Japanese and Singaporean Literature PDF

The literature of Singapore comprises a collection of literary works by Singaporeans in any of the country’s four main languages: English, Chinese, Malay and Tamil. A number of Singaporean writers such as Tan Swie Hian and Kuo Pao Kun have contributed work in more than one language. ...

The literature of Singapore comprises a collection of literary works by Singaporeans in any of the country’s four main languages: English, Chinese, Malay and Tamil. A number of Singaporean writers such as Tan Swie Hian and Kuo Pao Kun have contributed work in more than one language.  Heis a Singaporean multidisciplinary artist known for his contemporary Chinese calligraphy, chinese poetry and contemporary art sculptures found in Singapore and many parts of the world. -The Giant in 1968 -publish 35 publications of poetry, essays and stories. Tan Swie Hian - Chavalier de I'Ordre des Arts et Lettres by French Government for his initiatory Chinese translations of works by Beckett and Romanian writer Marin Sorescu. - In 1987, he was awarded the Cultural Medallion in Singapore. - In 1998, he won the Marin Sorescu International Poetry Prize in Romania.  - was a playwright, theatre director, and arts activist in Singapore who wrote and directed both Mandarin and English plays. - He founded three arts and drama centres in Singapore - was awarded the Cultural Medallion in 1990 for his contributions to Singapore theatre Kuo Pao Kun - His plays are characterized for their dramatic and social commentary, use of simple metaphors and multiculturalism themes, and have been staged locally and internationally. - The Coffin is Too Big for the Hole Descendants of the Eunuch Admiral There were varying levels of activity in succeeding decades, with poets in the late 1980s and early 1990s including Simon Tay, Leong Liew Geok, Koh Buck Song, Heng Siok Tian and Ho Poh Fun. The poetry of this younger generation is often politically aware, transnational and cosmopolitan, yet frequently presents their intensely focused, self-questioning and highly individualised perspectives of Singaporean life, society and culture.  He is a Singaporean law professor, author, and former Nominated Member of Parliament. He has two collections of poetry; Prism (1980) and 5 (1985). Simon Tay His novel, City of Small Blessings (2009), won the 2010 Singapore Literature Prize. Seong Chee and his non-fiction book Asia Alone: The Dangerous Post-Crisis Divide from America (2009) was reviewed by The Economist and The Financial Times.  Leong Liew Geok (1947, Penang, Malaysia–) is a renowned local poet. She was one of the 10 Singaporeans selected for American publisher W. W. Norton’s 2008 international anthology featuring 440 poems by 440 poets. Leong Liew Geok Leong’s writings portray the struggles that modern women face in trying to find a balance between work and their family roles. While Leong has said that she is not a feminist, her writings have focused on women’s issues, particularly the demands on a woman in terms of work and family. The 1998 anthology that Leong edited, More Than Half the Sky: Creative Writings by Thirty Singaporean Women, has also been lauded.  He is a Singaporean writer. He is the author and editor of more than 30 books, and works as a writer, editor and consultant in branding, communications strategy and corporate social responsibility in Singapore. Poetry 1992: A Brief History of Toa Payoh and Other Poems. Koh Buck Song 2001: The Worth of Wonder. 2003: The Ocean of Ambition. Koh worked as a journalist at The Straits Times Koh was also an editor for Singa, a journal on literature and the arts in Singapore.  She is a Singaporean poet and educator She has published five volumes of poetry: Crossing the Chopsticks and Other Poems (1993), My City, My Canvas (1999),Contouring (2004), Is My Body a Heng Siok Tian Myth (2011) and Mixing Tongues. In 1991, she staged her play The Lift. In 1994, it was read at the 3rd International Women's Playwrights' Conference in Adelaide, Australia.  Singaporean poet and teacher. Her short story, When The Tabebuia Bloomed At Soo Chow Gardens, first appeared in Tanjong Rhu And Other Stories (1986), a collection of four prize-winning entries from the 1982 Short Story Writing Competition organised by Ho Poh Fun the former Ministry of Culture. The collection of 68 poems, ranging from the early work Sennett Road '66 to the titular Katong, one of her best- known pieces, records snapshots of experiences connected closely to places in Singapore. With the independence of Singapore in 1965, a new wave of Singapore writing emerged, led by Edwin Thumboo, Arthur Yap, Robert Yeo, Goh Poh Seng, Lee Tzu Pheng and Chandran Nair. Poetry is the predominant mode of expression; it has a small but respectable following since independence, and most published works of Singapore writing in English have been in poetry.  He is a Singaporean poet and academic who is regarded as one of the pioneers of English literature in Singapore. Edwin Thumboo Thumboo wrote his first poem, Kelong in 1949. History is often represented in Thumboo’s works. He shares, “...History enters my writing, as it ought to enter the writing of others, because of its importance in our lives.  He was a Singaporean poet, writer and painter. His first collection of poems Only Lines was published in 1971, when he was Arthur Yap 28 Chioh Hiong In 1998, Yap received the Montblanc-NUS Centre for the Arts Literary Award for English.  A Singaporean poet. She has five volumes of poems to her name; of these, the first three, Prospect of a Drowning (1980), Against the Next Wave (1988) and The Brink of An Amen (1991) were winners of the National Book Development Council of Singapore (NBDCS) Award. In 1985 Tzu Pheng won the Cultural Medallion (Literature), Singapore’s highest award for excellence in the arts, and in Anne Lee Lee 1987 was named Singapore’s winner of the prestigious S.E.A. Tzu Pheng (Southeast Asia) WRITE award. Some of her poems have been set to music for choral performance. Her latest poetry collection, Catching Connections (2012), strongly references the Catholic religion she adopted in 1989.  He was a Singaporean poet and retired Director and Mediator of UNESCO in Paris. He was founder President of the Society of Singapore Writers from 1976 to 1981. His first book of poems, Once The Horsemen and Other Chandran Nair Poems, (University Education Press, Singapore), was published in 1972. His poem "Grandfather" has been used by the University of Cambridge International Examinations Board for their examination papers. Drama in English found expression in Goh Poh Seng, who was also a notable poet and novelist, in Robert Yeo, author of 6 plays, and in Kuo Pao Kun, who also wrote in Chinese. The late Kuo was a vital force in the local threatre renaissance in the 1980s and 1990s. Fiction writing in English did not start in earnest until after independence. Short stories flourished as a literary form, the novel arrived much later. Goh Poh Seng remains a pioneer in writing novels well before many of the later generation, with titles like If We Dream Too Long (1972) – widely recognised as the first true Singaporean novel – and A Dance of Moths (1995). The Taximan’s Story by Catherine Lim “Little Ironies”: Stories of Singapore Catherine Lim Poh Imm - considered to be the leading figure of Singaporean stories. - she is a writer of nine collections of short stories, five novels, two poetry collections and numerous political commentaries and best known for her collection of short stories such as Little Ironies: first book of Catherine. -one of the 17 short stories of the book “Little Ironies: Stories of Singapore”and Lim’s very first published book.  JAPANESE LITERATURE Japanese literature has been influenced heavily by the Chinese literature from the ancient period all the way to the Edo Period (1603-1868) which corresponds to the early modern Japanese literature. Japanese literary works also reveal elements of Indian and later of Western elements but above all, they reveal a distinct style which has also greatly influenced both Eastern and Western literatures. Japanese literature can be divided into four periods: the ancient, classical, medieval, and modern. Ancient literature in Japan deals primarily with myths and legends. Tales like the creation of Japan, where the islands came from the gemstones imbued in the swords of gods are very prominent during this period. The celebrated writers during this period are Ono Yasumaro, Nihon Shoki, and Man’yoshu who wrote based on real events in the country. Yasumaro was a Japanese nobleman and chronicler of folklore and myth who is most remembered for his work on the Kojiki, and his likely work on the Nihon, both of which were early Japanese chronicles of folklore, mythology and the Japanese creation myth. The Nihon Shoki, “The Chronicles of Japan,” is the second oldest book of Japanese history. It contains more detailed and elaborate ancient written texts than the Kojiki, and is considered the most complete extant historical records for many archeologists and historians. The Man'yōshū is the oldest extant collection of Japanese waka, compiled sometime after AD 759 during the Nara period. The classical literature in Japan occurred during the golden age, the Heian period. Murasaki Shikibu, one of the greatest Japanese writers, wrote the seminal text, Tale of Genji. Tale of Genji, considered the world’s first novel, is a very charming and accurate depiction of the Japanese court during the Heian period under the reign of Empress Akiko. History and literature were intertwined during the Medieval period due to the influence of the civil wars and the emergence of the warrior class. Thus, war tales are very prominent during this period. Besides war stories and tales, the popular form of Japanese poetry, the renga, saw its rise. renga genre of Japanese linked-verse poetry in which two or more poets supplied alternating sections of a poem. Modern literature can be further divided into early modern, which happened during the Edo period, and modern, which started during the Meiji period, when Japan opened its doors to the West. The early modern gave way to the rise of new genres like the Japanese drama, kabuki, the poetry form known for its simplicity and subtlety, haiku, and the yomihon, a type of Japanese book which put little emphasis on illustration. Kabuki, traditional Japanese popular drama with singing and dancing performed in a highly stylized manner. The term kabuki originally suggested the unorthodox and shocking character of this art form. In modern Japanese, the word is written with three characters: ka, signifying “song”; bu, “dance”; and ki, “skill.” yomihon, (Japanese: “books for reading”) a subgenre of gesaku, a type of popular Japanese literature of the Tokugawa, or Edo, period (1603– 1867). These novels were openly moralistic romances, and their highly schematized characters often included witches, fairy princesses, and impeccably noble gentlemen. The modern period also marked the emergence of new styles of writing. Japanese writers started to romanticize and tried experimenting with different genres and subject matters. The Second World War heavily affected Japanese literature but soon, the distinct Japanese style of writing manage to regain its popularity. Some of the prominent modern Japanese writers are Yasunari Kawabata, Kobi Abe, Takiji Kobayashi, and Haruki Murakami to mention a few. Yasunari Kawabata was a Japanese novelist and short story writer whose spare, lyrical, subtly-shaded prose works won him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968, the first Japanese author to receive the award. Snow Country, The Master of Go, The Dancing Girl of Izu, The Old Capital Kōbō Abe, pen name of Kimifusa Abe , March 7, 1924 – January 22, 1993), was a Japanese writer, playwright, musician, photographer and inventor. The Woman in the Dunes, The Face of Another, The Box Man Absurdist fiction is a genre of novels, plays, poems, films, or other media that focuses on the experiences of characters in situations where they cannot find any inherent purpose in life, most often represented by ultimately meaningless actions and events that call into question the certainty of existential concepts such as truth or value Takiji Kobayashi October 13, 1903 – February 20, 1933) was a Japanese author of proletarian literature. He is best known for his short novel Kanikōsen, or Crab Cannery Ship, published in 1929. It tells the story of the hard life of cannery workers, fishermen and seamen on board a cannery ship and the beginning of their revolt against the company and its managers. The proletariat are members of the working class. The proletarian novel is a subgenre of the novel, written by workers mainly for other workers.. Proletarian literature is created especially by communist, socialist, and anarchist authors. The proletariat are members of the working class. The proletarian novel is a subgenre of the novel, written by workers mainly for other workers.... Proletarian literature is created especially by communist, socialist, and anarchist authors. Haruki Murakami born January 12, 1949 is a Japanese writer. His novels, essays, and short stories have been bestsellers in Japan as well as internationally, with his work translated into 50 languages and selling millions of copies outside Japan. He has received numerous awards for his work, including the Gunzou Prize for New Writers, the World Fantasy Award, the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award Norwegian Wood (1987) The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1994–95) Kafka on the Shore (2002) 1Q84 (2010)  The Boy Named Crow (an excerpt from Kafka on the Shore) by Haruki Murakami