John Nathan on Japan and the Nobel

       In The Japan Times Damian Flanagan recounts how Literature critic John Nathan dissects Japan's Nobel Prize laureates, as the Mishima- and Oe-translator (among others) opines on the Nobel-worthy -- and not so worthy.
       Among the interesting opinions:

"I don't think Mishima belongs with the greats," he says. "He was prolific -- one measure of genius -- clever, brilliant even. But in my view his work was marred by a certain artificiality: Mishima characters tend to dangle lifelessly from the strings of his ideas about them -- they aren't genuine or true to life and consequently they mostly fail to move us."

       Artificiality to art -- what a concept ..... Sure, Mishima is a toss-up -- and it's especially difficult to tell from the foreign perspective, given how little of his output has been translated (more of his work is available in English that by almost any other Japanese author, and yet ...; despite his early death, he was really prolific), so Nathan presumably has a better sense. Still, toss in his versatility (all those plays, too), and it's hard not to rank him fairly high up the Japanese ladder.
       One author Nathan thinks was Nobel-worthy:

You didn't ask, but I will say that in my view, Soseki was a greater writer than any of these others -- he deserved a Nobel Prize.

       (See also Nathan's new translation of Light and Dark -- and Mizumura Minae would certainly agree.)
       Not mentioned either -- but surely also consideration-worthy: Tanizaki Jun'ichirō.