Caracteristicile literaturii japoneze
The Characteristics of the Japanese Literature

Summary/Abstract: The elements that characterize Japanese literature and that differentiate it from Chinese and Western, refer to five basic factors: its role as a whole culture, the form of its historical development, language and writing, the social context and finally, its own conception about the world. Following the intertwining of these elements, a clear vision will be obtained on its changes and developments. It starts from a hypothesis of a synchronous structure to reconstruct diachronic development. The role of literature in Japanese culture is extremely important. Throughout their history, the Japanese have expressed themselves their thoughts not so much in abstract philosophical systems as in the concrete literary works. “Collection of the ten thousand sheets”, 8th century, expresses thoughts and attitudes of the Japanese in the Nara period (710-794), much clearer than all the Buddhist doctrinarian works from the same period, taken together. Court culture during the Heian period (794-1185) gave rise to a poem and a literature of an extreme refinement but did not produce any original philosophical system. Even if the teaching of Confucianists could have had an influence on thought to philosophers who followed him, this would not have led to more abstract and more speculative thinking. The constant tendency of Japanese literature is to avoid logic, abstract and systematization, in favour of emotion, concrete and unsystematic.

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