reason why there are so many novels being written along those styles.
There's a ton of great western fiction that does the same thing, it's just not usually gonna show up on traditional channels. Heck, that's not even entirely true since Travis Baldree's slice of life Legends & Lattes won Nebula and Hugo awards last year.
If you go on Royal Road there's tons of great fantasy stories. The West is just missing the Japanaese pipeline of web serials -> light novel -> manga -> anime -> live action movie. Although there's companies like WebToons that seem to be trying to get such a pipeline going by making comics based on popular western web serials.
I've read my fair share of both Western and Japanese light novels, and you can definitely find quality content everywhere. In Japan they just do a better job at capitalizing on success by giving every slightly popular light novel series a try with an anime season or two. As someone who usually checks out 1 or 2 episodes of most seasonal anime, I can tell you that most of it ends up being barely memorable slop though.
It's worth noting that the West seems to be catching up, a few popular series are getting animated series. Two big ones that come to mind are Cradle by Will Wight, and Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman.
Murakami's works, at least, feel quite westernised. They are filled with references to western music and other art, the protagonists generally have jobs that are also common in the west, and (not sure whether this is down to Murakami or his translator) the characters always sound very American in dialogue. Nothing about them feels particularly alien to a western reader, except the surrealism itself (and, perhaps, certain aspects of his portrayal of women that is sometimes considered problematic in the west).
He provides a portal to the west as a Japanese person would imagined it to be, akin to an otaku romanticizing japanise culture.
To be fair, Japan is westernized
I think most attempts to rationalize why media from an entire culture is popular are going to fall short, and while this is better reasoning that usual it's still overthinking the problem. At the end of the day, every culture produces media, some percentage of that is going to be really good, and sometimes other groups end up really enjoying it because of quality and novelty.
Honestly I don't remember any time when Japanese manga/anime/video games weren't popular.
90s kids grew up watching Dragon Ball & playing Metal Gear Solid and Super Mario 64.
Video games, yes, but anime (aside from a couple things that played on normal channels, like dragon ball—seeking out more, though...) and especially manga were things only certain kinds of dorks enjoyed, among those whose high school years were in the '90s and '00s. Toward the veeeeery end of the '00s (as the kids right behind that group started reaching high school) it was changing, and what's remarkable now is how entirely normal it is, even manga. It's no longer unusual for the popular kids to like it.
It was kinda hard to even get anime in that time period, if it wasn't one of the few played on TV. Hell, even US TV shows had only recently started coming out as complete DVD sets, most still weren't available that way, and publishers were all over the place on what they thought a season was worth. You pretty much had to be into Internet piracy to be a fan, or know someone who was and would get stuff for you.
>it provides a perspective almost entirely seperated from the reality most people face.
The entirety of western entertainment seems to have forgotten that the whole fucking point of leisure activities is to escape from the hellscape that is life and reality. Japanese entertainment by and large is precisely that escape, the pressure valve to let loose and be just happy for a while.
A lot of people here take offense when western entertainment is called "woke", with a common rebuttal being that "woke" isn't well defined. Well tell you what, I'll help define it: "Woke" entertainment is entertainment that incorporates or outright is real life and particularly specific facets of real life, often with no reason for that incorporation or nature insofar as leisure is concerned. The obligatory black man or the obligatory powerful(?) woman to check the boxes, for some examples.
Japanese entertainment has none of that bullshit, even if it otherwise is rife with tropes. Entertainment that constantly shouts at you about real life is shitty entertainment.
Conversely, Japanese entertainment would die overnight if literally anyone else produces decent and simply enjoyable entertainment. Japanese entertainment is devoid of innovation now, a lot of it is rehashes upon rehashes and the isekai genre being as long-lived as it is is a huge symptom.
I don't know if that was your intention, but I basically understand from your comment that black men and powerful women are two components of reality that are bothering you to start with. Yes all new British and American productions are ticking these two boxes, but it's not shouting at all of us.
I suspect for the Japanese women who are putting in perspective the extreme conservatism on gender roles prevalent in their country, most Japanese fiction shouts at them about real life too.
>I basically understand from your comment that black men and powerful women are two components of reality that are bothering you to start with.
They were just examples, I'm deeply annoyed at anything concerning acute political/social activism in entertainment because it's simply not what I wanted to spend my leisure time on.
Isn't being annoyed at something sociopolitical and expressing that feeling, sharing your concerns with anyone who will listen, itself a sociopolitical act?
Because it is.
I'm not trying to gaslight you, insofar as reason itself agrees with my proposition.
I agree, it's a sociopolitical demand to stop shitting up my leisure time.
There's a good way and a bad way to have elements in entertainment. Using the "black man" example again, a good example are the Redguards in The Elder Scrolls games. I wasn't annoyed, the Redguards were a natural and very good part of the world building and lore and served to better entertain me.
A bad example on the other hand is literally any of the "obligatory black man" now seen everywhere. He doesn't serve any purpose other than to say that there's a black man.
I want more Redguards in my entertainment, not obligatory black men.
I'm not Elon Musk or Donald Trump. Sending your complaints of mainstream culture to me will not result in your political representation and its voice being heard. I am unable to effectively sponsor and defend your proposed alternative dynamics.
But! If I am like a techno-angel sent from the Heavens above, then what I can do is suggest to you that exit, as opposed to voice, is a sociopolitical act that you should consider. Exit from the mainstream culture is your best bet.
The token characters and checkboxes are a symptom of design-by-committee corporate culture anyways and even without them, the quality isn't going to be any better because again, it's corporate slop.
This only means that there's a pervasive cultural synagogue/cathedral that has infected behavior through pedagogical means. Namely, education itself has been made to serve the interests of all possible economics that can occur within the borders of global liberal democracy.
This also only means that any sociopolitical exit from the zombie invasion must at least be as high as considering a departure from common epistemology.
Isekai (anime) slop is bad on purpose. The target demo is hikikomori and otaku males. I don't think it's that deep.
That is about as uneducated a take as one could possibly have.
Keep in mind "isekai" as a genre also exists in western entertainment; A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and The Chronicles of Narnia are some prominent and famous examples. Are those specifically for shut-ins and nerds too?
When we talk about isekai in modern contexts we do commonly refer to the post 2015 Narou-Isekai where one certainly draws a distinction between isekai before 2015 or after.
The thing about "old" isekai is that they exist more as fantasy stories with specific messages and themes, where Narou-Isekai can be specifically placed in the context of the latest evolution of the Otaku after the failure of sekai-kei and the increasing self-indulgence from CGCDT, Battle-Harems all the way to Isekai.
Sorry if I struck a nerve, I was being slightly hyperbolic, but why do you think I'm uneducated? I also should have said I was specifically referring to anime since I think that's what most people think of when they hear "isekai".
> the whole fucking point of leisure activities is to escape from the hellscape that is life and reality
To claim that escapism is the sole purpose of art is certainly a bold statement. Why bother reflecting on human society when we can just do our best to jam our fingers in our ears and ignore it?
excuse me why are you browsing hn which is a leisure activity instead of fighting world hunger? Why are you ignoring starving people?
If capitalism wasn't the leviathan that it was, then I wouldn't blame anyone for trying to escape the life that capitalist neo-colonialism has brought into existence. Pretty soon, at this rate, life itself will be a subordinate of the democratic global capital project.
This take is in the "Why did they put politics into my Metal Gear?!" category. Japanese fiction continues to win over people precisely because it's more than just pure entertainment. Japanese creators still manage to challenge audiences intellectually, politically, even aesthetically. Metaphor: ReFantazio, probably one of the best Japanese game releases this year is very political, not shying away at all from tackling class, race and even the literal point of this post, media dumbed down to escapism.
Maybe you don't realize it, but we're on the same side.
Japanese entertainment isn't In Your Dumb Face about things unlike western entertainment, it respects your intelligence and sheer common sense. You're not being talked down to, your ability to just pick another (better) product to be entertained with and walk away is respected; and it's an escape from the rest of the world shouting at you about something.
> it respects your intelligence and sheer common sense
I wouldn't make the pedestal too high. There's plenty of very disturbing, low-brow stuff published in Japan.
"the whole fucking point of leisure activities is to escape from the hellscape that is life and reality"
I get that you don’t like woke, but that is too blanket a claim. There has just been too much popular literature across America and Europe that has directly dealt with dire social and political trends of the day. Even when it comes to the issue of American race relations and the impact of slavery, Uncle Tom’s Cabin was one of the bestselling books of the 19th century, so fiction readers clearly weren’t interested only in escape.
> Murakami and Yoshimoto have something else in common: both were criticised in a 1990 essay by Kenzaburō Ōe, the Japanese Nobel prize-winning author. Their works, he said, “convey the experience of a youth politically uninvolved or disaffected, content to exist with an adolescent or post-adolescent subculture”.
I don't know the context of the quote and this wouldn't be the first time the Guardian puts a weird spin on something, but is there a problem with politically uninvolved protagonists?
When I'm at the used bookshop, I always look for a Murakami book, Haruki or Ryu. I especially recommend Haruki's Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World for this crowd, as data encryption plays a role. Ryu is probably best known for his horror novel Audition because it was adapted for film by Miike Takashi. Both would be classified as surreal. Haruki's novels famously always have a cat in them, but not always in a major role.
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a startling book with a rather disturbing wartime scene that has haunted me for years.
Currently I'd recommend Yakumo Koizumi and Natsume Soseki for more old school Japanese writings.
Mishima's The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea is another great read, despite the author being an extremely disagreeable person.
Mishima's Sea of Fertility tetralogy was excellent. The second entry in the series, Runaway Horses, is in my opinion the 20th century's best novel. The fourth, with its surprising conclusion, was also astounding.
Much to my surprise, I've found that the books actually read better in English translation than they do in Japanese. Mishima was inordinately fond of using complicated, and sometimes archaic, Chinese-style (kanji) characters that even native Japanese readers have trouble with. His books flow a little bit more smoothly in English, and they don't seem to lose much in translation.
It has been years since I read the Sea of Fertility, but I remember one Western scholar of Japan claiming that the fourth volume was a shoddy work compared to the previous three, written hastily as Mishima was preparing for his death. Since the English version didn’t obviously strike me as so flawed, I wondered if the translator had done some rescue work. Sadly, I’ll probably never be able to read the book in its original Japanese.
I saw nothing wrong with the fourth book -- and I preferred it to the first, which was perhaps a little bit too saccharine and tinged with nostalgia for a lost world, and the third, which was a little bit too sedate. (Especially after the wild vitality of the second.)
Public opinion turned on Mishima after his death. Westerners, by and large, took offense at his final actions. The Japanese found it embarrassing and endeavored to forget all about it. I'd venture a guess that your critic could be influenced by feelings that have nothing to do with the book as a thing in itself.
I've read a few of Murakami's books (including Wind Up Bird) and enjoyed them. They certainly have their flaws and if you ever browse through a thread in a books subreddit, they will be pointed out with glee by one person after another. The primary complaint seems to be how he writes women.
You'd think a books subreddit would be a place for people to celebrate books and writers but it mostly seems to be a place for people who dislike particular books in particular ways to vent and rant. They don't like book X and they don't want you to either.
Thanks for the recommendations. I'm going to check them all out.
The primary complaint I have seen about Murakami in internet books forums, is how repetitive his writing ultimately became. His treatment of women that strikes many as problematic, is just one of the things that get repeated.
They aren't trojan horses for activism and ESG scores (yet, they are working on it). Just look at the closest comparable western equivalent, comics compared to mangas. The difference in sales numbers and impact on pop culture even in the west is monumental.
Are western comics "trojan horses for activism and ESG scores"? What do you mean by this (activism and ESG)? Who is "they"?
> Who is "they"?
All the people GP disagrees with
EDIT, this "they": "(yet, they are working on it)"
Could you please elaborate how I disagree with Japanese fiction? Thx :)
They (Japanese fiction) aren't trojan horses.
I'm not a search engine but ESG is basically corporate and government funding to include current year real world activism into media which is the antithesis of fiction.
Alright, so the search engine told me that "ESG" is a set of criteria to rate sustainability of corporations/investments, where E stands for environment (ressource efficiency/non-pollution, ...), S for social (worker safety, non-discrimination, ...) and G for governance (risk management, compliance, anti-corruption). Please correct misconceptions.
You are suggesting that government pays writers to show those kinds of sustainability in a overly positive way?
How would western media look if it wasn't a trojan horse? Would it show slavery, environmental pollution and feudalism in a much more positive light? How can you be sure that the mismatch here is from goverment/corporate influence on writers, and not simply a difference in ethical values between the average writer and you?
Its not just these three goals. Like the Patriot Act names rarely tell the full story.
>not simply a difference in ethical values between the average writer and you?
Because they only done this since its socially and commercially profitable?
> Because they only done this since its socially and commercially profitable?
You still did not tell me what those trojan horse writers are doing except that it is outside of the definition of "ESG score" that I provided.
What has become socially and commercially profitable?
Read a recent comic or do more than superficial googling or Wikipedia. If you can't tell then nothing I will say will help.
ESG is for corporates. Authors are individuals. This is just "anti-woke" whinging by another (dimly related) name.
Authors especially comic ones are usually part of big publisher like Marvel or DC that own the IP and call the shots. They also have ESG scores and they decide which activism to include that increases the score and raises more investor or government funding.
expecting corporate publishing to be a source of good art is a mistake. of course a corporation will adapt to the market. seems like you have a problem with the free market which is exploiting the desire for wokeness in culture.
Comics have a huge impact on pop culture. They form the basis for some of the biggest budget TV shows and movies which last for a long time in our collective consciousness: The Dark Knight series, Watchmen, the Avengers, etc.
Several just on their own are huge cultural juggernauts: Calvin and Hobbes, Peanuts, XKCD, Penny Arcade, etc.
I don't know why you think comics are. Trojan Horse for ESG/activism. Like all media, they seek to reach wider and wider audiences, for a good chunk of time, the best perceived way to do that was to diversify those offerings. Even if that didn't end up working (assuming your POV in good faith), that doesn't mean it was a "Trojan horse for activism" anymore than the rise and fall of the shonen genre in manga was a subversive attempt to inject masculinity into the populace.
What you term as ESG and all is not a shadowy cabal to force people to think a certain way. It's just companies trying to do what sells. You forget that in the beginning it did work, which is why it caught on.
Reminds me a bit of the latest video of Chris Niebauer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_Dq5512MIE where he talks about the mind wandering upgrade through smart phones and social media. with the help if these tools the brain can offload the task of simulating/imagening things into the real world.
https://archive.fo/MDeKf
There is no mention of ranobe or light novels which is where a significantly large portion of the Japanese fiction movement is spawning therefrom.
I highly recommend checking some out if you need to decompress some stress. :)
"book, japan" (˚0˚)
Some time ago somebody pointed out to me how the superhero genre really took off after 9/11 and I can't stop thinking about that because I think it says a lot about how people think, what they want and also how consent is manufactured.
9/11 pierced America's sense of safety. Perhaps Pearl Harbor was similar. Historically the Gauls sacking Rome in the 4th Century BCE was probably similar. So people were attracted to media where somebody would save them, protect them.
At a higher level, the superhero genre feeds into pushing an idealism narrative. Idealism here simply means some people are the good guys and other people are the bad guys. Inherently. Compare this to materialism, which is a philosophy that there is a feedback loop between a person and their environment, of each affecting the other. There is no good or evil. People simply respond to their circumstances. A Song of Ice and Fire (the books more than the TV show, particularly the later seasons) is a superb example of materialism in fiction.
So what does the rising popularity of Japanese literature (note: the article is about that and not about anime as I think some who simply read the headline assume) say about society?
I think we have a crisis of despair in society. The cost of living, particularly housing, is out of control. You have a generation who thinks they'll never own a home or ever be able to retire. They don't feel like they have the security to have children. Is it any wonder that escapism thrives when the real world seems so bleak?
I see this as yet another symptom of the crisis in capitalism. Sure there's a fascination with Japanese culture. This isn't new. But why? We're also seeing more Chinese fiction (eg Three Body Problem). It's hard for me not to see this trend as anything other than a failure in our society to provide hope to people whose dreams are very mundane.