Popular Japanese author Tomoka Shibasaki and literary scholar and translator Motoyuki Shibata found parallels between contemporary Japanese and American literature.
“It is now more difficult to capture the sense of place you live in. We used to be able to capture the sense of history, the sense of time and the place we live in, but it's getting more and more difficult to do that now.” —Tomoka Shibasaki
by Catherine Schuknecht
UCLA International Institute, April 6, 2015 — "[Tomoka Shibasaki’s] novels often capture the sensibilities of young women living in cities, written in a transparent, ephemeral, but somehow sober and elastic poem,” said Japan Foundation Director Naomi Takasu.
The Japanese author joined literary scholar and translator Motoyuki Shibata in conversation at a recent March event held at the Japan Foundation offices in Los Angeles. The evening was cosponsored by the UCLA Terasaki Center for Japanese Studies, the Tadashi Yanai Initiative for Globalizing Japanese Humanities, the Japan Foundation, Los Angeles and the UCLA department of Asian Languages and Cultures.
Shibasaki is one of Japan’s most popular novelists and the recipient of the 2014 Akutagawa Prize — the country’s most prestigious literary award. Her first book, Kyo no dekigoto (A Day on the Planet, 2000), was made into a successful feature-length film in 2003.
Shibata is a professor of American literature at the University of Tokyo, as well as a distinguished translator of contemporary American fiction. He is also the editor of Monkey Business, an annual literary journal published since 2008 that features new writing from Japan and the United States. The journal is available in Japanese- and English-language versions.
Intersections of contemporary Japanese and American fiction
“I used to think there . . . [were so many] differences between American fiction and Japanese fiction back in the 80s and 90s,” remarked Shibata. At the time, American writers like Raymond Carter were pursuing realism, whereas in Japan, authors like Haruki Murakami were incorporating elements of science fiction, fantasy and other genres into their fiction.
However, through his work as editor of Monkey Business, Shibata has grown to believe that contemporary Japanese and American fiction overlaps more than it differs. “American writers and Japanese writers are [easily] going back and forth between realism and non-realism,” explained the editor, noting that “so many writers today make extensive use of elements from pop culture . . . to make their fictional world more real.” Shibasaki’s work, which moves freely between reality and fantasy, belongs to this genre.
Shibata suggested that the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States and the 1995 Kobe Earthquake, the Sarin gas domestic terrorist attack in Tokyo that same year, and the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan have had an impact on fiction writing in both countries. “I often sense in [Japanese and American] fiction the feeling that something is irreparably damaged in this world,” remarked Shibata.
Capturing reality through fiction
Novelist Shibasaki argued that the intersections between contemporary Japanese and American literature reflect the impact that globalization and new technologies have had on our perception of place and interconnectedness.
“It is now more difficult to capture the sense of place you live in,” she explained. “We used to be able to capture the sense of history, the sense of time and the place we live in, but it’s getting more and more difficult to do that now.”
Technology has connected us to new worlds; we can travel long distances in a few short hours and even access far away places without leaving the confines of our homes. “On the other hand,” noted Shibasaki, “I hardly know what’s going on in my neighbor’s house. . . your very next[door] neighbor may be inhabiting a completely different world from yours.”
In her view, our daily experiences are paradoxical — we live in a vastly interconnected world where we interact less and less with the people around us.
Fiction writers in Japan and the United Stats have dealt with this paradox by representing reality in creative new ways. For example, in Shibasaki’s 2014 novel, Haru No Niwa (Spring Garden), she captured reality from multiple points of view by introducing a new narrator toward the end of the book. The writer noted that the Jennifer Egan’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, A Visit from the Good Squad (2010), also changes narrators from one chapter to the next.
“[This] goes to show that it is now practically impossible to capture reality from just one point of view,” commented Shibasaki. Pointing out that people now acquire information from a range of sources, she said, “Everyone is trying to capture the world from . . . so many different points of view.”
Fiction, she suggested, can act as a medium for conveying historical reality precisely because it is “suspicious” and “dubious.” “Fiction . . . [creates] possibility in our attempt to capture history; you hear a story from someone and then you write about it and that is how fiction is born.” And, she added, fiction has the potential to “provide a path [to] another world and between different persons.”
“You may not understand some things in the real world, or you may not sympathize with some [people] in the real world,” explained Shibasaki, “but while reading fiction you suspend your judgment and the fiction may be able to provide you with . . . [an] understanding other people and other ideas.”