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:
“[The] attempt to devote oneself to literature alone is a most deceptive thing, and ... often, paradoxically, it is literature that suffers for it.”
—Václav Havel (b. 1936)
“Views of women, on one side, as inwardly directed toward home and family and notions of men, on the other, as outwardly striving toward fame and fortune have resounded throughout literature and in the texts of history, biology, and psychology until they seem uncontestable. Such dichotomous views defy the complexities of individuals and stifle the potential for people to reveal different dimensions of themselves in various settings.”
—Sara Lawrence Lightfoot (20th century)
“Woe to that nation whose literature is cut short by the intrusion of force. This is not merely interference with freedom of the press but the sealing up of a nation’s heart, the excision of its memory.”
—Alexander Solzhenitsyn (b. 1918)