I finished reading that book last week. It was on my Japanese Lit syllabus.
I agree with you, in that it's a story about what's happenning now and not about what will happen later. Japanese lit is a lot about the present, about little moments and random sensations, but not so much about a plot with a satisfying ending. Or so I have seem to discover during the semester.
My favourite character was Midori, with all her issues. Naoko seemed to be more of a sort of ghostly presence haunting Watanabe, than a real person. Which worked very much fine, for me.
Translations are often shitty and quite difficult from the original japanese- I confess I have no idea how the English translation is, but my professor insists that Spanish translates better from Japanese than English. He also said that a translation made by a native Japanese will often try to capture the spirit of the book more than a learned Japanese translator, who'll try to be as literal as possible, thus loosing much of the symbolism.
I just begun After Dark, and I'm enjoying it very much. My favourite high school teacher has The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle in his favourites list, and I trust his literary taste enough to put in on my reading list. I can't vouch for it directly, though. But if you would like to delve deeper on Japanese Lit, I can recomend Prize Stock, by Kenzaburo Oe.
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I agree with you, in that it's a story about what's happenning now and not about what will happen later. Japanese lit is a lot about the present, about little moments and random sensations, but not so much about a plot with a satisfying ending. Or so I have seem to discover during the semester.
My favourite character was Midori, with all her issues. Naoko seemed to be more of a sort of ghostly presence haunting Watanabe, than a real person. Which worked very much fine, for me.
Translations are often shitty and quite difficult from the original japanese- I confess I have no idea how the English translation is, but my professor insists that Spanish translates better from Japanese than English. He also said that a translation made by a native Japanese will often try to capture the spirit of the book more than a learned Japanese translator, who'll try to be as literal as possible, thus loosing much of the symbolism.
I just begun After Dark, and I'm enjoying it very much. My favourite high school teacher has The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle in his favourites list, and I trust his literary taste enough to put in on my reading list. I can't vouch for it directly, though. But if you would like to delve deeper on Japanese Lit, I can recomend Prize Stock, by Kenzaburo Oe.