Nagai Kafu: Life and Writings (Edward Seidensticker, ed.)

When we speak of something as an acquired taste, often it is a backhanded way of saying that its virtues are not obvious, or even readily found.  When I say here that the writing of Nagai Kafu in particular, and Japanese literature in general, is an acquired taste, however it is not in that sense.  Rather, it is to say that to appreciate it, one must step entirely out of everything one has learned from a lifetime of Western literature.

I recall a similar experience reading The Tale of Genji and Soul Mountain many years ago.  I failed to appreciate either of them because I kept expecting something that wasn't going to happen.  I'm used to good books having a narrative, a plot, and interesting structure, a resolution of some sort, lifelike characterization, and other things that Western literature does so well.  It was very much like missing the forest for the trees, failing to appreciate the journey due to an obsessive focus on the destination.  In Eastern literature, at least as far as I've experienced, the point is in the moment, not in the momentum.  The joy of reading Genji, or Li Po, or Tu Fu, etc. is the same joy as that of sitting in a park and watching the leaves blow.  This is a quiet, still joy, and one that Kafu exemplifies.

In his excellent editorial and biographical comments, Seidensticker well highlights these joys, found everywhere in Kafu's writings.  Narratively weak and filled with bald, unremarkable characters, his stories might well seem to be poorly written.  Indeed, if one reads them as stories, such a judgement is more than fair.  If, however, one reads them as poems, as insightful, touching descriptions of subtle moments in the life of a man growing weary with the world, but still determined to record its pleasures faithfully, one ceases to care about the plot, characters, structure, and everything else that a Western approach to writing has indoctrinated us to believe is important.  One is able to sit in the yard of this self-described scribbler, and watch the leaves.