Japanese literature and me

I am coming with a new kind of article that I hope you will like and maybe I will come with more of them in the future.

Today, I am going to talk about why I love Japanese literature. It will start from my childhood and end with my relationship with it now.

Everything started when I was 6 or 7 years old, I would watch Wednesday afternoon cartoons. Those cartoons were, in reality, Japanese animes. I watched and loved animes like CardCaptor Sakura, Olive et Tom, Princesse Sarah and many more. I spent a great time watching them, and it was my first glimpse into the Japanese world. At that period, as I didn’t know that it was anime neither, I knew that it was based on books called mangas.

Years later, I was 15 or 16 years old, I started to talk to people who had a collection of mangas, so I became more interested in it. Even if I was still watching animes between my childhood and my teenagehood, I yet didn’t read any mangas.

I began to read mangas thanks to an ex and especially to his big sister. She had the whole CardCaptor Sakura and Fruit Basket series and lent me the first books. And this starts my manga era! At the end of this collection, as I sold it years later (I needed space, okay), I had a total of 400 (maybe more) mangas.

Even if I didn’t have mangas, I was reading some from time to time at my local library. It was the same for the animes as I didn’t have time to binge-watched them, thanks to uni.

Everything changed in 2017, during my first year in London. I was there to improve my English to be more confident with it. I had courses during the afternoon with different nationalities, and there I started to befriend Japanese people. With them, I learn a lot about their culture. So when I went to a bookstore, I came across the book The Guest Cat by Takashi Hiraide, and that start my dive into the Japanese literature.

I know that those books aren’t for everyone. I like them a lot, as they are true to reality for the ones I read. Most of them don’t have any action and aren’t dynamic, but they are a peaceful break from life for me. They have something that our western book doesn’t have, you learn through the characters. Time has a great place in those books, and you see the time passing with the descriptions or feelings, or daily events.

Throughout my life, I read both mangas and books, and it’s two different worlds. I like them both equally. For example, I recently bought back the Cardcaptor Skura series as the authors create a sequel to it for the mangas’ 20th anniversary.

I restrict myself to not buy many mangas as I know how much space you need, but I like to borrow them (I have a little sister who read mangas.) I prefer to buy books as most of them are standalone. Here a short slideshow of the book that I read (some of them are French) or that I have in my library.