The Classics Circuit is pleased to announce an upcoming tour! In the Land of the Rising Sun tour, we will be exploring Meiji-era Japanese Classics.

As the Western novel writing influences entered Japan after 1868, literature became a blend of western and classics Asian styles. Themes in Meiji literature were the relationship between westernization and the Japanese cultural tradition and the structural poverty of the general public.

The tour will be shorter this time around, as we both anticipate a smaller tour and we will be changing the tours to be a little more cohesive. The Land of the Rising Sun tour will begin on October 25 and run until November 5.

Although we highlight some Meiji authors below, for this tour, you can read anything written between 1868 and 1912 in Japan, or anything by an author indicated below. You’ll note that Natsume Soseki was the most prolific author in this group. If you have trouble finding the others in your library or bookstore, Soseki might be the choice for you.

About the Classics Circuit. The Classics Circuit: Land of the Rising Sun Meiji Tour is a blog tour of Meiji era authors. Participants select a work to read and let us know of the selection. Via email, we will assign participants a day to post about the work. Participants find their own copy of the work and read it. On the assigned days, participants post about the work on their blogs.  Participants write in their own style, for whatever length of post they’d like. After the tour is over, we will post on our site a list of permalinks to all those who participated in the tour. Note you must have a blog to participate.
Sign up is currently closed. If you are coming here late and would still like to join, please send an email to rebecca[at]rebeccareid[dot]com . The Tour will run for five days, from November 1 until November 5. Please only sign up if you intend to read and then post about your selected work.

Meiji-era Japanese Writers

Futabatei Shimei(1864-1909). Realist novelist, credited with Japan’s first modern novel.

Ukigumo [Drifting Clouds, Floating Clouds] (1887). A character-driven novel about growing materialism in Japanese society. (via Wikipedia)

• “Ukigumo is Japan’s first modern novel, and it is fascinating to read…. this is a strong novel with a good story.” A Customer at Amazon
  

K­ōda Rohan (1867-1947). His work focuses on traditional culture in the face of modernization.

“The Pagoda” and other short stories (1889). Stories about ” karma, religion, individualism and the realistic views of being a Samarai” (via Amazon).

• “One could almost characterize his stories as uplifting. Certainly, there is suffering to be had, hardships to be endured, but the ultimate reward is something…good. A greater twist one could not expect in a Japanese novel. ” Zack Davisson at Amazon

Izumi Kyōka (1873-1939). His novels are a series of short stories, and often featured the supernatural.

Japanese Gothic Tales. A collection of stories that use atmosphere and themes with a gothic feel.

• “Kyoka’s tales define Japanese Gothic: masterpieces of Japanese Ghost Stories and, at the same time, short stories about love which exceeds death’s boundaries.” J. Holt at Amazon

In Light Of Shadows: More Gothic Tales. A second volume of Kyoka’s stories, including one of his most famous novellas, “A Story by Lantern Light.”

• “Kyoka’s work is of extraordinary depth, and are the kind of tales that muddle around in your head long after you have turned the final page, trying to figure out if you actually understood them. Then, you are drawn back for a second, and a third reading, with each time a little more of the mystery being made clear.” Zack Davisson at Amazon
  

Higuichi Ichiyō (1872-1896). Novelist and diarist, she is considered the first professional female writer in Japanese literature.

In The Shade Of Spring Leaves: The Life Of Higuchi Ichiyo, With Nine Of Her Best Stories by Robert Lyons Danly. A biography and translation of her stories.

• “Deservedly, this 19th century’s woman’s writings are considered some of the greatest in the world. Robert Danly has done a wonderful job of bringing Ichiyo to us. Out of a different time and world, he has still managed to make her accessible to an English reader. … Each story its own literary jewel.” Teresa Conant at Amazon

Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902). Today he is credited with reviving haiku and tanka forms of poetry. His life was cut unfortunately short by tuberculosis.

Selected Poetry. A collection of Haiku.

• “Treat yourself, its worth it.” petaloka at Amazon

Other works: Literary Criticism.

Natsume Sōseki (1867-1916). Writer of the psychological novel. He is best known for his novels Kokoro, Botchan, I Am a Cat and his unfinished work Light and Darkness. He was also a scholar of British literature and composer of haiku, Chinese-style poetry, and fairy tales. From 1984 until 2007, his portrait appeared on the front of the Japanese 1000 yen note. — found via Goodreads.com

I Am a Cat. (1905) A satire of upper-middle-class Japanese society from the perspective of a cat.

• “You don’t have to be a cat lover to appreciate this book, but it was a hysterical experience to read the Cat’s antics, which so very much reminded me of my own cat. … It’s a collection of tales from daily life and the Cat provides meaningful insights into humanity.” Adventures in Reading blog

The Tower of London: Tales of Victorian London. (1905) Fantastical stories based in 1900 London, written after Soseki’s visit to the city.

• “As a piece to understand the workings of the author’s mind, this is well worth reading – the interplay between fantasy and “reality” is very telling. ” M.J. Smith at Amazon

Botchan. (1906) Called Soseki’s lightest work, Botchan is about a young man from a big city who arrives in a small southern town to teach school, rebelling against the system.

• “The work can be seen on one level as a rejection of the increasing westernisation of early-twentieth-century Japan, where the Land of the Rising Sun took on the fripperies of European culture without acquiring the morals underpinning them.  Then again, you can just read it as a fun book (I did).” Tony’s Reading List blog

Kusamakura (The Three-Cornered World) (1906): A young artist-narrator on a meandering walking tour of the mountains, and at the inn at a hot spring resort, he has a series of mysterious encounters with Nami, the lovely young daughter of the establishment. Nami, or “beauty,” is the center of this elegant novel, the still point around which the artist moves and the enigmatic subject of Soseki’s word painting. In the author’s words, Kusamakura is “a haiku-style novel, that lives through beauty.” Written at a time when Japan was opening its doors to the rest of the world, Kusamakura turns inward, to the pristine mountain idyll and the taciturn lyricism of its courtship scenes, enshrining the essence of old Japan in a work of enchanting literary nostalgia.

• “The novel is very much a meditation on the reading life and a contrast of Japanese and Western Literature as seen through the eyes of the narrator.  … I completely endorse this novel to anyone interested in the development of the Japanese novel with the understanding that it is about sixty percent an interior monologue of a philosophical nature and assumes an interest in Romantic era western poetry and classical forms of Japanese literature.   It is beautifully expressed and the translation seems without jarring infelicities.” Mel at The Reading Life blog

The Heredity of Taste (1906): An anti-war novel telling a heartbreaking love story, it reflects Soseki’s views of the Japanese-Russo war of 1904-1905.

• “It is a good insight into Natsume’s opinion about war. The lack of intensity may be because he wrote this book in only eight days, and it is a short composition. However, Natsume does convey the sadness of the loss of life and the loss of individuality unequivocably within this book. ” Anna B. Paesler “writer” at Amazon

The 210^th Day (1906): A novella about two men climbing a mountain.

• “The book is very easy to follow unless you forget who is speaking (and then things become a little difficult) but other then that, you should have no problems reading this book.” Tone at Amazon

The Miner (1907): A pampered student plunges in to reality for “romantic” reasons. (from Amazon review)

• “I had to turn to the frontspiece several times to reassure myself that this book was written over 100 years ago – it’s so colloquial, flat, and modern that it’s hard to imagine it emerging in the age of James and Conrad. Soseki undermines the form of the novel, kicking out most of the familiar narrative supports, yet creates the kind of interior experience that marks so much modern fiction.” Larry Dilge at Amazon

Ten Nights of Dreams (1908): Ten collected dream-like stories that have a surreal aspect to them.

• “It is a work like “Ten Nights’ Dreams” that reminds me of Soseki’s amazing versatility. Each story is distinctive in subject matter as well as in the emotions that they provoke, but they all share the same dreamy yet vivid quality. Issues like fear, death, and loneliness are only hinted at implicitly more often than not, yet they hang like a dark, silent shadow over most of these stories.”Charles E. Stevens at Amazon

Sanshiro (1908): Natsume Soseki’s only coming-of-age novel, Sanshiro depicts the eponymous twenty-three-year-old protagonist as he leaves the sleepy countryside to attend a university in the constantly moving “real world” of Tokyo. Baffled and excited by the traffic, the academics, and-most of all-the women, Sanshiro must find his way among the sophisticates that fill his new life. An incisive social and cultural commentary, Sanshiro is also a subtle portrait of first love, tradition, and modernization, and the idealism of youth against the cynicism of middle age. ” — found via Penguin.com

• “This book really is a joy to read, at once familiar and yet just different enough from its western equivalents to avoid sinking into cliche.” Tony at Tony’s Reading List blog

And Then, A Novel (1909). A quiet novel about an apparently successful man who is now living in seclusion, deep in self-analysis.

• “Like all of Soseki’s works, it moves very slowly. There is no real action in it, and yet, when it ends, one feels that a great upheaval has occurred. This is not a book to read when one is living a peaceful, wholesome life; however, in times of personal crisis, when one is driven to sleepless self-analysis, there is no book more relevant than this one. ” Angry Mofo at Amazon

To the Spring Equinox and Beyond (1912). A recent college graduate and others carry emotional baggage in a practical and philosophic story about the meaning of life.

• “Spring Equinox and Beyond it’s a faithful portray of the urban Japanese society in the early twenty century. Japan society of status is presented at Keitaro’s search for a job, and the price he is willing to pay for Taguchi’s help. This author is one of Japan’s finest. I recommend it. ” M.R. Alicea at Amazon

Kokoro (1914): Kokoro–meaning “heart”-is the story of a subtle and poignant friendship between two unnamed characters, a young man and an enigmatic elder whom he calls “Sensei”. Haunted by tragic secrets that have cast a long shadow over his life, Sensei slowly opens up to his young disciple, confessing indiscretions from his own student days that have left him reeling with guilt, and revealing, in the seemingly unbridgeable chasm between his moral anguish and his student’s struggle to understand it, the profound cultural shift from one generation to the next that characterized Japan in the early twentieth century. — via Penguin.com

• “Overall, while a book with an extremely Japanese flavor, it does transcend the barriers and gets at the inner life, the kokoro. ” Zack Davisson at Amazon

Inside My Glass Doors (1915). Essays.

• “At first glance they seem to be little more than brief musings of a brilliant writer who was in the twilight of his life, but if one is willing to read the book a little closer, one will see the man Natsume Soseki through these brief pages. Through them we can understand his mental make up and his feelings about everything from kabuki to cats. A good book for the Soseki fan. ” Daitokuji31 at Amazon

Other works: Selected Poetry & Literary Criticism; Kairo-kō (1905); The Poppy (1907); The Gate (1910); Spring Miscellany and Other Essays (1910); The Wayfarer (1912); Grasses on the Wayside (1915); Light and Darkness (unfinished at his death).

Mori Ōgai [Mori Rintarō] (1862-1922). As an anti-realisist, he proclaimed that novels should portray the emotional sides of life. He strived to revitalize the novel in Japan, and translated many European works into Japanese (from German).
Collected Stories (one collection is titled The Historical Fiction of Mori Ōgai). (1912) Stories that deal with contemporary moral and philosophic issues.

• “Each story is masterly crafted with meticulous attention paid to historical detail, and each story is well prefaced…” A Customer at Amazon

Vita Sexulais. (1909) The story of a philosophy professor’s journey to sexual awareness (summary via Amazon).

• “”Vita Sexualis” is sexual philosophy. It is an intellectual take, something which Mori excelled at. It stands out in a field full of devil-may-care exploitative literature in the same vein, and shows that one can write a serious and intelligent sex book. ” Zack Davisson at Amazon

The Wild Geese. (1913) A poor young woman becomes a money-lender’s mistress yet learns for freedom.

• “This book is an achingly beautiful story, and a fascinating historical document. I highly recommend it. ” Kurt A. Johnson at Amazon

Shimazaki Tōson (1872-1943). Although he began as a Romantic poet, he later embraced the Naturalist tradition.
The Broken Commandment. A young man born in a low class struggles with discrimination.

• “This book isn’t really about the burakumin, but about anyone with a secret shame that they must keep hidden. His protagonist Ushimatsu could have been gay, or of a different, shunned religion, or a member of any group that is/was considered distasteful to the general public. “The Broken Commandment” is not a political work, but instead a Humanist novel dealing with themes that can be found in any country, amongst any populous.” Zack Davisson at Amazon

Before the Dawn. An historical novel of the fall of the Tokugawa shogunate.

• “A masterpiece of literary history.” J Van Sant at Amazon

Other works: Collection of Young Herbs; Spring; Family; New Life.

Kunikida Doppo (1871-1908). One of the inventors of Japanese naturalism writing novels and romantic poetry. His life was unfortuneately cut short by tuberculosis.
River mist and other stories/Selected stories.

• “Plot and character often take a back seat to impressionistic sketches and hauntingly suggestive vignettes. … His knack for the tragic also comes in to play here, uncompromisingly portraying the highest human ideals and best of intentions shipwrecking upon the rocks of a hostile or, worse perhaps, indifferent universe. All of these factors come together to make these short stories, disobeying as they do many of the conventions we now associate with this genre, oddly moving and surprisingly memorable. ” Crazy Fox at Amazon
  

Tayama Katai (1871-1930). His pseudo-autobiographical novels followed the naturalistic tradition.
Country Teachers. (No online reviews found.)
The Quilt and Other Stories. (No online reviews found.)

Tokuda Shūsei (1871-1943).
Rough Living. (1915) A young seamstress tries to survive in Meiji Japan. (via Goodreads)

• “Two Stars. … It’s easy to see why it might be used as a textbook for a Japanese history class.” Mika on Goodreads

Ryunosuke Akutagawa (1892-1927). Considered the “Japanese Father of the Short Story.”

Rashamon and Other Stories. (1914 and on)

• “Most of these later stories are like volatile portraits. To me they read very much like unregulated haiku. Regardless of length or syllables, many of them had two flat beats and a long mournful downbeat. ” Incurable Logophilia

Naoya Shiga (1883-1971). A novelist and short story writer that used a sincere tone.
A Dark Night’s Passing. (1921) “Tells the story of a young man’s passage through a sequence of disturbing experiences to a hard-worn truce with the destructive forces within himself.” (via Amazon)

• “Five stars. I liked this substantially better than I expected from the opinions of critics I had read about it. It has a nice bit of occasional humor –notably the Mitty-like sequence when the protagonist imagines himself a sort of “monster that ate Tokyo” and a satisfying conclusion.”  antiquary at LibraryThing
  

The Paper Door and Other Stories. (trans. 1987) Stories in the “confessional” mode written throughout Shiga’s life. (via Amazon)

• “Shiga Naoya’s talent lies in his ability to reveal much by giving away little. He neither overwhelms the reader with inessential details, nor does he confounds him with pretentious diction. The structure of his stories is simple, yet sophisticated. Underlying his straightforward manner and clear prose is a subtle humor and a certain wit, which enhance each story. These brilliant works of art should be read by those who love Japanese literature.” Gertrude & Victoria at Goodreads

Sign up is currently closed. If you are coming here late and would still like to join, please send an email to rebecca[at]rebeccareid[dot]com . The Tour will run for five days, from November 1 until November 5. Please only sign up if you intend to read and then post about your selected work.