Botchan: A Modern Classic

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best Japanese novels ever! And its funny!

Lighthearted. Fast moving. Hilarious. These are not adjectives usually associated with classic Japanese literature or with Natsume Soseki, an author whose image graces the 1,000 yen note in Japan. Soseki’s intense novel “Kokoro” (which translates as “heart” or “spirit”) is famed for its insight into the Japanese soul. But he was a young man once too, who laughed and loved and mocked, and this early comic novel is no less penetrating for its sense of humor.

“Botchan” is the classic City Mouse tale. Botchan is a Tokyo boy, through and through. Lazy, unmotivated, and spoiled by the housekeeper who raised him, he suddenly finds himself needing to make his own way in the world when his father dies and his older brother inherits the fortune. Thinking school is easier than work, Botchan takes his brother’s offer to pay his way through university. Life is good so far, but even Botchan must graduate, and he finds himself educated and assigned as a middle school teacher in a rural town in the island of Shikoku, Japan’s most rural island. Arrogant and sure of his superiority over the hicks, Botchan quickly runs afoul of the locals and winds up in a merry war with both students and co-teachers.

Reminiscent of the best of Mark Twain’s yarns, “Botchan” is layers upon layers of wit and hijinks. A short, snappy novel, the narrator’s own self-assurance blinds him from the mechanisms against him that are so obvious to the reader. All the townspeople are pure characters, each with their own Botchan-given nickname such as “Porcupine,” “The Hanger-on” or “Redshirt.” Twined into the story is Botchan’s protective elderly maid, Kiyo, who’s blind support and admiration of Botchan only feeds his swelled ego, yet adds a touching element of humanity to the tale.

Added to all this is Soseki’s brilliant insight into the Japanese school system. Over 100 years later, little has changed and I laughed out loud as Botchan experienced things that I experience every day as a teacher at a Japanese high school. To see a Japanese person, especially one as revered as Soseki, voicing the very thoughts in my head is an absolute pleasure. Anyone wanting an authentic insiders look into Japanese society and culture would do much better laying down their copy of “The Enigma of Japanese Power” and picking up a copy of “Botchan.”

J. Cohn’s translation is perfect, preserving both the humor and the insight, and manages to portray the class differences of the Tokyo and Shikoku dwellers without resorting to cheap tricks like using Southern US accents and such. He must have a great sense of humor himself, and I look forward to more translations from him.

Insightful and penetrating, a window behind the hidden doors of Japan, “Botchan” is also hands-down the most entertaining Japanese novel I have ever read. Highly, highly recommended.

Read Real Japanese Essays: Contemporary Writings by Popular Authors 1 free CD included

 

The perfect Japanese reader

The second in Kodansha’s excellent “Read Real Japanese” series. Whereas the other book, Read Real Japanese Fiction focused on fiction stories by popular modern Japanese authors, this one focuses on non-fiction essays, including some that are about the nuance of the Japanese language itself, so you are learning about Japanese in Japanese.

Basically, any student of Japanese needs both of these books. For a long time there was a dearth of quality Japanese readers. Some, like A Japanese Reader are so dense and academic as to put off all but the most dedicated student. Some, like Mangajin’s Basic Japanese Through Comics, are fun to begin with but don’t get you very far. The biggest problem has always been that middle ground, that 2-kyu level where you need some help getting over the hump from constructed text and into the real world. Even the previous release from Kodansha, Read Real Japanese, relied too heavily on romaji.

Most of the authors in “Read Real Japanese Essays” will be familiar to anyone who reads Japanese literature, like Murakami Haruki (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle) Yoshimoto Banana (Kitchen) Ogawa Yoko (The _Professor’s Beloved Equation). Some of them are more obscure, like short-story author Mitsuyo or poet/novelist Machida Kou. Each author is given a short biography, and there is a nice breadth of style and subject. Probably my favorite essay was Machida’s, where he showed how important the ~masu, ~da and ~de aru sentence endings were in Japanese by putting the lyrics to the Sex Pistols’ Anarchy In The U.K. in polite ~masu form. Mitsuyo’s essay on why men shouldn’t cook was also very funny.

The eight essays are:

Murakami Haruki – Little White Lies
Sakai Junko – Admonishing Young People in Trains
Kakuta Mitsuyo – On Cooking
Yoshimoto Banana – On Beauty
Machida Kou – No Matter How he Writes, a Creep is Still a Creep
Ogawa Yoko – Concerning “The Professor’s Beloved Equation”
Hirano Keiichiro – Thoughts on Mutability
Levy Hideo – Living in the Land of the Bungakusha

All of the essays are challenging and interesting. The pages are split with the original Japanese on the right, and a break-down translation on the left. Kanji are given with hiragana readings only once, which force you to learn the reading rather than rely on the furigana. The end of the book has a dictionary of the intermediate and advanced words for you to refer to.

I also really enjoyed having the CD to listen to while reading through the essays. It sets a challenging pace, being read at normal speed, and is excellent training for anyone looking to pass a JLPT exam.