Read Real Japanese Essays: Contemporary Writings by Popular Authors

Read Real Japanese

by Janet Ashby (Editor), Haruki Murakami, Junko Sakai

There is a dramatic difference between reading Japanese that is tailored to students, and reading real Japanese that has been written for native speakers. The concocted variety tends to be insipid, flat, stiff, standardized, completely lacking in exciting and imaginative use of language. Read Real Japanese Essays, and its companion volume Read Real Japanese Fiction, allows readers to experience the work of several of todays foremost writers as if they were lifelong Japanese speakers.

The pieces in Read Real Japanese Essays are informed by the personalities of the writers: Haruki Murakami, Banana Yoshimoto, Mitsuyo Kakuta, Junko Sakai, Yoko Ogawa, Kou Machida, Keiichiro Hirano and Hideo Levy. By turns humorous, serious, beautiful and biting, they have been selected on the basis of their appeal. All are stimulating works that will motivate readers to want more.

Just like real Japanese books, the text in this collection runs from top bottom and from right to left. For those needing backup, the essays have been supplemented with facing-page translations of the phrases used therein, often with notes on nuance, usage, grammar or culture. In the back of the book, moreover, is a built-in Japanese-English learner's dictionary and a notes section covering issues of nuance, usage, grammar and culture that come up in each essay. Best of all, the book comes with a free audio CD containing narrations of the essays, performed by a professional voice actress. This will help users to become familiar with the sounds and rhythms of Japanese, as well as the speed at which the language is normally spoken.

Genres: Japanese Literature, Nonfiction, Japan, Language, Anthologies, Essays, Linguistics

240 pages, Paperback

First published April 7, 2008

Reviews

[Akylina · Rating 5 out of 5]

A truly wonderful and very useful book for anyone who desires to get acquainted with reading authentic Japanese texts. Some of the essays I enjoyed more than others (my favourite must have been the last one, Hideo Levy's "'Bungakusha' no Kuni ni Boku ga Iru", which focused on some literary and translation-related topics - mainly on the untranslatability of the essence of the word "bungakusha" and how American and Japanese societies view and react to writers and literary people) and some where much more challenging, but all of them were very worth reading.

I liked the fact that some of my favourite Japanese authors such as Haruki Murakami, Ogawa Yoko and Banana Yoshimoto were included in this collection of essays, as it was very intriguing to see their way of writing in actual Japanese and not through their translated works I've been exposed to so far. After the essays, there is a "Notes" section, which I found extremely useful, as it contains all kinds of information about the Japanese text (grammatical phenomena, peculiar syntax etc) as well as some issues concerning the translations. There is also a Japanese-English glossary at the very end of the book. The accompanying CD with audio recordings of the essays was also a wonderful addition, since listening to the text alongside reading it always helps me grasp some things better and more efficiently.

All in all, whether this book is used as pleasure reading or as studying material, it is certain to satisfy its readers. I, for once, plan to come back to it in the near future and study its vocabulary and syntactic structures much more carefully this time around. And, of course, I can't wait to try reading its 'Fiction' counterpart.

[Christian · Rating 2 out of 5]

Those essays were the absolute bore. Of all the possible subject matters, why would they choose to include someone's opinion on how disrespectful it is for young women to put make-up on the train? I really couldn't give less of a fuck about who puts make-up where.

The last one is on the word 文学者 and how impossible it supposedly is to translate "お前なんか、文学者じゃない" in English. Well here is a fair attempt: "The things you write, I wouldn't call that literature". Done. Hideo Levy spends thousands of words to explain the difference and how it's subtly different from say "It's not writing, it's typing"... which supposedly defines how American judge their literature. OK. Whatever, Hideo, maybe you're right. Could we move on to something else?

The other essays were also either condescending, or of little interest (to me at least!) I don't mean to criticize the essays, but rather the editor for choosing them. Of all the non-prose Japanese writing, surely there's something a bit more appealing lol?

Apart from the boring content, the book is well designed (even though IMO, the dictionary is a waste of space + don't care about the CD but that's just me) and the end notes are insightful.

[Carola · Rating 4 out of 5]

Among Japanese learning material aimed at foreigners, this book is definitely one of the better ones. The book contains eight essays by (relatively) popular authors, such as Haruki Murakami, Banana Yoshimoto and Yoko Ogawa.

The set-up of this book works perfectly. Each essay contains a short introduction in English with some background information on the author. Then after that, on the right page we get the essay, with furigana the first time you encounter the more difficult kanji. The left side has, not exactly translations but rather, interpretations of the more difficult sentences. Finally in the back of the book we get a dictionary of the words found in the essays, followed by grammatical and contextual notes on each essay.

Clearly someone has thought long and hard on the structure of the book and it works (unlike a lot of bilingual parallel texts). The dictionary in the back may sound inconvenient - I for one do not like going back and forth in a book to look up things. However, I found I rarely needed the dictionary thanks to the translations on the left page. This can also be a bit of a disadvantage. The book is set up in such a way that you can choose to focus only on the essays on the right side pages, but the reader might have to restrain themselves from glancing at the translations on the left page.

The Japanese level of the essays is quite high. Being at N2, some of the essays were relatively easy to read, while others (mostly due to the vocabulary) really challenged me. In that sense the level was perfect for me. I like texts that are readable, but I also want to challenge myself to level-up! It's refreshing to read texts that were not written with foreign learners in mind, but are, well, real Japanese.

Honestly, I am quite enthusiastic about this book. And best of all, there is a companion to this book: Read Real Japanese Fiction (which in retrospect I wish I had started with).

Haruki Murakami - Little White Lies
Being the first story, Murakami's essay on lying is perfect to start the book with. Murakami's style is pretty easy to read so it gives the reader some confidence in reading. A nice, short and fun essay.

Junko Sakai - Admonishing Young People on the Train
In contrast to Murakami's opening essay, Sakai's essay on manners on trains was pretty boring. But it helps that it's an accessible topic everyone knows something about and has an opinion on.

Mitsuya Kakuta - On Cooking
This essay was actually really funny. Kakuta explains her feelings about men cooking. This essay was definitely a bit more challenging (vocab-wise) than the first two, but it's worth it.

Banana Yoshimoto - On Beauty
I was looking forward to Yoshimoto's essay but ended up finding it pretty boring. It's a daily scenario that Yoshimoto is describing, something she is usually quite good at. However, maybe it's just me. All of Yoshimoto's works I am reading lately leave me disappointed...

Kou Machida - No Matter How He Writes, a Creep Is Still a Creep
This essay starts off a bit... whiny, almost. However, it ends up being really funny and very accurate. Also a good practice for readers of Japanese: the essay talks about the tone of Japanese texts.

Yoko Ogawa - Concerning "The Professor's Beloved Equation"
This essay was a bit challenging but I really, really enjoyed it! It'll be especially fun for those readers who have read Ogawa's The Housekeeper and the Professor, as she talks about random things related to that book. At the time Read Real Japanese Essays was published, The Housekeeper and the Professor had not yet been translated. Good for us that now it has: it makes the essay a lot of fun to read for those interested in Ogawa's work.

Keiichiro Hirano - Thoughts on Mutability
Ugh. I got through about 75% of this essay and then gave up. The style is definitely not to my taste, and also quite challenging: long sentences that go on and on, and clearly Hirano is known for his extensive use of kanji. That in itself was tiresome, but if the text at least had been interesting I think I could've managed. However, for me it was a load of blah, an opinion on people's opinions on how Kyoto is changing.

Hideo Levy - Living in the Land of the "Bungakusha"
I ended up finding this (surprisingly readable) text more interesting that I was expecting, but I expect most people won't agree with me. Levy talks about Japanese-English translation issues as well as the Japanese literary world.

[Rosa · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book consists on five Japanese essays, organized in incresing difficult, with a dictionary of the used vocabulary at the back, translation on the side, and very useful grammar nottes section.

I'm getting ready for the N2 and this was perfect for it.

The fourth essay I found specially difficult.

I was really scared that maybe i wouldn't find the topic of the essays interesting, but I did. The first one is an essay about lies, another one was about young generations and rudeness, another one about the difficulty of translating words that have a hefty cultural meaning, another one about the concept of Beauty, and finally another one about creating and conveying a personality when writing.

[Charlene Xiaolan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great for language learning purpose, picking up vocabulary and reading authentic Japanese. But most of the essays are a bit dry. Maybe because it's for beginner level.

[Lidian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some interesting ideas put together in not much detail but are easy enough to understand. Thus perfect for learning :)
面白い話かるくで結ぶ．つまり勉強にとしてぴったり :)

[Jason Downey · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great book for Japanese learners who want to enjoy themselves instead of studying all the time. Unlike a bilingual fiction edition I once read, this edition translated sections of the essay phrase-by-phrase or clause-by-clause instead of the whole thing all at once. This was particularly useful for isolating the difficult bits of Japanese.

(Also, essays rather than fiction are probably a better place to start reading real Japanese, since they're talking about real things and not, as a rule, trying to color up their language quite as much as a fictional story does. That's just my opinion, though.)

Something else that was helpful was the second half of the book: hundreds of pages of notes on why certain passages or words were translated as they were. This helped me get a better feel for some words that carried abstract meanings which were not clearly conveyed in their English translations.

The book also comes with a CD narrated by a professional Japanese 落語 artist. Her pronunciation is clear, but fast enough that you have to work to keep up with her if you want to follow the text as she's reading--or, for the true 頑張る人, to read along with her out loud.

Another big plus is that, after having finished this book, I have a list of contemporary writers who I want to delve into more deeply over the next couple of months. Five stars, rounds of applause, and I highly recommend this book.

[Simon · Rating 4 out of 5]

As the title implies, this is a great book for helping read Japanese written by actual Japanese authors (as opposed to textbook Japanese). It facilitates reading by including furigana on most kanji, giving an English translation on the opposite page, having notes at the back of the book that describe subtleties of Japanese grammar and nuance, and having a dictionary at the back of the book. It also comes with a CD so that you can listen to the essays.

For me, the dictionary was redundant as it was much easier to look up new words on my electronic dictionary. But all the other features were immensely helpful: the furigana made it very easy to look up new words; the translation was good to check that I had understood the Japanese correctly; and the notes at the back were very useful.

I found this book more challenging that the fiction book in this series and so would recommend reading the fiction one first. The essays are on a range of topics are written by well-known Japanese authors (e.g., Haruki Murakami, Banana Yoshimoto, and Yoko Ogawa). I found the essay by Keiichiro Hirano and the last half of Hideo Levy's essays very difficult to read (these are the penultimate and final essays respectively).

This book is highly recommended as a stepping stone towards reading "real" Japanese.

[Mauri · Rating 2 out of 5]

It reminded me of being back in high school, when I despaired of loving either English Lit or French Lit. Like both of those however, there were a few pieces that I found myself enjoying - Ogawa's essay on math, and Hirano's on change in Kyoto. The rest were whiny or boring or pretentious - Levy's in particular, oh how I despise the word 'un-translatable'.

I continue to dislike Murakami's writing in general.

It's easy to read something like this and think "What is there for me in Japanese literature?" I remember saying almost exactly this to my French teacher in high school. She had the solution of course - dug up two modern novels in French that happened to intersect with my interests. What you want to read is out there, you just can't depend on it being published in bilingual learners' editions.

On the format - very useable, with a dictionary, and specific explanations and notes for each essay at the back.

[Grace · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a great idea -- Japanese essays written by good Japanese authors with the translations on each facing page. However, the selections varied widely in terms of level. They were all challenging for an intermediate student such as myself, but some required a dictionary for almost every other word, making it somewhat discouraging. The book would have worked better if the essays were all a similar level or put in ascending order of difficulty. There were some good essays, though. I especially liked the one about Otoko no Ryouri (Man Cooking).

[Frank Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Together with its fiction companion this is the best reader I've encountered so far.

The only two downsides are that:
1) except for the last one, written by Hideo Levy, all the essays are pretty boring and pointless and somehow missed their well-deserved place in either the writer's or the publisher's garbage bins; and
2) the audio CD is a little challenging (it's only "natural speed" for someone who naturally speaks at an unnatural speed) ...

[Tintin]

Putting the Murakami Haruki essay first in the book was a good idea. Totally hilarious - I love Murakami already. I want to read more of him! In Japanese! And now after putting it off since forever I'm actually motivated to read the rest of the book *gasp*

[Skivvy Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book rewards persistence. The audio component is an invaluable addition. If, at the start, the pace is too hard, you can listen to the cd and read along to improve. I wish more publishers did this, although you can find more books like this via White Rabbit press.

[Keith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Denser and more difficult than the fiction volume, but still well worth the (months of) effort it took for me to finish.

[Fish · Rating 5 out of 5]

This will definitely be one of the texts I take with me in order to be able to continue studying Japanese when I am no longer living in Japan.

[Guido Rosano · Rating 4 out of 5]

Esta serie de libros es lo más. Ojalá salieran nuevas compilaciones.