小说与文学2018the-tls.co.uk
村上春树之后的日本文学写作
Japanese Writing After Murakami
导读
这篇《泰晤士文学增刊》文章讨论村上春树之后的日本写作版图：轻小说、类型惊悚、后启示录故事，以及音乐在小说中的位置。对写作者的价值在于它提供了一个参照系——当西方叙事越来越围绕身份政治展开时，日本当代小说仍把重心放在“个体在便利与信息过剩中漂流”的内心问题上；评论区则补充了从吉本芭娜娜到大江健三郎、三岛由纪夫、谷崎润一郎的阅读路径，也提醒你别轻信文章里那些被夸大的影响力论断。
可以直接用的写作要点
- 01
村上的小说靠情绪基调（一种“预感”式的氛围）而非情节推进——写不动时可以问自己“这一段的情感底色是什么”，让氛围统领叙事。
- 02
把笔力放在个人的、灵魂层面的困惑上，而不是政治标签式的身份，故事反而更容易跨文化地被读懂。
- 03
用对比阅读校准自己的语言质感：普鲁斯特像繁茂丛林，谷崎润一郎像新剖的木头——干净、克制、中性。
- 04
慎用流行文化彩蛋式的引用（“《头号玩家》式”堆砌），它会让文本变薄；同时别把任何作者的影响力说成“无法高估”。
HN 评论精选
村上靠氛围与“预感”而非情节驱动，且这种情绪只有与具体城市经验对上才被读懂。
初读村上时我感受复杂：难以代入他的人物，他们的世界观与我相差太远；也 frustrate 于“什么都没发生”。他的写作更像由叙事底层的情绪驱动（最贴切的词是“预感”）而非情节。后来我第一次去东京才明白，读他小说时的那种感受正是这座城市的本质——责任感、孤独、在集体主义典范之地对个体性的坚持。他的文字成了一扇窗，让我看到一种与我完全不同的世界观。
gringoDan查看英文原文
For those in the West who haven't read Japanese literature, I highly recommend it. When I first read Murakami, I had mixed feelings. I struggled to relate with his characters; their outlook on the world seemed so alien compared to mine. I also was frustrated that "nothing happened". His writing seemed much more driven by the underlying emotion of the narrative ("foreboding" is the best description that comes to mind) than plot. However, when I traveled to Tokyo for the first time I realized that the feelings that I had reading his novels captured the essence of the city - the sense of duty, the isolation, the assertion of individuality in a place that epitomizes collectivism. His writing provided a window into a worldview that could not have been more different from my own. I'm glad to have run across this article; I'll add these other authors to my reading list.
日本当代叙事以“个体漂流”和灵魂问题为核心，而非政治化的身份标签。
文中那段话说：西方文学与文化产品正被性与种族驱动的身份政治消耗，而在日本这类东西要么被淡化要么不存在；日本的后现代美学只是现代主义骨架外的一层皮。日本故事关注的是个体在过剩的便利与信息之海中漂流，执着于个人的而非政治的身份，以及灵魂的问题。这正好说出了我这几年对日本与西方媒体的感受。
iamatworknow查看英文原文
>The sex and race-driven identity politics currently animating and, to my mind, diminishing the literature and cultural products of the West are either muted or non-existent in Japan, where postmodern aesthetics are the outer skin of a modernist backbone. Japanese stories focus on the individual adrift in seas of excessive convenience and information, obsessed with personal not political identities, and questions of the soul. Oh boy, this puts into words how I've felt about Japanese vs. Western media for a few years now.
用同代人与跨文化作家做对照阅读，能更清楚地看清一位作家的手法与语言质感。
对村上同代人感兴趣的话，吉本芭娜娜很有意思。我只读过她的《厨房》，相似度惊人：都写丧失、日常生活正下方那层神秘暗流、独立（但不一定反叛）的主人公；语言同样干净又鲜活（当然也可能是翻译造成的）。她出道稍晚（八十年代末），或许是受他影响。中文里我也想到格非的《隐身衣》，更近的作品，但质地更硬、少些梦幻。想碰“更深”的日本小说，大江健三郎（《换取之子》《个人的体验》）是好起点；想更黑暗、更失控、政治光谱另一端，可读三岛由纪夫（《假面的告白》）。再往前，谷崎润一郎《细雪》写成年姐妹间变动的关系，意外地好看——如果普鲁斯特像一片丛林，繁茂、丰盛、几乎放肆地浓密，那谷崎更像新剖的木头：干净，带着某种克制与中性。
majos查看英文原文
For thise interested in Murakami's contemporaries, Banana Yoshimoto is an interesting case. I've only read one of her works, Kitchen, but the similarity is almost astonishing. They both cover themes of loss, a strong sense of a mystical undercurrent right underneath everyday life, and independent (but not necessarily rebellious) protagonists -- and, while it may be an artifact of translation, they have similarly uncluttered but lively prose. She came a bit after he did, in the late 80s, so maybe he influenced her. In Chinese, Ge Fei's Invisibility Cloak -- while a much more recent work -- also comes to mind, although there's something harder and less dreamy about it. Invisibility Cloak is about a niche audio technician and hobbyist who gets involved with a strange underworld customer, and I'll leave it at that :) If you like Murakami and want to dip a toe into "deeper" (or at least more prestigious and less popular) Japanese fiction, Kenzaburo Oe (Changeling, A Personal Matter) is a good starting point. If you want to go darker, a little more unhinged, and on the opposite end of the political spectrum, Yukio Mishima (Confessions of a Mask) is also good. If you want to go even further back, Junichiro Tanizaki's The Makioka Sisters is an oddly enjoyable story of adult sisters and their shifting relationships -- if Proust is like a jungle, alive and profligate and almost obscenely lush, then Tanizaki is more like fresh-cut wood, clean and with a certain reserve and neutrality, but still alive. I find Yasunari Kawabata the least accessible of all these writers, but he seems to be held in high esteem in Japan. His Snow Country is I'm guessing making references to things I don't understand, but it's at least pleasant to read, and the ending is (I'm told, and at least kind of feel, but not with any sophistication) a very nice example of ma, which Wikipedia tells me roughly means negative space. Finally, to end an overlong post, I first heard of most of these things in Brian Phillips' excellent longform article connecting modern Japanese sumo, older Japanese literature, and Yukio Mishima's very strange attempted coup/suicide: http://grantland.com/features/sumo-wrestling-tokyo-japan-hakuho-yukio-mishima-novelist-seppuku/
警惕文章里被夸大的“影响力”论断和把不同文类混为一谈的写法；彩蛋式引用不等于文学影响。
文章说“无法高估他对当代日本文学与文化的影响深度”——这纯属胡说，等于说“无法高估丹·布朗对美国当代文学与文化的影响”。村上有一批痴迷粉丝，但对日本文学与文化的影响几乎为零，因为除了铁杆粉丝没人关心他的写作。文章还把“轻小说”（带动漫风插画的青少年类型，大概主要面向初中生）和桐野夏生的犯罪惊悚小说混为一谈，硬说日本文学受了“漫画式美学”影响，这是故意混淆。至于他爱在书里塞满引用，那是《头号玩家》式的点缀，并不……
resoluteteeth查看英文原文
> It’s impossible to overestimate the depth of his influence on contemporary Japanese literature and culture, This is complete 100% pure grade A nonsense. It's like saying "it's impossible to overestimate the depth of Dan Brown's influence on contemporary America literature and culture." Haruki Murakami has lots of obsessive fans, but he has had almost zero influence on Japanese literature or culture because nobody other than his rabid fans cares about his writing. > Japan’s current literary and cultural scene takes in “light novels”, brisk narratives that lean heavily on sentimentality and romance and often feature visuals drawn from manga-style aesthetics, and dystopian post-apocalyptic stories of intimate violence, such as Natsuo Kirino’s suspense thrillers, Out and Grotesque. This is also total garbage. "Light novels" are specific (terrible) genre of young adult novels with anime style illustrations (yes, illustrations, not just "aesthetics") that are probably aimed chiefly at middle schoolers. Natsuo Kirino’s books are not "light novels." This article is intentionally trying to conflate these completely different things in order to misleadingly suggest that actual Japanese literature has been influenced by "manga-style aesthetics." > Music plays a prominent role in much contemporary Japanese literature; but it is not mere metaphor. Murakami... Yes, Haruki Murakami loves to litter his books with references, Ready Player One style, but this is not something that is normal in Japanese literature. > But there are larger currents at work that make today’s Japanese stories, poems, animations and manga so vivid as domestic cultural artefacts, and so ripely attractive to the rest of the world. > Ten years ago I wrote in my book Japanamerica: So basically, "Having written a book about the popularity of anime in the US makes me an expert on Japanese literature." Please.
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