Literature
Some sites along the Inland Sea were featured in eighth-century Japanese literature, both in prose and in verse, including Kojiki, Nihonshoki, and Man'yōshū. Since some sites were used as places of exile, their feeling and landscape were evoked in waka. In fiction, in The Tale of Genji, Genji fled from Kyoto and resided in Suma (now a part of Kobe) and Akashi for two years.
In medieval literature, because of the Genpei War, the Inland Sea is one of the important backgrounds of The Tale of the Heike, particularly in its latter part.
In the Western world, Donald Richie wrote a semi-fictional novel called The Inland Sea relating a journey along the sea, beginning at Awaji Island and ending at Hiroshima, going from island to island, exploring the landscape as well as musing on Japanese culture, the nature of identity, and his own personal sense of identity. In 1991, filmmakers Lucille Carra and Brian Cotnoir produced a film version of Richie's Book, which further explored the region through interviews and images photographed by Hiro Narita. Produced by Travelfilm Company and adapted by Carra, the film won numerous awards, including Best Documentary at the Hawaii International Film Festival (1991) and the Earthwatch Film Award. It screened at the Sundance Film Festival in 1992. (NY Times review)
Koushun Takami`s novel Battle Royale took place on a fictional island in the Seto Inland Sea.
Read more about this topic: Seto Inland Sea
Famous quotes containing the word literature:
“What makes literature interesting is that it does not survive its translation. The characters in a novel are made out of the sentences. That’s what their substance is.”
—Jonathan Miller (b. 1936)
“I am not fooling myself with dreams of immortality, know how relative all literature is, don’t have any faith in mankind, derive enjoyment from too few things. Sometimes these crises give birth to something worth while, sometimes they simply plunge one deeper into depression, but, of course, it is all part of the same thing.”
—Stefan Zweig (18811942)
“One of the necessary qualifications of an efficient business man in these days of industrial literature seems to be the ability to write, in clear and idiomatic English, a 1,000-word story on how efficient he is and how he got that way.... It seems that the entire business world were devoting its working hours to the creation of a school of introspective literature.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)