• Centro Escolar University

• ABM HATDOG Japanese literature,

Japanese literature, the body of written works produced by Japanese
authors in Japanese or, in its earliest beginnings, at a time when
Japan had no written language, in the Chinese classical language.
Both in quantity and quality, Japanese literature ranks as one of
the major literatures of the world, comparable in age, richness,
and volume to English literature, though its course of development
has been quite dissimilar. The surviving works comprise a literary
tradition extending from the 7th century ce to the present; during
all this time there was never a “dark age” devoid of literary
production. Not only do poetry, the novel, and the drama have long
histories in Japan, but some literary genres not so highly esteemed
in other countries—including diaries, travel accounts, and books of
random thoughts—are also prominent.
The difficulties of reading Japanese literature can hardly be
exaggerated; even a specialist in one period is likely to have
trouble deciphering a work from another period or genre. Japanese
style has always favoured ambiguity, and the particles of speech
necessary for easy comprehension of a statement are often omitted
as unnecessary or as fussily precise. Sometimes the only clue to
the subject or object of a sentence is the level of politeness in
which the words are couched. Japanese literature of all periods is
exceptionally appealing to modern readers, whether read in the
original or in translation. Because it is prevailingly subjective
and coloured by an emotional rather than intellectual or moralistic
tone, its themes have a universal quality almost unaffected by
time.
Japanese literature absorbed much direct influence from China, but
the relationship between the two literatures is complex. Although
the Japanese have been criticized (even by some Japanese) for their
imitations of Chinese examples, the earliest Japanese novels in
fact antedate their Chinese counterparts by centuries, and Japanese
theatre developed quite independently. Because the Chinese and
Japanese languages are unrelated, Japanese poetry naturally took
different forms, although Chinese poetic examples and literary
theories were often in the minds of the Japanese poets. The first
writing of literature in Japanese was occasioned by influence from
China. The Japanese were still comparatively primitive and without
writing when, in the first four centuries ce, knowledge of Chinese
civilization gradually reached them. They rapidly assimilated much
of this civilization, and the Japanese scribes adopted Chinese
characters as a system of writing, although an alphabet (if one had
been available to them) would have been infinitely better suited to
the Japanese language. The characters, first devised to represent
Chinese monosyllables, could be used only with great ingenuity to
represent the agglutinative forms of the Japanese language.