Thinking back on my trip to Japan

A little over a year ago, I found myself, much to my surprise, in Tokyo. I spent a month there, weekdays in a tiny overheated conference room in front of two computers, weekends wandering about. I wasn't sure if I would be able to keep Wuthering Expectations going while I was there, but I did, helped by my camera and the fact that everything I saw was intensely interesting.

So looking back, the trip was good for my writing. I feel that I have been off my stride lately, although come to think of it, I always feel that way. Japan pushed me, made me think harder in some ways. I don't have that pressure now, and miss it a bit.

The trip was also good for my reading. It forced me to overcome my anxiety about the foreignness of Asian literature. The way I overcame it was by doing a little reading, so it turned out to not be so complicated. The great tradition of Japanese poetry, as brought into English by Kenneth Rexroth and others, is a delight, a breeze. The Chinese tradition is if anything richer. One reason I can so blithely say this is that Rexroth and David Hinton and so on only translate translatable poems. They make it all look easier than it really is.

Because of my chronological neurosis, I soon slipped away from Japanese literature, and back to Chinese poetry of the T'ang period, and earlier. And now I'm itching to move further back, to spend more time with the volumes of the Clay Sanskrit Library, if it were only easier to get hold of the dang things. A piece of the Ramayana is on its way.

I have been using Book Blogger Appreciation Week to expand my social network a little, to leave a few more comments here and there. One was at Dolce Bellezza, the generous hostess of the Japanese Literature Challenge, who invited me to participate. Well, I don't know, I don't ususally - hey, I thought of the right book, so OK.

The 19th century was a terrible time for Japanese literature. Possibly also for Japan. The book I'm going to read is thought of as the first modern Japanese novel, whatever that means. It's Ukigumo, or Drifting Clouds (1887), by Futabatei Shimei, Japanese translator of Turgenev. I know nothing else about it, except that it is only available in English in a volume titled Japan's First Modern Novel: Ukigumo of Futabatei Shimei (1967), author and translator, Marleigh Grayer Ryan. Way to sell it, Marleigh.

This is why I don't join challenges. My entire reading life is one giant challenge. Maybe I should host one. Anyone want to read John Galt? The early 19th century Scottish novelist? Two weeks on John Galt, forthcoming on Wuthering Expectations, as soon as I get his books read.

This is how I welcome the new readers I gain from expanding my blogging social network, with John Galt and a Japanese novel I've barely heard of. I should figure out how to work in some more Adalbert Stifter, while I'm at it.

Anyway, welcome, new readers!