In this week’s news, our editors report on the various matters occupying readers around the world. From the power of literary awards throughout Japan’s modern history, a survey on contemporary literary habits, and the growing Hebrew Book Fair—read on to find out more!
Xiao Yue Shan, Blog Editor, reporting for Japan
On June 16, the nominees for the 169th Akutagawa Prize and the Naoki Prize were announced to the public. Long recognised as the most important literary awards in Japan, the two accolades are given to emerging authors for a work of “pure literature” (junbungaku) and “popular literature” (taishū bengei) respectively, a fascinating distinction that has shifted tenuously throughout the awards’ long history, reflecting the evolving perspectives on what constitutes literary excellence, the separation between author and work, as well as how taste and zeitgeist can be reflected in the awardees. While the difference between what constitutes a literary text and a popular text can be seen as elitist, there have been, in the past, a great many other factors that have gone into the consideration of awardees—perhaps best exemplified by the awarding of the 1937 Naoki Prize (considered the less prestigious of the two) to Masuji Ibuse, whose profound literary output has insured him a spot in the modern Japanese canon. Throughout their time, the separate realms that the Akutagawa and Naoki Prizes were intended to occupy have opened up significant inquiries as to what, exactly, is valued in writing, consulting the multiple planes engaged by the literary arts: the aesthetic, the political, the dialogic, and the compassionate.
This year, the nominees for the Akutagawa Prize are Sao Ichikawa, Ameko Kodama, Masaya Chiba, Yusuke Norishiro, and Kaho Ishida. The subject matter of the narratives veer from the life of a professional welder; the changing intimacies and relations between four high school students over a single day; the introduction of the Internet in the 90s and its reverberations in a young man’s life; the potentials of anonymity as discovered by a teenage pop star; and the sexual life of a physically disabled woman.
The nominees for the Naoki Prize are Tow Ubukata, Ryosuke Kakine, Kazuaki Takano, Ryoe Tsukimura, and Nagai Sayako. Their nominated works include a historical novel on Ashikaga Takauji, the first shogun of the Ashikaga shogunate; a psychological story centred around the spectral presence at a railroad crossing; a crime novel set between Hong Kong and Japan; a tale of a young samurai who avenges his father; and a work of horror that paints a violent world under Tokyo’s polished metropolis.
What becomes evident in looking at these two groupings, even just by the superficial delineations of their bylines, is that this year, there is indeed a conspicuous demarcation between their preoccupations. Whereas the texts up for the Akutagawa can be all considered as realist storylines, recognisably using the prism of an individual’s life to refract truths and insights into the society in which they—and we—live, the nominees for the Naoki are being publicised along the engaging capacities of thrill and mystery. It is reflective of the same bilaterality that has always troubled the book as an object of consumption: that seeming incompatibility between the educational and the entertaining. Such is undoubtedly a judgement we all make independently when selecting what we’re interested in reading—or what we think we should be reading—and it’s somewhat unsettling to see this consideration fortified in the institutional fixedness of an award, which is by definition a statement of authority, a mandate of a higher power. In this way, the very essence of the Akutagawa and Naoki Prizes presents a conundrum that expounds on the act of reading, not only within Japanese literature and its apparatus, but in regards to the invisible schematic that books themselves exist on—all of these gossamer compartments and classifications that aim to instruct us not only on our own literary predilections, but what the books and their authors should be pursuing. It reveals both the impossibility and the necessity of judgment within the literary industry, about how unruly we know the whole process to be, yet how implicitly we trust it still. The freedom of the writing-act and the imagination of the reading-act has so many binds to negotiate, so many contracts to overcome.
Still, at the end of the day, we are left with the books.
What struck me, as I was reading over the history of these prizes, was not necessarily how “pure literature” was determined by the juries—an argument that will doubtlessly continue to be forevermore—but how strained the word “popular” became, as the juries behind the award attempted to encapsulate and rein in a book based on this diaphanous quality. In 1935, when the award was established, jurist Osaragi Jirō put forth a dilemma: is the Akutagawa based on “genius”, and the Naoki based on “labour”? Is one based on the author’s purity, and then other on their diligence? In other words, how do we approach this strange art of language, which urges us to understand not only what it says, but also what it does not reveal, what the author themselves may not even know, what the world thinks, and who we ourselves are when we meet the words, on the page?
Eva Wissting, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Sweden
For Swedes, summer is a season for reading. A recent survey presented by Swedish online bookstore Adlibris concludes that seven out of ten Swedes intend to read a physical book during the summer, and almost a quarter claim that they will read more books than they did last year. 74% of the respondents read for relaxation, 55% for entertainment and 33% to learn something new. Preferred genres vary a lot––the suspense novel and crime fiction are favorite genres among the older readers, while younger readers prefer fantasy and romance. Overall, however, the novel has increased in popularity. Most readers, 70%, seek book recommendations from friends and family, while 31% go to newspapers and magazines, and 20% turn to television and radio for book suggestions. It is mainly younger readers, under the age of thirty, who find their reading inspiration on social media.
Perhaps some Swedes will take the summer months to read—or re-read—the work of Finnish writer Märta Tikkanen, who belongs to Finland’s Swedish-speaking minority. This month, Tikkanen received a lifetime achievement award from The Finnish Women’s Association Unioni. With the award, the organization seeks to highlight the importance of long-term work for gender equality. During Tikkanen’s over fifty year’s of writing––she debuted in 1970 with Nu imorron (Now Tomorrow)—women’s position within the family and in society has been a continuous theme. She is best known for Århundradets kärlekssaga from 1978, in English translation by Stina Katchadourian as The Love Story of the Century (Deep Vellum, 2020), a story about a woman’s complex relationship with her alcoholic husband. The book is written in verse and has been translated into twenty languages, as well as adapted for stage performance. Tikkanen has previously received the Nordic Women’s Alternative Literature Prize, Finland’s State Prize for the Dissemination of Knowledge, the Swedish De Nios Grand Prize, the Swedish Academy’s Finland Prize, and Finland’s State Literary Prize. Today, she has readers in over thirty different languages around the world.
Michal Zechariah, Assistant Managing Editor, reporting on Israel
In the eight years since I left Israel, I have only rarely had the opportunity to visit it during Hebrew Book Week—an annual celebration of Hebrew literature and the primary bookselling event of the year. For ten days in June (despite its title, the event has long exceeded seven days) dozens of publishing houses erect sales booths in central locations in Tel Aviv, books are sold at steep discounts, and authors grace book fairs in signing events.
The Israeli literary scene is small, and events like Hebrew Book Week bring to the fore its delicate economy and uneasy politics. In recent years, more and more initiatives develop apart from the main Tel Aviv book fair that has become the symbol of this holiday. Independent publishers have collaborated to organize an alternative book fair that traveled to different locations in Jerusalem, Haifa, and more, in an attempt to reach new audiences in the highly centralized Israeli book market. In addition, for the first time, a shorter book festival was organized in the Jaffa, dedicated to the local authors of the city, both Arab and Jewish.
The Hebrew Book Week events even made headlines when images of teenage girls crowding romance literature booths and filling entire suitcases with the latest titles in erotic fiction reached media attention. As young women’s sexuality is always a hot topic, local news covered concerns about the content that girls—even those in the religious education system—consume, the absolute dominance of the romance genre on BookTok, and the quality of the teens’ reading choices.
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