Not mentioning the war...

The photo you see to the left is a little souvenir from my time in Germany, now (unbelievably) over a decade ago, and this little pennant is serving as an introduction to the next in my series of posts on my reading interests and influences. More on the pennant later...

I was introduced to German (by which I mean literature written in German, not just books from Germany) when studying the language for A-Level. We had a small class (only five people - there were six, but one girl did the test lessons at the end of the fifth year and promptly chickened out), which allowed us to discuss the books we were studying in more depth (and which even led to our finishing our A-Level revision at our teacher's house over tea and chicken soup!). The first book we read, 'Der Richter und sein Henker' by the Swiss writer Friedrich Dürrenmatt, was a marvellous literary crime novel and is still one of my favourite books today. Along with this novel, we read Hans Fallada's 'Kleiner Mann, was nun?', Max Frisch's play 'Andorra' and Brecht's 'Mutter Courage', and, for me, it was a revelation that it was possible to read novels in a foreign language (albeit very slowly and with the aid of a dictionary) and enjoy them.

I read some more works in an ill-fated (and ill-advised) attempt to get into Oxford, but the next lot of reading came when I started my Bachelor's degree at Leeds University. The first year was fairly easy (Leeds had been wonderful enough to choose most of my previous books for the first-year set-text list), so it wasn't until the second year that I got into some new works. As well as diving further into Dürrenmatt with 'Der Verdacht', 'Das Versprechen' and his famous play 'Der Besuch der Alten Dame', I was also introduced to Kafka in the form of 'Die Verwandlung' ('The Metamorphosis').

On finally moving to Germany, firstly during my third year, for what was loosely described as 'study' (but can more truthfully be described as drinking, sleeping and playing football with the Dutch boys down the corridor), and later for work (although at that early stage, my 'work' consisted mainly of my giving German businessmen something to read and then getting them to chat about it in pairs), I discovered that it's difficult to keep up a good reading regime when you don't actually earn very much money (and have no idea where the local library is). It is to this situation that I owe the pleasure of possessing a small collection of cheap German chick-lit and a translated Agatha Christie omnibus. Ouch.

Now I work at a big university with a lovely little second-hand book shop, and it is here that I discovered my next big German author, Heinrich Böll. The Nobel prize committee did discover him in 1972, but (to be fair) I wasn't alive then. Better late than never...

If you have been waiting patiently for me to tell you why I like German books, I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed; I really can't say. Part of my reason for reading them stems from not wanting to lose the language proficiency I had built up to a reasonably high level by the time I left in 1999 while another reason is to see life from a different perspective. Damn, didn't want to mention it... You see, a lot of my reading has been from the twentieth century, and anyone with a passing interest in history (or just the Earth in general) will know that this period lends itself to certain themes in German lit. Whether it's the futility of war portrayed in Remarque's 'Im Westen nichts neues' ('All Quiet on the Western Front'), the attraction of the Nazis to a struggling family man in 'Kleiner Mann was nun?', the difficulties of surviving the war at home in Böll's 'Gruppenbild mit Dame' or the absurdity of Nazi sympathisers being able to transform themselves into solid, democratic citizens in post-war times ('Ansichten eines Clowns', 'Billard um halbzehn'): it's difficult not to mention the war...

Still, enough of that for now. Give a German book a go and you won't regret it (and if you do, don't blame me). Oh, you want to hear about the pennant; I'd almost forgotten about that. You see, one of my other passions is football, and I spent two seasons playing for the fourth team of my local club, making some good friends along the way. When it was finally time for me to move on and leave Germany for good, I packed up my things and walked down to the train station to get the NRW-Express to Düsseldorf airport. When I got to the platform, I found four of my team-mates who had come along to say goodbye, and one of them presented me with this pennant from our football club as a final present (in addition to the parties and barbecues we'd had as formal farewells). It now hangs just to the side of where I am writing this post as a reminder of the times I had back in Germany; perhaps as a reminder as to why I continue to read German books.

Turning Japanese

I am now on page 850 of my current book, which means I have just over 600 pages to go - so no surprise that I haven't been quite as regular in my reviews as I usually am. Rest assured, I should be back on reviewing duties by the end of next week at the latest (provided that my wretched back doesn't take another turn for the worse).

Instead, of the aforementioned non-existent review, I thought I'd start a little series in which I look at what I'm reading and why. All of us have our own preferences and reading niches (both literal and metaphorical), so today I'll talk a little about one of mine. Are you sitting comfortably? No? Well, what do you expect me to do about it? Some people...

The observant among you (if there are any) will have already noticed the picture above, which gives away the theme of today's post - if the title hadn't given you enough of a hint. Yes, I'd like to talk about Japanese Literature and how I came to like it, even if I haven't really read enough so far to really be able to talk about the whole 'genre' in any depth. Those of you who have great eyesight (or know how to click on a photo) will have spotted that my Japanese shelf, soon to overflow and start a territorial war with the Chinese and Russian shelf just over the border (which is, historically, both apt and very unfortunate), consists of Yoko Ogawa's 'The Housekeeper and the Professor', a few Banana Yoshimoto books, three works by Yukio Mishima and every novel by Haruki Murakami which has so far appeared in English (even if one of them is a print-off of a bootleg PDF floating in cyberspace). But why?

Let's go back in time (cue Scooby Doo-type sound effects). My first experience with Japanese was back in sixth form when it was offered as an elective. For six weeks, twenty seventeen-year-old boys went through the first few chapters of the seminal (and highly boring) 'Japanese for Busy People', struggling to copy out hiragana and laughing ourselves silly at the American man on the tape (especially the way he said 'vocabulary' - it just cracked us up for some reason). After six weeks, the teacher got fed up and changed to something else which was so tedious that I no longer remember it. However, that short time was the seed for later experiences...

The next brush with Japanese occurred when I was at university. I was in my final year, an Arts student with no idea what to do after graduation, when I heard about the JET programme and applied to go and teach in Japan. In order to do well at the interview, I bought a few books and even looked up some stuff on something called 'the internet', a new invention which some computers could access (simpler times). After the interview, I was put on the waiting list, but, by the time I was offered a position, I had already accepted a job in Germany...

I stayed in Germany for two years, and it was great: I played football every weekend, got drunk with my team-mates, taught English (first in a grammar school and then in a private language school) and generally lazed around. Unfortunately, lazing around paid little (my job not much more), and I had a sizeable overdraft which my bank, somewhat unreasonably, seemed to want paid back. Then, one day, I got a letter from my mum with an advert for teaching in Japan inserted (either she knew I was interested in Japan, or she really wanted to get rid of me). Anyway, a couple of trips to London later, and it was Tschüss to Deutschland and Konnichi-Wa to Nihon!

I stayed in Japan for three years, mainly because I met my wife there and thought it would be a good idea to hang around. We both worked for a well-known company which first shafted me royally and then went bankrupt (I'm claiming a connection), but I worked for another language school in the final two of my three years there. So this is where I learned to love Japanese literature, right? Uh, no. In fact, if you're an English speaker and interested in reading Japanese books, Japan is the last place you would go as they're pretty expensive and ALL IN JAPANESE! In fact, the author I got into most during my time in Japan was Anthony Trollope as the English second-hand bookshop in Kobe had most of the Barchester Chronicles in stock. How bizarre...

In 2002, my wife and I moved to Australia (mainly because that's where she lived), and, one day, my wife went to the library and came back with a book of short stories by a Japanese writer (Haruki Murakami's 'After the Quake') because she was feeling 'natsukashii' for Japan. She hated it, I loved it, and you can imagine the rest. Since then, I've read all the fiction he's had translated into English and started branching out into the works of other authors (in part, thanks to Bellezza's 'Japanese Literature Challenge').

And that's it: me and Japanese books. The floor is now open for questions.