Advanced Japanese Book Club // Now reading: 海辺のカフカ・Next: 狼と香辛料

Azmo · July 1, 2020, 9:22pm

Home Thread for the Advanced Japanese Book Club

Start Date: May 28th, 2022

Amazon JP (上) | Amazon JP (combined volume for 上 and 下) | Bookwalker (separate volumes for 上 and 下) | Bookwalker (combined volume for 上 and 下)

Next: 狼と香辛料

Start Date: Aug 27th, 2022

Amazon | BookWalker

Book Proposals

How to Propose Books

As a rough guideline, good candidates are (1) those books that exceed ~300 pages in modern, standard Japanese; OR (2) those books shorter than ~300 pages that are less modern, more literary (read: harder).

For the modern books, we will aim at reading 30 - 50 pages per week, while we plan to read the less modern, more literary books at about 15 pages per week.

Proposal Template

Taken directly from the beginner book club.

Copy this template into a new post when proposing a book/manga.

For page samples, you can either take photos of your own copy (try to make the three additional pages ‘representative’ if possible), grab photos from the internet, or use previews from e.g. Amazon, BookWalker, EBookJapan. Make sure the text is legible!

!!! ONLY COPY BELOW THIS LINE !!!

# Insert Title Here
Author:

## Summary
[details=“Japanese”]
Add Japanese summary here.
[/details]
[details=“English”]
Add English summary here.
[/details]

Length:
Category:

## Availability
Insert link to book on amazon.co.jp here.
Insert link(s) to eBook here, or mention if an eBook is not available.

## Personal Opinion
Insert why you think this book would be good to read, personally and for the book club here.

### Pros and Cons for the Book Club
#### Pros
* Insert pros here.
#### Cons
* Insert cons here.

## Pictures

[details=“First Three Pages of Chapter One”]
Insert images here (can be photos from you or the internet, or from ebook previews).
[/details]

[details=“Additional Pages”]
Insert a few more images here - try to make them representative.
[/details]

## Difficulty Poll
How much effort would you need to read this book?

[poll type=regular public=true]
* No effort at all
* Minimal effort
* Moderate effort
* Significant effort
* So much effort my head might explode
* I don’t know
[/poll]

Current Proposals

Category 1: easier reading, faster pace

1. 86―エイティシックス―

Author: 安里（アサト）
Illustrator: しらび, I-IV
Length: 344
Nomination Post

第23回電撃小説大賞《大賞》受賞作、堂々発進！最終選考委員と、編集部一同をうならせたエンターテイメントノベルの真・決定版！

サンマグノリア共和国。そこは日々、隣国である「帝国」の無人兵器《レギオン》による侵略を受けていた。しかしその攻撃に対して、共和国側も同型兵器の開発に成功し、辛うじて犠牲を出すことなく、その脅威を退けていたのだった。そう――表向きは。本当は誰も死んでいないわけではなかった。共和国全85区画の外。《存在しない“第86区”》。そこでは「エイティシックス」の烙印を押された少年少女たちが日夜《有人の無人機として》戦い続けていた――。死地へ向かう若者たちを率いる少年・シンと、遥か後方から、特殊通信で彼らの指揮を執る“指揮管制官（ハンドラー）”となった少女・レーナ。二人の激しくも悲しい戦いと、別れの物語が始まる――！

2. クォンタムデビルサーガアバタールチューナーⅠ

Author: 五代ゆう（ごだいゆう）
Illustrator: 前田浩孝（まえだひろたか）
Length: 372
Nomination Post

荒廃の地ジャンクヤードでは、勝利者を楽園へ迎え入れると説く〈カルマ教会〉の支配の下、
６つのトライブがいつ果てるとも知れぬ戦いを続けていた。
しかし、そんなトライブのひとつ〈エンブリオン〉のサーフらが交戦中、
謎の蕾と黒髪の少女セラに遭遇した刹那、世界の掟は根本から覆される。
彼らは状況を探るべく抗戦相手の本拠地を訪れるが、そこで悪魔の力が発動し……

3. マスカレード・ホテル

Author: 東野圭吾（ひがしのけいご）
Length: 515
Nomination Post

都内で起きた不可解な連続殺人事件。容疑者もターゲットも不明。残された暗号から判明したのは、次の犯行場所が一流ホテル・コルテシア東京ということのみ。若き刑事・新田浩介は、ホテルマンに化けて潜入捜査に就くことを命じられる。彼を教育するのは、女性フロントクラークの山岸尚美。次から次へと怪しげな客たちが訪れる中、二人は真相に辿り着けるのか!? 大人気シリーズ第1弾のミリオンセラー。

4. 風の谷のナウシカ

Author: 宮崎駿（みやさきはやお）
Length: 128
Nomination Post

「火の七日間」と呼ばれる戦争によって巨大産業文明が崩壊してから千年。
荒れ果てた大地には「腐海」と呼ばれる有毒の瘴気を発する菌類の森が広がり、
衰退した人間の生存を脅かしていた。酸の海のほとりに、海から吹く風によって
腐海の毒から守られた「風の谷」という辺境の王国があった。そこでは、王女のナウシカを中心に人々は自然を尊び平和に暮らしていたが、大国トルメキア軍の侵略に遭い…。

5. 化物語(上)

Author: 西尾維新
Length: 436
Nomination Post

阿良々木暦を目がけて空から降ってきた女の子・戦場ヶ原ひたぎには、およそ体重と呼べるようなものが、全くと言っていいほど、なかった――!?

6. 虐殺器官 - Genocidal Organ

Author: 伊藤計劃（いとけいかく）
Alias: Project Itoh
Length: 391
Nomination Post

９・11を経て、“テロとの戦い”は転機を迎えていた。先進諸国は徹底的な管理体制に移行してテロを一掃したが、後進諸国では内戦や大規模虐殺が急激に増加していた。米軍大尉クラヴィス・シェパードは、その混乱の陰に常に存在が囁かれる謎の男、ジョン・ポールを追ってチェコへと向かう……彼の目的とはいったいなにか？大量殺戮を引き起こす“虐殺の器官”とは？ゼロ年代最高のフィクションが電子書籍版で登場。

7. ユージニア

Author: 恩田陸（おんだりく）
Length: 420 pages
Nomination Post

8. 蛇にピアス

Author: 金原ひとみ
Length: 124
Nomination Post

9. 感応グラン=ギニョル

Nomination Post

10. 村上海賊の娘

Nomination Post
Length: 343 pages
Author: 和田竜 (Wada Ryou)

Category 2: harder reading, slower pace

1. 檸檬 (角川文庫)

Author: 梶井基次郎（かじいもとじろう）
Length: 276
Nomination Post

私は体調の悪いときに美しいものを見るという贅沢をしたくなる。香りや色に刺激され、丸善の書棚に檸檬一つを置き–。現実に傷つき病魔と闘いながら、繊細な感受性を表した代表作など14編を収録。

2. 風立ちぬ

Author: 堀辰雄（ほりたつお）
Length: 110
Nomination Post

The Wind Has Risen (風立ちぬ – Kaze Tachinu) is a Japanese novel by Hori Tatsuo, written between 1936–37. It is set in a tuberculosis sanitarium in Nagano, Japan. The plot follows a main character identified only with the pronoun “I” as he takes care of his fiancée, and then wife, Setsuko, who has been diagnosed with the disease, deciding to stay with her until her death.

The main character meditates about life and death as he sees her beloved’s condition deteriorating, finally moving with her to a sanatorium surrounded by beauty, and finally discovering that just like the wind rises he can still keep living after her death through the strong bond of their love.

3. 午後の曳航

Author : 三島由紀夫（みしまゆきお）
Length: 208
Nomination Post

船乗り竜二の逞しい肉体と精神に憧れていた登は、母と竜二の抱擁を垣間見て愕然とする。矮小な世間とは無縁であった海の男が結婚を考え、陸の生活に馴染んでゆくとは……。それは登にとって赦しがたい屈辱であり、敵意にみちた現実からの挑戦であった。登は仲間とともに「自分達の未来の姿」を死刑に処すことで大人の世界に反撃する――。少年の透徹した観念の眼がえぐる傑作。

4. 文字渦

Author : 円城塔 (Toh EnJoe)
Length: 302
Nomination Post

昔、文字は本当に生きていたのだと思わないかい?
――秦の始皇帝の兵馬俑から発掘された三万の漢字「文字渦」
――硯のうえで文字を闘わせる、いにしえの言語遊戯「闘字」
――漢字の領土争いにルビの反乱! Unicode宇宙大戦「誤字」
――さらには、恐ろしい大量殺字事件までもが起こり「幻字」

Purchasing Books

Please see the Discussion Thread of the current book for direct purchasing links.

Physical Books

Two good options for purchasing physical books are:

The former has economy shipping options which are likely to be cheaper but slower. You can also check out the Amazon site for your home country, or might be able to find the book on Amazon US.

If you can’t find an online store that will ship to you, you can use a forwarding service like Tenso or White Rabbit Express to forward the package to you for a fee. Alternatively, you may be able to find the book at a local Japanese book store such as Kinokuniya; just google your area.

Book types:

単行本 (たんこうぼん): “stand-alone book”. Hardcover or paperback, denoted by ハードカバー or ソフトカバー. Slightly larger than 文庫本.
文庫本 (ぶんこぼん): small-format paperbacks, cheap but usually well-bound.

eBooks

There are several places you may be able to purchase eBooks:

eBook Japan | no regional restrictions; not Kindle-compatible | see this usage guide
Book Walker | accepts paypal
Honto | not Kindle-compatible; mobile reader app is region-locked – on Android, get an APK, on iOS, use JP App Store
Amazon JP | check out sirvorn’s wonderful guide

Links

Master List of Book Clubs
Discord Read Aloud Server - Used for read aloud sessions for some books, depending on interest from book club participants.

All things subject to change as community wants and needs are gauged.

Naphthalene · July 1, 2020, 11:07pm

Sounds good to me.

That’s hard to say. I would say like the other clubs: one week break between books.
That being said, I understand the point of taking longer breaks, since this club will be more time consuming that the other ones.

We can use the current one. All the other clubs are doing it, it would be weird to have a separate server just for this club.

Also tagging @Kumirei so that they can nominate their book

Shandapanda · July 1, 2020, 11:10pm

Just here to read your interesting posts

Kumirei · July 1, 2020, 11:10pm

Naphthalene · July 1, 2020, 11:17pm

By the way, how many nominations should we consider before a vote? I guess as long as we have 5+, we could set a firm deadline for nominations (e.g. a week) and then put up the poll?

Naphthalene · July 1, 2020, 11:26pm

Forgot to say: you need to have the Regular status to do that. Otherwise, you’ll need a mod to make it a wiki for you.

seanblue · July 2, 2020, 12:53am

That’s only if you guys plan to do a read aloud though, which could be challenging at 30-45 pages per week. 獣の奏者 takes us 1.5-2 hours and that’s when the chapter is 15-20 pages. Granted we’re just chatting for 10-15 minutes at the start and we’re stopping to ask questions, which may not happen much in an advanced club.

The 本好き book or something else?

Naphthalene · July 2, 2020, 1:03am

That’s what the Re: zero club is doing, though? Also I’m not saying we need to read out loud, but if we do, we should use the same server.

Yes.

seanblue · July 2, 2020, 1:05am

Oh yeah, that’s impressive!

Hopefully I can keep up if you pick that one!

NicoleRauch · July 2, 2020, 5:50am

Sounds good!

In the other clubs we sometimes have polls when to start a new book. We could do this here as well to check back with members when they are ready to tackle the next one or whether they need a longer break. Other than that, I’d lean towards Naphthalene 's suggestion of a one week break.

(Copying my thoughts from the previous discussion:)

For the discord channel, I’m not sure about this. We will not be able to read a whole book aloud if we go at that pace, plus we (in the Kemono no Souja read aloud club) have discovered that we hardly post any questions in the threads any more because we discuss them all in the read aloud session… And while I definitely prefer having a quick chat over writing a lenghty post, it kinda dries out the reading threads, which is a pity for those who are not in the live discussion. So, I would actually lean towards not having a discord channel in order to force me to have more discussions in the forums.

For reach, it might be interesting to announce this book club in the Extensive Reading thread and to ping some of the participants from the previous Advanced Book Club discussion thread?

NicoleRauch · July 2, 2020, 7:43am

OK, let’s get cracking

雪国 - Snow Country

by 川端康成 (かわばたやすなり)

Summary

Japanese

『雪国』（ゆきぐに）は、川端康成の長編小説で、名作として国内外で名高い。雪国を訪れた男が、温泉町でひたむきに生きる女たちの諸相、ゆらめき、定めない命の各瞬間の純粋を見つめる物語。愛し生きる女の情熱の美しく哀しい徒労が、男の虚無に研ぎ澄まされた鏡のような心理の抒情に映されながら、美的に抽出されて描かれている。

English

Snow Country is a stark tale of a love affair between a Tokyo dilettante and a provincial geisha that takes place in the remote onsen town of Yuzawa.

Trivia:
“Snow country” is a literal translation of the Japanese title " Yukiguni ". The name comes from the place where the story takes place, where Shimamura arrives in a train coming through a long tunnel under the border mountains between the Gunma (Kozuke no kuni) and Niigata (Echigo no kuni) Prefectures. Sitting at the foot of mountains, on the north side, this region receives a huge amount of snow in winter because of the northern winds coming across the Sea of Japan. The winds accumulate moisture over the sea and deposit it as snow while running up against the mountains. The snow reaches four to five meters in depth, sometimes isolating the region’s towns and villages from others. The lonely atmosphere suggested by the title is infused throughout the book.

Availability

Amazon
Bookwalker

Personal Opinion

This book is a classic of Japanese literature. The author was the first Japanese person to receive the Noble prize for literature, and this book (together with two others) was mentioned by the committee.

Whenever I mentioned this book, (Japanese) people kept telling me that it is hard, so we might want to pick a slower pace. I don’t really know the exact reason for this, though, as the Japanese does not seem to be especially hard or old (where I looked at it).
Wikipedia might give a hint as why it has this reputation:
" Edward Seidensticker, noted scholar of Japanese literature whose English translation of the novel was published in 1956, described the work as “perhaps Kawabata’s masterpiece.” According to him, the novel reminds of haiku, both for its many delicate contrapuntal touches and its use of brief scenes to tell a larger story."
So probably it is more the contents that makes it hard to understand than the language.

Pros and Cons for the Book Club

Pros

Japanese classic
Not too long (224 pages) so we can take our time with it
Author received Noble price

Cons

Probably not much action
Probably very philosophical and therefore hard to digest

Pictures

Note: page numbers are from an ebook and do not correspond to the real pages.

First Three Pages of Chapter One

Additional Pages

Difficulty Poll

How much effort would you need to read this book?

No effort at all
Minimal effort
Moderate effort
Significant effort
So much effort my head might explode
I don’t know

0 voters

Naphthalene · July 2, 2020, 12:04pm

checks text

御機嫌よろしゅうございます

I mean, I’m not against it though. 苦しゅうない!

NicoleRauch · July 2, 2020, 12:10pm

Heeey! I said

right after what you quoted

catbus · July 2, 2020, 5:12pm

I already have this book, so I would be a vote for it. I’ve been wanting to read something more literary, it seemed interesting, and I had to add some books to an order to make shipping worth it.

Azmo · July 2, 2020, 6:44pm

Coming in swinging, @NicoleRauch. I would love to.

Also, @Naphthalene proposed waiting until there are at least 5 nominations, then we can set a firm deadline––probably a week later––for any other nominations to come in and for votes to be cast. That seems like a good idea unless anyone objects.

NicoleRauch · July 2, 2020, 6:57pm

I’m planning to propose a book per day until somebody tells me to stop

But I do hope that some others step up as well and propose something!

By the way, would it be a showstopper for a nomination if there were no ebook? In the other bookclubs we have no fixed rule for this, but I cannot recall that we actually had a nomination without ebook.
I’m asking because my bookshelf (and my list of recommendations) contains a bunch of books that are only available in printed form, so I’m wondering whether I should rather not nominate those?

Azmo · July 2, 2020, 6:58pm

Great idea. I’ll go make an announcement post. When you say ping… I @ them in this thread?

NicoleRauch · July 2, 2020, 6:59pm

Yep, that’s what I was thinking.

seanblue · July 2, 2020, 6:59pm

Because this book club will have dual harder+slower / easier+faster books to vote on, the book selection poll should probably indicate if it’ll follow the slower or faster pace.

Azmo · July 2, 2020, 7:03pm

*licks lips* Two categories: slow and hard, or quick and easy. Say no more.

Poll #	Date	#Voters	Winner
Poll 1	2020.07.09	27	本好きの下剋上	nomination
Poll 2	2020.09.18	24	雪国	nomination
Poll 3	2020.12.04	17	容疑者Xの献身	nomination
Poll 4	2021.02.25	18	すべてがFになる	nomination
Poll 5	2021.05.18	20	人間失格	nomination
Poll 6	2021.08.05	15	乳と卵	nomination
	Tie-Breaker for #2	13	パノラマ島綺譚	nomination
Poll 7	2021.11.20 + tie poll	15	本陣殺人事件	nomination
			薬屋のひとりごと	nomination
Poll 8	2022.04.15	25	海辺のカフカ	nomination
Poll 9	2022.07.14	21	狼と香辛料	nomination

Book	1st time	2nd time	3rd time	Removed
アウト (OUT) 上	Poll 2	Poll 3	Poll 4	2021-03-02
薮の中・将軍	Poll 3	Poll 4	Poll 5	2021-05-22
騎士団長殺し第１部	Poll 4	Poll 5	Poll 6	2021-08-09
86―エイティシックス―	Poll 9
風立ちぬ	Poll 9

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