At last, this morning I read Dan SHAO's book about the relationship between Japanese literature (especially, Haruki Murakami's works) and the translation of Richard Brautigan and Kurt Vonnegut (the title can be translated as "Literature Which Produces Translation [邵丹（ショウ・タン）『翻訳を産む文学、文学を産む翻訳』]"). I, as a Japanese reader, used to Haruki's works through the original text. In my opinion, his Japanese seems very "English" to me (in a way, his style is slightly but essentially different from any other author's). His one is very logical, sophisticated, and "too cool" for me, which has the same essence as any English text.
Dan SHAO tries to explain his Japanese style's character by pointing out how Haruki could have been influenced by those authors I've written. This tells me that Haruki must have built himself (especially, very unique style) through his vast, diverse reading experience. Also, I have to remember a simple, important fact that Haruki has made a huge effort to "train" his style throughout his long career. In other words, he must be a very great "hard worker", not a gifted genius who could write any "lucky" hit.
After that, I joined a discussion about Haruki Murakami (Oh my!) on Twitter. The content was, as I wrote yesterday, how to "zone" several literature works such as Yasunari Kawabata and Kenzaburo Oe, which can have been treated as a sort of pornographies (or simply too dangerous for young readers). In my opinion, I allow any private readers (or even any "commercial" publishers) will "zone" those books because of their content's sensitiveness. However, I can't agree with any trial of "total" zoning upon them by this country or any large establishments. Anyway, it still gives me an interesting, provoking point of view.
However, one question I'm having... Do we need that kind of zoning to any of Haruki's novels such as "Norwegian Wood" and "A Wild Sheep Chase"? If you affirm this, why? Shouldn't novels have such "lewd", and "too straight" content? How should we distinguish literature works from any violent pornographies (who judges this from what point of view. Is it simply possible)? This evening, reading Haruki's early short novels collection, I tried to think about this issue more by myself.
