Characteristics of Japanese Literature

Japanese literature can be difficult to read and understand, because in many ways the written Japanese reflects certain peculiarities of the spoken language. Statements are often ambiguous, omitting as unnecessary the particles of speech which would normally identify words as the subject or object of a sentence, or using colloquial verb forms from a specific region or social class. Special language used to depict gender, age, social status, or regional origins is often the only clue as to who is speaking or being spoken about in a sentence. In many cases the significance of a simple sentence can only be understood by someone who is familiar with the cultural or historical background of the work.

Japan’s deliberate isolation during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries created a strong cultural homogeneity, and the literature of that period incorporated many common understandings that are unintelligible to someone who does not share the same background. For example, Japanese readers of the seventeenth century immediately understood the phrase,“some smoke rose noisily” (kemuri tachisawagite), as a reference to Great Fire of 1682 that ravaged Edo (the modern city of Tokyo).

Though the Japanese writing system was first adapted from Chinese, the Japanese and Chinese languages are unrelated. The original Japanese language contained a great variety of words expressing emotion and feeling, but very few words for abstract intellectual concepts such as justice, morality, honesty or rectitude. Japanese literature tends to be emotional and subjective, rather than intellectual, and consequently appeals strongly to modern readers all over the world, who can relate to sentiments and feelings which transcend historical changes and cultural differences. Japanese writers who wanted to express more intellectual or abstract meanings wrote in Chinese, or borrowed from the Chinese language.

As early as the tenth century, patronage of literature and poetry by the court and the aristocracy gave rise to literary criticism and artistic “codes,” developed by the writers and poets themselves, which dictated the style and form of poetic composition. These codes restricted the types of sentence structures which were acceptable, and generally prohibited the use of words with humble meanings or foreign origins until the sixteenth century, when less formal haikai no renga (俳諧の連歌, “playful linked verse”) became popular. Japanese writers emphasized refinement of sentiment and elegant phrasing over the expression of intellectual concepts.

The nature of the Japanese language influenced the development of poetic forms. All Japanese words end in one of five simple vowels, making it difficult to construct effective rhymes. Japanese words also lack a stress accent, so that poetry was distinguished from prose mainly by being divided into lines of specific numbers of syllables rather than by cadence and rhythm. These characteristics made longer poetic forms difficult, and most Japanese poems are short, their poetic quality coming from rich allusions and multiple meanings evoked by each word used in the composition.

Japanese prose often contains very long sentences which follow the train of the author’s thought. Japanese writers concentrated more on making a smooth transition from one thought to the next than on linking each statement to an overall structure or meaning. Personal diaries and accounts of travel from place to place developed as a means of linking unrelated elements together in a chronological succession.