Classic literature receives a boost in Japan
The popularity of literary classics has received a huge boost in Japan in the past couple of years with the publication of a Japanese version of Dostoyevsky’s final and largest work, The Brothers Karamazov. The published corpus consisted of five volumes translated by Ikuo Kameyama, president of Tokyo University of Foreign Studies; the first of these was released in 2006 with the final volume being released in July of last year.
It is a testament to Ikuo Kameyama’s stylistically popular and accessible translation that just over a year after the final volume’s publication, sales of the five volume collection have topped one million with a second print run being commenced this Thursday.
The Brothers Karamazov is an epic work that took Dostoyevsky two years to write and originally published in serial form under the title of ‘The Russian Messenger’; it was originally intended to be just the opening volume of a much larger work, however, Dostoyevsky died several months after the publication of ‘The Brothers Karamazov’.
Anyone who has read any of Dostoyevsky’s works will know that they can be extremely hard going on occasion; all the more credit then to Ikuo Kameyama’s translation for becoming so well liked that it has also spurred the release and popularity of a new speight of classic novels with fresh translations.