Tokyo Stories Reading List

[rynling]

In the spring semester I'm teaching a literature class called "Tokyo Stories." I don't mean to be a grumpy old man, and I say this with nothing but sympathy: I think college-age students have trouble with reading. A lot of this is coming from the fact that reading requires quiet, focus, and attention, and these kids are extremely busy. I therefore want to assign books that are (a) short, (b) interesting, and (c) accessible, both in the sense of "easy to read" and in the sense of "easy to find summaries and reviews online" (also in the sense of "inexpensive" and "readily available in a digital edition").

This is what I have so far:

- In the Miso Soup by Ryu Murakami
- Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto
- After Dark by Haruki Murakami
- Tokyo Ueno Station by Miri Yu
- Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata
- The Last Children of Tokyo by Yoko Tawada
- Himawari House by Harmony Becker

I'm considering assigning one of the Fuminori Nakamura crime novellas - maybe the one about the taxi driver? - but I don't remember them being that good in translation. I guess I should probably read a few of the translations again over the break. I'm also considering the first volume of the Durarara!! light novel series, but I need to read the translation first to see if it's any good.

Comments

[lassarina]

One of the new features of iOS is various levels of "do not disturb," where it will automatically turn on notification filtering (if you wish, and the level of filter is granular and adjustable) when you are doing certain things, such as watching a video app, or in a reading app. I don't use my iOS device for reading very often, mostly because I prefer a dedicated e-reader for a variety of reasons, but I think that's a really interesting and useful option, partly because of the focus/quiet/attention you mentioned.

I also remain impressed at your thoughtfulness as a professor where you are taking into consideration not just want you want to teach, but what would be feasible and engaging to your students. I definitely had professors in my college days who seemed to think that their single class was the only one I was taking.

[rynling]

I definitely had professors in my college days who seemed to think that their single class was the only one I was taking

...and that it's perfectly reasonable to assign a heavily footnoted $80 translation published by an academic press because it was written by someone you went to grad school with twenty years ago. I think there's a certain degree of artificial difficulty and inaccessibility you have to build into a college class so that the students take it seriously, but a lot of professors are just plain delusional.

Although, to be fair, the bar on what's "reasonable" does keep moving. It took me a few years to understand that young adults born in the 2000s can't really watch feature-length movies either, and that they need to be taught basic "just google it" skills. I used to be frustrated by this cultural shift, but I found that it's better for my mental health to accept it and move on.

[lassarina]

Accepting and moving on is sometimes the only thing you can do.

We didn't buy that many weird academic press things, but we did often have to buy a "course pack" of photocopied/bound articles and the place that did them (where I briefly worked) didn't take plastic until the 2010s. Cash or check only. Baffling.