The Private Library

The Japanese Literature Publishing Project and The Private Library

If you are like most Western book collectors, you probably have little familiarity with Japanese literature. Perhaps because the Japanese language relies on three different writing systems (two of which are syllabary systems), this writer has encountered few private collections of Japanese literature that were not assembled by native speakers of the language.

This is unfortunate, for not only has Japan produced some of the world's greatest literature, it has produced some of the earliest surviving forms of world literature. Among these are one of the earliest surviving examples of the novel (The Tale of Genji); one of the world's earliest surviving examples of a story involving time travel (Urashima Tarō); Man'yōshū, one of the world's earliest surviving poetry anthologies; and Konjaku Monogatarishū, a 31-volume compilation of very early folktales from Japan, China and India, of which 28 volumes survive.

  

Western book collectors might be more familiar with Japanese literature if such literature were widely translated into Western languages, but such is not the case.   The Japanese language is only partly to blame for this situation.  History, too, is a culprit.

For over two hundred years, from ca. 1633-1853, Japan was largely isolated from the West. This at the very time when much other world literature was undergoing enormous change, and when the products of such change were being translated into a wide variety of European vernacular languages.

By contrast, the first translation of Japanese literature into German didn't take place until 1847. (Because August Pfizmaier's translation of Ryutei Tanehiko's 1821 story Ukiyoe Six-Paneled Folding Screen included reproductions of the original Japanese text and illustrations, this work became the first Japanese text ever printed in Europe from movable types, the font having been cast in the previous year, at Pfizmaier's direction, for the Imperial printing office in Vienna. The copy to your left is via the Tokyo Printing Museum.)

The Tale of Genji, the work of Japanese literature perhaps best known to Western book collectors, did not receive its first English-language translation until 1882, and its first complete English-language translation (by Arthur Waley) did not see its sixth and final volume published until 1933.

For reasons both linguistic and historical, then, most works of Japanese literature, like most Japanese authors, remain virtually unknown in the West. The exceptions (think modern Japanese authors Banana Yoshimoto and Haruki Murakami, for example, or Nobel Laureates Yasunari Kawabata and Kenzaburō Ōe) stand out precisely because their works have been translated into numerous Western languages.

  

This blinkered neglect of Japan's literary traditions by the West, though, may slowly be changing.  In 2002, Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs launched a bold initiative to better promote Japanese literature worldwide.  The Japanese Literature Publishing Project (JLPP) is designed to promote Japanese literature of the past 150 years by arranging overseas publication in a variety of (mostly Western) languages. As of 2010, 121 titles had been selected for translation, with more to come. (The publishing cycle is such that new titles are selected roughly every two years, which means that in 2012 we likely will see a new round of titles selected.)

  

Besides English, initial titles have been published in French, German, Russian, Portugese and Turkish. To insure the highest quality translations possible, JLPP also instituted, in 2011, the 1st JLPP Translation Competition.

  

So far as this writer has been able to determine, this is the very first translation of many of these titles into any Western language.  A ground-floor opportunity for book collectors so inclined....

FB&C and The Private Library

As many longtime TPL readers are aware, for the past couple of years it has been this writer's privilege and honor to contribute an occasional piece to the Fine Books & Collections Blog, official blog of Fine Books & Collections, the magazine (better known to its many fans as FB&C).

  

Founded back in 2003 as OP magazine, and now under the capable editorial direction of Rebecca Rego Barry, FB&C is one of the finest magazines of its type that remains in print. It regularly features compelling news and articles about every aspect of book collecting, and numbers among its regular contributors such worthies as Nicholas Basbanes, Joel Silver, Jeremy Dibbell, Nate Pedersen ... to name only a few who come immediately to mind.  

If you have any interest at all in collecting the printed book, your faithful blogger considers FB&C a must buy ... and cheap (only U.S. $25.00 for four print issues per year).  FB&C also sponsors a companion free monthly eNewsletter, delivered directly to the email address of your choice.

  

I bring FB&C to your attention because print magazines devoted to book collecting are few and far between.  Without the active financial support of readers, such magazines tend to cease publication, never again to be seen.  

FB&C itself disappeared from print a while back, only to be resurrected.  That alone, in this writer's humble opinion, deserves the respect and support of everyone who still collects the printed book....

From The Private Library's Archives: The World's Greatest Independent Booksellers and The Private Library (cont.)

We have observed in several previous posts (see, for example, our post of 20 June 2009) that if history has taught us anything, it is that some folks prefer their ideas to everyone else's ideas. This simple fact has led to the destruction of countless libraries, public and private, over the centuries.

But it also has led to the shuttering, and persecution (and often prosecution), of countless independent booksellers over the centuries as well.  In our own times, few independent booksellers have stood against the pernicious and malevolent influences of groupthink (or suffered the consequences of their opposition) as well as City Lights, the infamous (and beloved) San Francisco bookseller and publisher:

Founded in 1953 by Peter D. Martin, City Lights Books was the first all paperback bookstore in the USA. 

Martin had previously established a magazine named City Lights (after the Charlie Chaplin film) to publish Bay Area writers. This led to one of the magazine's writers, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, going into partnership with Martin later in 1953.  In 1955, the two launched a book-publishing venture, City Lights Publishing.  (Martin sold his share of the businesses to Ferlinghetti later that same year and moved to New York, where he opened New Yorker Bookstore, which specialized in cinema.)

Ferlinghetti was born in Yonkers, New York, though much of his early childhood was spent in France (he eventually would earn a Ph.D. at the Sorbonne).  He served in the Navy during World War II (taking part in the Normandy assault).  At the time he met Martin, Ferlinghetti was working in San Francisco as a painter, art critic and was teaching French for an adult education program.

It was City Lights publishing and promotion of the so-called Beat Poets that first, and most famously, brought this landmark bookseller into conflict with the "powers that be."  When City Lights published and sold copies of Allen Ginsberg's Howl and Other Poems (number four in the publisher's Pocket Poet Series), Ferlinghetti was arrested on obscenity charges, though later acquitted in a landmark court case that established a legal precedent for the publication and distribution of controversial works of "redeeming social importance:"

As other tenants moved out of its building, City Lights took over their space, eventually acquiring the entire building.  It now offers three floors of both hardbacks and paperbacks, including many titles that other bookstores are unwilling to handle.  

In 2001, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors took the unusual step of designating both the building and the business an historic landmark for "playing a seminal role in the literary and cultural development of San Francisco and the nation."  A few years earlier (1998), Ferlinghetti--the author of more than thirty books of poetry--was named San Francisco's first Poet Laureate:

And the beat goes on....