>>7268490I just started but so far it seems nice. I've read a few Kawabata books before this (Master of Go, Snow country, Thousand Cranes) and it seems to be a similar treatment of the same themes - traditional Japanese culture and the encroaching threat of the West, and the danger of obliteration of traditions; the role love and romance plays in family and the necessary tensions it creates; etc. Kawabata has really straightforward prose that is elegiac and sincere. I enjoy the aesthetic a lot.
I'm not a huge fan of Murakami to be honest. I think the Wind Up bird Chronicle is my favorite from him, and Norwegian Wood my least favorite. Besides those two I've read Kafka on the Shore, which is OK but not amazing. I think there's a lot of truth to criticisms of his work as really same-y. He is what Virginia Woolf would disparagingly label as firmly middlebrow.
I've read quite a bit of Japanese lit but I actually haven't read any Mishima yet. I plan on reading his Tetralogy after I get around to reading Mann's Joseph and His Brothers since Mann was a huge influence on Mishima.
If you want to get into Japanese lit I'd recommend starting with-
Kokoro by Soseki
Rashomon and some other short stories by Akutagawa
Snow Country by Kawabata
No Longer Human by Dazai
before deciding if/how you want to delve deeper. Kokoro is -the- quintessential Japanese classic though, so definitely read that first if nothing else.
