Surely many of you, including overseas readers of The Japan Times online, live within 100 km of a Japanese-language bookstore or a university with a collection of Japanese books. Japanese literature is available, but confronting the sheer volume of offerings can be overwhelming.
For me, it was helpful to isolate just three major Japanese authors as a starting point. The inspiration for this strategy came when an enthusiastic student at the Japanese university where I teach English asked me for a few suggestions of excellent American authors. He hoped to gain a deeper understanding of my home culture and society by reading a major American novel.
I was thrilled and challenged by his request and directed him toward John Steinbeck, Thomas Wolfe and Mark Twain. My favorite work by the great Californian, Steinbeck, is "East of Eden." Wolfe, my own homeboy, (we both hail from Asheville, N.C.) wrote the best novel I have ever devoured, "Look Homeward, Angel." And through Twain's "Huckleberry Finn," I was confident my student could begin to understand the Mississippi River, slavery, American dialects -- and even the American personality.