context: literature > sources

Japanese Literature: A Historical Outline, eds. Edward Putzar & Hisamatsu Seni'chi

Sometimes the first sentence of the introduction almost makes you give up: "Japanese literature is quite old." This covers a lot of ground - prose (fiction and non-), poetry, theatre - over a long period, so it skimps on a lot. Talking about Heian times with hardly a mention of the impact of the invention of kana, and barely mentioning calligraphy is bad enough, but giving barely a page for 'The Tale of Genji and Other Monogatori' (stories), i.e. to Heian fiction, is absurd. There's many times as much space taken for early 20th Century communist fiction, for instance. It's very poor on the social context of art, and too often resorts to lists of creators, works and dates. Frustrating, but I suppose any fairly short overview of a subject on this scale is bound to be.

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