The first full-length novel I read in Japanese was Battle Royale, Koushun Takami’s tale of a futuristic Japan in which students are forced to participate in a violent game to the death.
Before reading Battle Royale, I had read several short stories in Japanese, not to mention countless academic articles on education and educational law. I put off attempting a thick novel for a long time partly because I was afraid that if I gave up, it would negatively affect my desire to read another. Finally, in the Summer of 2003, I bought Battle Royale and a nice leather book cover and took the plunge.
The only novel I had attempted before Battle Royale was a Japanese translation of Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer. Although I am a huge Twain fan, this proved to be a poor choice. If I know what’s going to happen, and am overly familiar with a story, my desire to read the novel to the end is hampered a bit. Simply put, there isn’t sufficient pay off for the effort if I already know what’s coming next.
Here are some things I think people should look for when choosing the first full-length novel they attempt reading in a foreign language:
- a fast paced story – a great plot can motivate you to press on through difficult passages
- frequent chapter breaks – I know this can be a tough bill to fill, but when the chapter breaks, so do you. Endless blocks of unbroken text can be pretty daunting.
- a lot of dialogue – Dialogue tends to be a little bit easier to read, and for languages like Japanese, a little casual dialogue can be a welcome oasis in a sea of kanji. Also, paragraphs are shorter when there’s dialogue, this means the page has more white space and feels lighter.
- someone to discuss it with – it helps if you have a friend who’s read it or someone reading it at the same time, especially if you are worried about missing some of the major plot points.
- the fewer characters the better – names are hard enough to keep straight in the real world… this is one item for which Battle Royale strays from the ideal, luckily however the characters were all very different and easy to keep track of.
For me, the most important factor is the plot. Even though I now read Japanese as well as I read English, I find that I have less tolerance for a bad Japanese novel than English. Because of my love for writing fiction, I have often read through to the end of books I didn’t enjoy just so that I could experience them in their entirety. Part of my own development as a writer is exploring my likes and dislikes as fully as possible.
In Part Two of the Reading in a Foreign Language series, I’ll discuss some of the strategies that have worked for me when attacking long or difficult reading materials in a foreign language.