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When I see stacks of Russian literature on display at bookstores, I am overwhelmed by a feeling of how far we've come.

Thursday 03rd July, 04:53 AM JST

Yuri Kato, an associate professor who teaches Russian and comparative literature at the University of Tsukuba, talking about how Japanese readers are beginning to embrace Russian literature. (Asahi)

6 Comments

  • sabinuki at 05:05 PM JST - 3rd July

    When I see stacks of Russian literature on display at bookstores, I am overwhelmed by a feeling of how far we've come, and then by a feeling of how far we've yet to go; we've got to sell those mountains of books that aren't going anywhere and I certainly can't fit anything else into my 4 square meter concrete mansion.

  • buddha4brains at 05:09 PM JST - 3rd July

    I hope they read "House of the Dead" and gain a better appreciation of how good they got it.

    It works for me.

  • jeancolmar at 08:45 PM JST - 3rd July

    It is good to hear that the Japanese are reading anything intelligent these days, but this Russian literature boom is a pleasant surprise. In older and more intellectual days Russian literature was popular in Japan. Two Japanese newspapers sponsored Alexandra Tolstoy's lectures on Leo Tolstoy in the late 1920s. She ended up living in Japan for three years. She taught Russian in Kobe, cycling all the way from Ashiya to save on train fare. Also Takurazuka had a number of talented Russians attached to it. Toson based his novel Hakai on Dostoyevski's Crime and Punishment.

    I wonder how this Russian boom can be accounted for.

  • RepublicofTexas at 12:48 PM JST - 4th July

    I wonder how this Russian boom can be accounted for.

    It's certainly not a result of Russo-Japanese foreign relations. However it's nice that there should be a reading boom of any kind, regardless of what country the literature's from as people seem to be reading less and less.

  • Seiharinokaze at 07:58 PM JST - 4th July

    It's because Russia perhaps has something that appeals to us? Cultural anthropologist Nakazawa Shinichi wrote something interesting on why the world of the Orthodox Eastern Church gave birth to many Dostoyevskies. The Orthodox Church has kept the esoteric and profound thinking that Father is Son, and Son is Holy Spirit, and Holy Spirit is Father. Something that the Western Church rejected with the notion of "filioque" at Nicaea. Catholicism then was wedded to Aristotelean type of logic, the rational way of thinking of Greece. Whereas the Orthodox Eastern Church criticizes such Aristotelean logic and requires a very religious way of thinking that contradicts Aristotelean rationality. In the Eastern Church world, we cannot approach the true nature of the world unless we surmount the Aristotelean logic of "A is not non-A". In Russia, the God is a high-dimensional entity where the Aristotelean logic does not work. A can be non-A there; A is replaceable by non-A and nothing changes. Dostoyevsky called it the God. Doesn't such a way of thinking appeal to Japanese?

    http://www.lang.nagoya-u.ac.jp/proj/socho/mirai/mirai-nakazawa.pdf#search='中沢新一%20東方'

  • sageb1 at 11:39 AM JST - 7th July

    If Russia can fill the Japanese spirit with its panentheism and revitalise the arugamama then Japan still has hope!

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