Factbook

A Dynamic Compendium of Interesting Japanese Literary and Publishing Facts
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    A poem about a frog written in 1686 by Japan’s most famous poet is Japan’s best known poem[UPDATED: 10-2-2023]

    Matsuo Basho, the 17th-century Japanese haiku master said to be Japan’s most famous poet as well as one of the world’s most influential, wrote the most famous Japanese poem and the most famous haiku ever penned.

    The poem, which he wrote at the age of 44 in 1686, is a very a simple poem about a frog.

    Translators have been trying ever since to find the perfect way to render the poem English, and there are unsurprisingly a myriad of versions of the poem in English translation as well as many other languages.

    Old pond – frogs jumped in – sound of water. (Lafcadio Hearn)

    Into the calm old lake A frog with flying leap goes plop! The peaceful hush to break. (William J. Porter)

    Old pond frog leaping splash (Cid Corman)

    A lonely pond in age-old stillness sleeps … A part, unstirred by sound or motion … till Suddenly into it a lithe frog leaps. (Curtis Hidden Page)

    The original Japanese is:

    古池や蛙飛び込む水の音

    Furu ike ya, kawazu tobikomu, mizu no oto

    A poem about a frog written in 1686 by Japan’s most famous poet is Japan’s best known poem Posted by Richard Nathan
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    In the 1960s a member of the Japanese Imperial Family started moonlighting as a science fiction author[UPDATED: 8-22-2023]

    Princess Fukuko Asaka (1941-2009) started publishing science fiction and fantasy stories in Japanese magazines in the late 1950s under the pen name Bien Fu, and had stories regularly published throughout the 1960s. 

    One of the Princess’s stories was published in the first issue of Uchujin (1957-2009), an important pioneering science fiction magazine of the period. 

    The Princess was the Emperor’s second cousin and the granddaughter of the Meiji Emperor (1852-1912), who ushered in the Meiji Era (1868-1912), opening up Japan to the West after more than 250 years of self-imposed isolation. This was a period in which Japan and the Imperial family changed beyond all recognition. In fact, all aspects of Japanese society from the way people dressed and wore their hair, to the types of books that were read and written, as well as the food eaten, were to change dramatically. 

    In 1969, while in her late 20s, the Princess invited a group of schoolchildren to a former imperial palace to discuss writing and science fiction. One of those students, Takayuki Tatsumi, went on to become a professor of American Literature at Keio University, a prestigious private university in Tokyo. She was the first science fiction writer Tatsumi had met and by all accounts made a lasting impression. 

    Princess Fukuko Asaka, who lost her official title in 1947 during the post-war occupation of Japan by Allied Forces, published numerous fantasy and science fiction stories throughout the late 1960s and also produced comic strips. 

    Her work features cyborgs and immortal imperial consorts, and she reportedly empathised with Native Americans, whose position in their country, like her own in Japan, had changed after the arrival of people from afar. She was a vocal champion of their rights and the rights of  others threatened with extinction. 

    According to literary critics and academics, this disinherited noblewoman was a pioneer of both Postmodernism and Science Fiction in Japan, and managed to reinvented herself as an author while also helping to lay the ground for others, especially women writers, and writers of new genres like Japanese Cyberpunk that has subsequently flourished in Japan.

    In the 1960s a member of the Japanese Imperial Family started moonlighting as a science fiction author Posted by Richard Nathan
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    New international standards for measuring time, weights and measures encouraged some to call for Japan to adopt a Westernised writing system abandoning traditional alphabets[UPDATED: 7-7-2023]

    At the height of Japan’s period of rapid modernisation and opening up to the West, known as the Meiji era (1868-1912), it wasn’t just Japan that was undergoing seismic change. Many countries were in fact being forced to embrace change as well.

    New international standards, for example, were emerging for time, the length of a day, weights and measures and much more in the wake of an internationalising world and rapidly emerging new technologies. 

    New technologies and communication tools such as the railways, which required standard time tables, had a huge impact on many countries including Japan.

    Phonetic transparency was also required for sending messages by telegraph, which these new railway lines facilitated the rapid spread of. It was thought that standardisation would bring efficiencies, reduce the cost, and increase the speed and internationalisation of trade.

    The first telegraph line was set up in Japan on the same route as Japan’s first railway line between Tokyo and Yokohama in 1869, much later than some other countries. Nevertheless, the number of messages sent by telegraph internally in Japan, and then internationally to and from Japan, increased exponentially.

    The introduction of railways had a very broad and deep impact on Japan, not only on how Japanese people sent messages, but on its cities and literature and much more besides.  Unification and harmonisation of standards became increasingly important.

    In 1875, Japan alongside 17 other nations attended the Paris Conference on the Metric System of Weights and Measures, and in 1884, at the Prime Meridian Conference in Washington seven resolutions were agreed, several that the French delegation refused to accept, on how to standardise time and the definition of a day. 

    Time within Japan was subsequently standardised across the nation in 1886 giving birth to Toki no machi, Town of Time, in Akashi in Hyogo where Japan Standard Time (JST) is set, just over a decade after Japan had formally adopted the seven-day week system, which it did in 1873.

    Before this, time in one town could be noticeably different from another and in some nations horological experts argue that it wasn’t simply train times that forced counties to settle on a single time, but in Britain, for example, Victorian licensing laws introduced to regulate the opening hours of pubs.

    New technologies often force societies to consider their regulations; their priorities; the values they attribute to different groups, business sectors and segments and even how they weigh, measure and regulate society’s ills and benefits.

    Today officialdom and commentators obsession is with algorithms, AI, targets and data analytics as opposed to the introduction of more basic standards and measurements for time, weights and measure.

    That said, just like text messaging and emails today, these new forms of communication had a major impact on language, and generated significant debate that even encompassed for instance the future of written form Japanese.

    As is the case today, all this change spurred some very prominent Japanese individuals to call for wholesale change. 

    In 1885, a Japanese physicist, Aikitsu Tanakadate (1856-1952), invented a new alphabet for Japanese people to use called Nippon-Shiki Romaji. Romaji, is the Japanese word for the Latin alphabet, while Nippon-Shiki means Japanese style, and Romaji is now one of the four syllabaries (sets of written characters) used in written Japanese. 

    His intention was for his new easy to use alphabet to replace, not just complement or be a lexical stand-in, the alphabets and scripts already used in Japan to write and communicate in Japanese. 

    An earlier similar approach existed called the Hebon-Shiki Romaji developed in 1859 by James Hepburn (1815-1911), an American physician and lay Christian missionary. Hepburn wasn’t Japanese and his system was aimed at a non-Japanese audience.  

    His approach, known in English as the Hepburn romanization system for transliteration of the Japanese language into the Latin alphabet, became popular through a Japanese–English dictionary he created. It is still used today. 

    Tanakadate and others, however, thought that their approach designed with a Japanese audience in mind would speed up the adoption of new technologies and research, creating a new Japanese ‘cultural and communication algorithm’, allowing Japan to compete more effectively with Western countries, which all used similar scripts. 

    Others held similar views. Arinori Mori (1847-1889) for instance, a statesman who founded Japan’s modern education system and was also a former Japanese Ambassador to the United States. He argued for the adoption of a simplified written form of English as the new national script. Others argued for English to replace Japanese as the nation’s language. 

    Anyone living in Japan today, or who has visited recently, might consider this aspiration fanciful and unrealistic, but other countries have adopted national language strategies to help position their nations better in a modernising world.

    Such countries as Singapore with its Mandarin Chinese and English language, Bilingual Policy and Rwanda’s policy to replace French with English as its national language.

    And Kanji, one of Japan’s four syllabaries, is after all a Chinese import that arrived in the Land of the Rising Sun in the 5th century AD.

    That said, during Meiji period Japan, magazines and publications designed to encouraged and amplify change were launched in Japan. Such publications as The Romaji Journal in 1885, The New Romaji Journal, as well as books promoting so-called Romaji Bungaku and Romaji Literature. During this period, Romaji Clubs were also founded.

    Romaji is widely used in Japan today, especially in advertising and for product branding in particular, but it is generally used to complement the traditional ways of writing Japanese, kanji, hiragana and katakana generating a soup like mix of different alphabets or scripts in any given text or passage.

    New international standards for measuring time, weights and measures encouraged some to call for Japan to adopt a Westernised writing system abandoning traditional alphabets Posted by Richard Nathan
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    Kafka a popular author and name amongst Japan’s creatives[UPDATED: 1-26-2022]

    Kafka is a popular author and name amongst creatives in Japan. In 2007, an animated version of Franz Kafka’s (1883-1924) 1917 short story A Country Doctor was produced by Koji Yamamura and the author’s name also famously appeared in Haruki Murakami’s bestselling 2002 book titled: Kafka on the Shore, a novel in which the protagonist renames himself Kafka after his favourite author.

    Two high profile Japanese people use the name in their pen names Kafka Shishido, a female drummer and singer; and Kafka Asasiri, the author of the manga series Bungo Stray Dogs, a series about the members of a very specialist detective agency; in which the main characters are named after famous authors: such as Agatha Christie (1890-1976), Osamu Dazai (1909-1948), Kenji Miyazawa (1896-1933), Junichiro Tanizaki (1886-1965), and Akiko Yosano (1878-1942).

    Another example is a character called Kafuka Fu’ura in the award winning manga series and subsequent spin-off anime Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei (Goodbye, Mr. Despair), where the characters have nicknames coined after social issues. The name Kafuka Fu’ura is apparently a conscious reference to Franz Kafka while the character’s actual real name is said to be An Akagi a pun on the Japanese translation of the title of the book Ann of Green Gables by L.M Montgomery (1874-1942).

    Interestingly, a port and the main hub on a small Japanese island called Rebun, with a population of three thousand, north of Hokkaido is called Kafuka. Despite the name; it is not related to Shikoku, the Island, which features in Murakami’s book, Kafka on the Shore.
    Kafka a popular author and name amongst Japan’s creatives Posted by Richard Nathan
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    Mount Fuji, which is featured in Japan’s oldest fictional prose and first collection of poetry, is still a powerful literary motif[UPDATED: 12-1-2021]

    In June 2013 the World Heritage Committee of UNESCO announced that Mount Fuji would be recognised as a World Heritage Site. The official proposal that led to the mountain winning this status was known as ‘Fujisan: Sacred Place and Source of Artistic Inspiration’. 

    Mount Fuji, also known as Fujiyama, and Fujisan is Japan’s highest mountain. It is volcanic and last erupted in 1707-1708. Mount Fuji has had a huge impact on Japanese culture including its literature in all its forms and formats. According to UNESCO, it has “inspired artists and poets and been the object of pilgrimage for centuries”. 

    Japan’s oldest extant fictional prose The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, from the Heian Period (794-1185), which tells the tale of Princess Kaguya, features the mountain at the end of the story. Mount Fuji also features in the ManyoshuCollection of Ten Thousand Leaves, Japan’s oldest surviving book of poetry, which was compiled even earlier during Japan’s Nara Period (710-794), when the nation’s capital was located in Nara. 

    Japan’s first winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature Yasunari Kawabata (1899- 1972) used it in his works, including First Snow on Fuji; as did the Zen master and poet Matsuo Basho (1644-1694) who wrote poems about it. Contemporary authors including Randy Taguchi, whose collection of short stories Fujisan about the lives of dysfunctional Japanese individuals living under the shadow of the mountain, continue to draw on it for inspiration. 

    The mountain has been an enduring icon and influence on Japanese literature and the nation’s creative communities. Academics have written books on its influence; books like The Literature of Mt. Fuji: Japanese Classic Literature and Mount Fuji: Icon of Japan. It has also famously featured in woodblock prints by some of Japan’s best-known artists as well as many other Japanese art forms. 

    Its power and influence endures to this day – and it is probably too early to predict if or when Mount Fuji, which stands at 3,776 metres, will reach its cultural and literary peak.

    Mount Fuji, which is featured in Japan’s oldest fictional prose and first collection of poetry, is still a powerful literary motif Posted by Richard Nathan
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    Banana Yoshimoto chose the pen name banana as it was gender neutral[UPDATED: 8-20-2021]

    Banana Yoshimoto, one of the most internationally recognised contemporary female Japanese writers established her career in 1988 with her debut novel Kitchen, which was nominated for various prizes, instantly putting her on Japan’s literary map. She wrote the novel while working as a waitress in a golf club. 

    She chose her pen name while at college before graduation choosing banana to replace her given name Mahoko as she liked banana flowers, which flourish deep within the stems of banana plants, and because she thought the name was memorable, “cute”, and  “purposefully androgynous.” 

    She comes from a very creative family. Her father Takaaki Yoshimoto (1924-2012) was a well-known poet and literary critic, her mother Kazuko (1927-2012) a haiku poet and her sister, Yoiko Haruno, is a well-known cartoonist.
    Banana Yoshimoto chose the pen name banana as it was gender neutral Posted by Richard Nathan
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    Kobo Abe is said to be ‘The Kafka of Japan’[UPDATED: 4-27-2021]

    Kobo Abe (1924-1992) is said to be ‘The Kafka of Japan’. He is best known for: The Road Sign at the End of the Street (1948), The Woman in the Dunes (1962), as well as being avant-garde, being expelled from the Japanese Communist Party, and collecting insects.

    His novella, The Wall, won the Akutagawa Prize and established his reputation. His best friend was Yukio Mishima (1925-1970) and he was also a friend of Harold Pinter (1930-2008).

    He didn’t give many interviews, but an interesting conversation with him is reported in the New York Times under the headline: Japan’s Kafka Goes on the Road, where his experimental theatre group is discussed. 

    He and his book The Woman in the Dunes in particular are still popular today amongst some of Japan’s most talented and creative individuals such as the up-and-coming film director Yuka Eda, director and screenwriter of the 2018 crowd-funded film Shojo Kaiko, Girls’ Encounter, and the 2019 TV drama 21st Century Girl.

    Eda cites Abe’s The Woman in the Dunes as one of the books that has had the most influence on her and one she returns to when she is looking for inspiration. She says she admires the novel’s kafkaesque tone and narrative style.

    Abe is also sometimes compared to Albert Camus (1913-1960) and Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) for the absurdist frameworks he deploys to observe and critique the individual and society in Japan and beyond.
    Kobo Abe is said to be ‘The Kafka of Japan’ Posted by Richard Nathan
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    The translation of Harry Potter triggered a major tax investigation and fine in Japan[UPDATED: 4-21-2021]

    Yuko Matsuoka, the multi-millionaire Japanese translator and publisher of the Harry Potter novels in Japan, lost a case with the Japanese authorities, who sent her an extraordinary additional tax demand for 700 million yen, US$7 million, for undeclared income of more than $29 million.  

    The Japanese tax authorities alleged that Matsuoka, 62, received more than US$29 million between 2001 and 2004 in undisclosed income. She argued that, as she had been resident in Switzerland since 2001 no tax was in fact due in Japan. After consultation with the Swiss authorities she lost the case, as she had spent too much time in Japan during the period to qualify as non-resident in Japan for tax purposes.
    The translation of Harry Potter triggered a major tax investigation and fine in Japan Posted by Richard Nathan