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IICJ2016 18394

Literary Canon in Japan 
A quick overview to the perception of canon in Japan is provided by the investigation 
of Sadami Suzuki.
15
Since the concept of canon was created anew in Japan to answer 
the need to compare it to Western literature and art, it maintained unchanged the 
definition in itself and the role of an institution to protect it, namely, the Japanese 
bundan
.
16
As Japanese literature was defined for its characteristic of been written in 
Japanese language, the attention can be turn to the high quality that designates the 
literary product in order to be ascribed as a work of 
jun bungaku 
純文学
 
(translated as 
“pure literature” as a derivative of the UK “polite literature”)
17
and its opposite, the 
taish
ū
 bungaku 
大衆文学
, as to say, “popular literature”). This two notions obviously 
underline a different approach to the literary production: the 
jun bungaku
responds 
better to Sartre’s ideas while the 
taish
ū
 bungaku
would have been more appreciated 
by Barthes. What is remarkable here is the definition of “high quality products worth 
of a proud nation”.
18
This aspect is directly connected with the Japanese aesthetics 
fundaments: 
mono no aware
物の哀れ

wabi
侘び

sabi
錆び
(often considered as a 
unit maybe because of the alliteration) 
shibui
渋い

y
ū
gen
幽玄


miyabi, f
ū
ry
ū
 


and so on;
19
although any further investigation about these different Japanese 
approaches to aestheticism are now out of place, a common denominator can be 
identified in these concepts: they are all connected with nature. In particular, they 
refer to the transcendence and frailty of life, a kind of thinking that gives priority to 
the enjoyment of the impermanence as the source for beauty in itself, a concept 
derived from the Buddhist perspective of 
muj
ō
.
20
The most common image in this 
sense is the one of cherry blossoms, more appreciated “when the air is thick of their 
falling petals”
21
to quote Richie. The turning point of this study is then revealed: the 
importance of nature in the Japanese artistic and literary production. The attention can 
be focused on literary works written around the topic of nature, or better, on the theme 
of a catastrophic natural event: although the term “catastrophe” implied a feeling of 
fear and sorrow in the Western perception, the aesthetic mindset peculiar to Japan 
justifies the beauty of literary works on this theme and even encourages a reading in a 
new light. As stated at the beginning, to define a canon for the “literature of 
catastrophe” is all the more necessary to investigate past literary works on the theme. 
The most quoted is without any doubts the 
H
ō
j
ō
ki
『方丈記』
(“An Account of my 
14
Innocenti, L. (2000). Introduzione. In 
Il giudizio di valore e il canone letterario
. Roma: Bulzoni 
Editore (p. 20). My translation.
15
Sadami, S. (2000). From Canon formation to Evolutional Reformation: Man’y
ū
, Genji, Bash
ō
(pp. 
25-45). In 
PAJLS Issue of Canonicity and Canon Formation in Japanese Literary Studies. vol 1

Bellingham: AJLS.
16
日本文壇
, the “Japanese literary circle”.
17
Salami (p. 27).
18
ibidem
.
19
For further investigation, here out of place, see Richie, D. (2007). 
A tractate on Japanese Aesthetics

Berkeley: Stone Bridge Press.
20
Murakami, H. (2011). “Speaking as an Unrealistic Dreamer” in 
The Asia-Pacific Journal Vol 9
, Issue 
29 No 7.
21
Richie (p 38).


Hut”, 1212) by Kamo no Ch
ō
mei, a report of various disasters such as earthquake
famine, whirlwind and conflagration that occurred in the ancient capital city of Ky
ō
to. 
Several works by Akutagawa Ry
ū
nosuke
 
(
芥川龍之介
, 1892-1927) and Terada 
Torahiko (
寺田寅彦
, 1878-1935), just to name a few, are worth to mention too. 
Finally, the 
genbaku bungaku
原爆文学
(“literature of the atomic bombings”) makes 
its appearance as a label used to described all the poetic and prosaic responses to the 
double atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, of which Ibuse Masuji’s 
Kuroi 
ame
『黒い雨』
(“Black Rain”, 1965) is the most well-known example: even if the 
genbaku bungaku
genre refers to a men-made catastrophe, it sets a precedent in the 
Japanese literary production that deserves scholar’s attention. 

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