11 - Literary culture

Summary

The relationship between literature and society/culture is complex. The act of writing is not a process of recording. Literary works interact with our sociocultural reality; they challenge, question, or sometimes reinforce our everyday values and assumptions. Reading modern Japanese literature means reading individual writers' experiences and their multifaceted interpretations of society and culture. In principle, therefore, any attempt at generalisation will fail. At the same time, however, literature is not created in a vacuum; writers' experiences are woven within a social and cultural fabric, and certain common literary features emerge during any given period in history. The individual writer's words are taken from, and the chain of words he or she creates is once again incorporated into, that very fabric. Sometimes these words may cause a tear or rip; or when they regurgitate the experiences of everyday life, they may be absorbed with little resistance, often becoming commercially successful in the process. This metaphor may help explain the distinction between so-called pure and popular literature in modern Japanese literary history. The two genres have been commonly differentiated by the way they are received in the literary market: pure literature for those readers who 'seriously' enjoy reading literature and who have the ability to appreciate its 'literary' value; popular literature for the broader public who read for entertainment.