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:
“To me, literature is a calling, even a kind of salvation. It connects me with an enterprise that is over 2,000 years old. What do we have from the past? Art and thought. That’s what lasts. That’s what continues to feed people and given them an idea of something better. A better state of one’s feelings or simply the idea of a silence in one’s self that allows one to think or to feel. Which to me is the same.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“Philosophy, astronomy, and politics were marked at zero, I remember. Botany variable, geology profound as regards the mud stains from any region within fifty miles of town, chemistry eccentric, anatomy unsystematic, sensational literature and crime records unique, violin player, boxer, swordsman, lawyer, and self-poisoner by cocaine and tobacco.”
—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930)
“How has the human spirit ever survived the terrific literature with which it has had to contend?”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)