3 books that will help me truly understand japanese culture and soul before I travel there in 2 weeks?

>Japan has a consumer culture skull-fucking itself into an early grave. People work, consume, drink, work, drink, and act polite to one another because it would be unbearable commuting with even one or two assholes on the trains.

so it's like North America but people are actually polite? Sounds great actually.

any anime

Jesus christ dude, while reccomending anime was a bullshit thing to do. Stop acting like anine killed your wife, people have personal interests. What a shocking relevation.
I also agree with you that some anime fans gay turbo virgins(Like myself), but don't generalize a group like that.

>he thinks japanese people read their literature or even care about it
HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA, he fell for the meme. What a fucking loser!

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>hi im davido-san and I'd like to read some books on japanese culture before embarking on an epic journey through maid-cafes, sex shops and Bookoff
For fuck's sake, just go and enjoy it. They are more westernized than you think.

Some Japanese literature links I got
This one is in Japanese
shikinobi.com/koten
The complete collection of Japanese classical literature
japanknowledge.com/en/contents/koten/title.html

>the ancient Japanese soul
The Nihonshoki
>the Japanese soul under the influence of Buddhism
Hojoki
Tureduregusa
>the modern Japanese soul
anything by Natsume or Tanizaki
>the NEET/otaku Japanese soul
Welcome to the NHK
Paranoid Agent (it's anime, but it still embodies much of the Japanese spirit)
>the "I hate being Japanese, but I don't want to move elsewhere" soul
Murakami's Norwegian Wood

Have you got any recommendations that actually embody the Japanese soul better than Neon Genesis Evangelion and Paranoia Agent?

Welcome to the NHK
It's a blackpill beyond belief

I'm actually going to see a couple college friends of mine in hoken. And I definitely enjoyed Kyoto more than Tokyo for visiting, especially as a foreigner.

There are some interesting nuances to japanese culture I've observed over the years. They tend to respect obsessing over one particular thing and just dedicating your life to it in order to cultivate self development (could be as obscure as plastic cup stacking). They tend respect this idea that you MUST find your own selfish reason for doing a thing. You see this reflected in every movie, anime, or video game I've ever seen where the protagonist is asked "why do you X?" and at the end he decides why to do X and saves the day. They express themselves in strange ways, both in pop culture and 1 on 1 in real life.

Anyways, anime is a shit; a book contains so much more about what a culture really is. Japanese authors are shilled pretty hard on this board too. I've read a couple japanese books and have always been pleasantly surprised at how enjoyable they do seem to be. Looking for something a little deeper now.

Just read Kusamakura and visited several Japanese cities in the past 2 months. Honestly no Japanese works before ww1 are really relevant in understanding its modern society. They're two different worlds

The difference between what America did in Japan and what it did in Iraq is in Japan we literally destroyed the culture that made them what we didnt like. In Iraq we merely tried to give them back infrastructure and figured they would voluntarily love us.

I wonder if you could identify a similar culture change in Japan after their first contact with China. Koreans are always saying the japs were savages until the koreans and chinese civilized them. I'm not sure the japs even had a written language back then.

Shogun by James Clavell, it will change your life

Lolita

>Stop acting like anine killed your wife

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>in Japan we literally destroyed the culture
No. You really have no idea what you’re talking about.
>Koreans are always saying the japs were savages
Koreans say shit about everybody because they have a massive inferiority complex, especially WRT their neighbors. Koreans walk around with chips on their shoulders, constantly bemoaning how everything good in the world comes from Korea yet has been stolen from them.

>you really have no idea what you're talking about

Help me understand then. Or recommend a book I can read by a japanese author to make me understand

The post-WWII period was a second Meiji. The Japanese understood that the system they were working under was inferior and therefore began to emulate their victors, i.e. the US. The US on its side had no explicit desire “to destroy the culture,” but instead was far more focused on economic reform (eliminating the zaibatsu, etc.). Even this quickly fell by the wayside, as the US needed an efficiently functioning Japanese industrial base to supply its needs in the Korean conflict.

>WW1
pretty sure the sequel changed them a bit more

Hojoki
Oku no Osomichi
Go Rin no Sho

Of course, as other anons have already said, you shouldn't expect these old books to perfectly reflect modern Japanese society, just as reading Whitman, Emerson, and Thoreau won't give someone a perfect understanding of modern American culture, but they're major cultural artifacts that are good reads anyway.

*Oku no Hosomichi
fuck I'm retarded

>Anyways, anime is a shit
But then everything is shit, including books.

Not really. Though most books nowadays are shit, there are still many good authors out there. Anime OTOH is uniformly puerile and shallow, with a very few exceptions.

Then everything, including books, is uniformly puerile and shallow, with a very few exceptions.

Mudazumo Naki Kaikaku

History
>Japan: It's History and Culture
Aesthetics
>In Praise of Shadows
Religion
>Religion and Nothingness

or
Literature
>Snow Country
>Kokin Wakashu
>Botchan

this user here
while stuff like Genji, major plays, the longer histories, religious texts or the myths would also be worthwhile reading, you only have 2 weeks and I'd just pick from the two tracks here.

Learn 2 logic.
More contemporary stuff would be better. Best Murakami (Ryu), for example.

It is logical. Since you are erroneously making these claims about anime, then your claims must apply to everything else as well. There's no reason why they wouldn't.

Ad hominem. Learn 2 logic.

No, it is not ad hominem. You made an erroneous claim about anime which can be applied to any other medium.

The Japanese did not have a written language until a later date than China. There were diplomatic liaisons from the Chinese Imperial Court to the fledgling Japanese court - and before the court, to chieftain / chieftain pairs (for example, there are Chinese written records of contact with the female shaman-chieftain Himiko). The Japanese archipelago was referred to as Wa by the Chinese at this time; I can't remember the meaning, but something tells me it's demeaning.

Written language, tea, Buddhism; all the good culture came from China and India.

That was aeons ago and Japan developed its own culture.

>it is not ad hominem.
It quite clearly was. Learn 2 logic.
>You made an erroneous claim about anime
Nothing incorrect about it. Anime is for children and simpletons. Which are you?
>your erroneous claim can be applied to any other medium
>x is false, therefore x can be applied to the members of any set
Learn 2 logic. The first step would probably be to put your weeb butthurt behind you.

Unit 173

The blackpill: Japan is a country of shallow appearances and have engaged in a kind of self-orientalising for hundreds of years, so much of this stuff will be LARPy fictions, often times designed to appeal to Westerners too as much of the impetus for this comes from trying to be seen as equal to Westerners (mostly by themselves). From a time where they were inferior from the Western perspective. They were Westernised, taking that perspective, and tried to change their intellectual world to be equal or better as obviously in everything else they were immediately inferior, you can't bullshit your way around lacking industry and science. That's why there's so much bullshit in it, obfuscation and regurgitation of Western ideas with Eastern marketing.

Keeping that in mind, a nice little book written in English by a Japanese author is the Book of Tea.
>The Book of Tea (茶の本 Cha no Hon) by Okakura Kakuzō[1] (1906) is a long essay linking the role of chadō (teaism) to the aesthetic and cultural aspects of Japanese life.