Healing fictions are selling big; what does that mean for crime fiction? Japanese healing fiction bestsellers include Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s series set in a magical cafe in Tokyo where customers can travel back in time ‘before the coffee gets cold.’ It’s sold 6 million copies worldwide in many languages.
I've read the kamogawa food detectives and what you are looking for is in the library. I preferred the kamogawa food detectives, but what most stood out for me, and was more obvious in the second kamogawa book, was how formulaic they were. Of course, crime novels tend to be formulaic too, but usually over the whole book. In the Japanese books, the formula repeats every section even down to wording in places. This is not necessarily a bad thing though when it becomes too obvious it might. It does make the books quick to read and they are nice and short without all the extraneous padding that a lot of crime authors seem to be adding these days - great chunks of irrelevant history and description, route details taken from google maps.
Of course we are reading translations here - my understanding of japanese is very very basic - so we are seeing them filtered through the translator which must affect things in some way. Most of us are less familiar with the cultural nuances too so anachronisms and errors don't jump out at us. (I'm only saying that because I've just been reading a series with many anachronisms and misused words and it has annoyed me so much :-) )
I have to say that I hadn't heard them described as healing fictions before. I always tend to read books where it all works out in the end and there's no sadness - I never read anything described as "moving" - so maybe that's why I quite liked them. There's a series on Netflix called (I think) Tokyo Diner which has been around for a while and falls into this genre. I enjoyed it a lot. Samurai Gourmet might also fall into it to.
I'm annoyed by all the dream books (which I haven't read) because I'm trying to write something involving dreams and, if I ever finish it, everyone will say I copied them when I was completely unaware of them :-(
I really appreciate all your thoughts on this sub-genre! My preference in genre fiction is for books that push the limits of the formulas, not repeat them without innovation. Maybe such repetition is reassuring in an age of uncertainty, but I think we need more creativity if we're going to survive as a species and even thrive. And the point you make about translation is on point. Translating a language that uses characters to English must be hideously difficult, but there's no excuse for the errors you found. I wonder if the translations NY publishers are now putting out will be better. In any case, your take on healing fictions suggests they're not going to undercut crime fiction anytime soon.
I'm not sure the original being written in a character language is a really issue - the hard thing is conveying the cultural nuances and references usefully. There's some interesting discussions around about translating Murakami - one example of difficulty is that that there are different versions of I in Japanese (boku and watashi for two - I think there's a female variant too). Boku is more familiar and coarser, watashi more formal. Hard to do in English though you could do it using dialect I suppose. Another example, entirely unrelated to text, is Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, the film by Almodovar where (I have read) the upper class characters speak with lower class accents and vice versa. That doesn't come across in subtitles :-)
There is something, though, about translations from Japanese which might contribute to the "healing". There is this strange slightly odd feeling about reading Murakami, Banana Yoshimoto and others. It's like being a metre outside your body. I haven't done well with Japanese detective fiction though, what little there is in translation. I can't think of authors off the top of my head.
Conveying subtleties like people of one class faking the speech of a different class requires clever use of language in writing. And so much cultural context doesn't survive translation. Probably these novels can move easily into other languages because they're simple. Plot translates, nuance doesn't do so well.
I've read the kamogawa food detectives and what you are looking for is in the library. I preferred the kamogawa food detectives, but what most stood out for me, and was more obvious in the second kamogawa book, was how formulaic they were. Of course, crime novels tend to be formulaic too, but usually over the whole book. In the Japanese books, the formula repeats every section even down to wording in places. This is not necessarily a bad thing though when it becomes too obvious it might. It does make the books quick to read and they are nice and short without all the extraneous padding that a lot of crime authors seem to be adding these days - great chunks of irrelevant history and description, route details taken from google maps.
Of course we are reading translations here - my understanding of japanese is very very basic - so we are seeing them filtered through the translator which must affect things in some way. Most of us are less familiar with the cultural nuances too so anachronisms and errors don't jump out at us. (I'm only saying that because I've just been reading a series with many anachronisms and misused words and it has annoyed me so much :-) )
I have to say that I hadn't heard them described as healing fictions before. I always tend to read books where it all works out in the end and there's no sadness - I never read anything described as "moving" - so maybe that's why I quite liked them. There's a series on Netflix called (I think) Tokyo Diner which has been around for a while and falls into this genre. I enjoyed it a lot. Samurai Gourmet might also fall into it to.
I'm annoyed by all the dream books (which I haven't read) because I'm trying to write something involving dreams and, if I ever finish it, everyone will say I copied them when I was completely unaware of them :-(
I really appreciate all your thoughts on this sub-genre! My preference in genre fiction is for books that push the limits of the formulas, not repeat them without innovation. Maybe such repetition is reassuring in an age of uncertainty, but I think we need more creativity if we're going to survive as a species and even thrive. And the point you make about translation is on point. Translating a language that uses characters to English must be hideously difficult, but there's no excuse for the errors you found. I wonder if the translations NY publishers are now putting out will be better. In any case, your take on healing fictions suggests they're not going to undercut crime fiction anytime soon.
I'm not sure the original being written in a character language is a really issue - the hard thing is conveying the cultural nuances and references usefully. There's some interesting discussions around about translating Murakami - one example of difficulty is that that there are different versions of I in Japanese (boku and watashi for two - I think there's a female variant too). Boku is more familiar and coarser, watashi more formal. Hard to do in English though you could do it using dialect I suppose. Another example, entirely unrelated to text, is Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, the film by Almodovar where (I have read) the upper class characters speak with lower class accents and vice versa. That doesn't come across in subtitles :-)
There is something, though, about translations from Japanese which might contribute to the "healing". There is this strange slightly odd feeling about reading Murakami, Banana Yoshimoto and others. It's like being a metre outside your body. I haven't done well with Japanese detective fiction though, what little there is in translation. I can't think of authors off the top of my head.
I'm rambling now :-)
Conveying subtleties like people of one class faking the speech of a different class requires clever use of language in writing. And so much cultural context doesn't survive translation. Probably these novels can move easily into other languages because they're simple. Plot translates, nuance doesn't do so well.