Highbrow vs. lowbrow literature

Japanese book section of Kyobo Bookstore in Seoul / Korea Times

Unproductive debate pushes Korean novels behind Japanese books

By Kang Hyun-kyung

In terms of book sales, this year hasn't been quite different from any other recent past years. Amid the sluggish publishing industry, fiction books written by Japanese authors have sold well.

Two Japanese novels ― Gaku Yakumaru's mystery novel “Irrevocable Promise” and Higashino Keigo's steady seller “Miracle of the Namiya General Store” ― are still on the lists of top 10 best-selling books at the nation's largest bookstore Kyobo Books as well as online bookstore Yes24.

Of the two, “Miracle of the Namiya General Store” is a steady seller. Since it was translated and published by Hyundai Munhak in 2012, the book won Yes24's Book of the Year Award in 2013.

Another emerging star is Mizuki Tsujimura's critically acclaimed fiction “Solitary Castle in the Mirror,” which was published in May in Japan. As of Saturday, the fantasy fiction has sold over 30,000 copies. “Solitary Castle in the Mirror” revolves around a teenage girl who dropped out of school due to bullying and then journeyed to a fictional world where other teenage victims of school bullying gathered. The book has stayed in the top 100 best-selling books on Yes24, merely months after it was translated and published in Korea.

Goh Gwang-ryul, a novelist, said the “unproductive highbrow vs. lowbrow literature debate” in Korean literary circles can partly explain how Japanese fiction has been pushing Korean writers out of business.

He said Japanese writers are able to meet the changing tastes of Korean readers as they produce readable books, whereas Koreans fail to do so because of the hypocrisy of literary critics.

In literary circles, he said, there has been “a dominant culture of ignorance” on middlebrow fiction, accessible books of which genre stands somewhere between highbrow and lowbrow novels, and this has lasted for decades since the 1980s.

According to him, most of the Japanese books that appeal to Korean readers are middlebrow fiction.

Local literary critics see middlebrow fiction as something derogatory and lower-class literature, Goh said.

“Their arrogance and downplaying of middlebrow books is related to the sluggish book sales of Korean fiction. They exert enormous influence on publishers. They make or break publication of certain books.”

Following the popularity of Japanese fiction, he said novels written by European writers are rising. “This indicates the local book market will be flooded with books of foreign origin as local writers will be pushed out of business,” he said.

The popularity of Japanese books among Korean readers is not a new phenomenon.

Since local publishing houses began to release Korean editions of Japanese fiction around the early 2000s, book sales have gone very well.

Joo Yeon-sun, the founder and president of Eunhaengnamu (maidenhair tree) Publishing Company, said the golden days for Japanese fiction in Korea was around 2010, and now they are not as popular as they once were.

“Japanese novels are well-received particularly by the younger generations, partly because they were raised watching Japanese animation,” he said. “So, unlike the older generation who feel uncomfortable about Japan and Japanese products due to Korea's tragic past under the Japanese occupation, younger readers are more open-minded toward Japanese fiction. They like various genres of books, including science fiction, mystery thrillers and fantasy novel, and these areas are relatively less covered by Korean writers.”

Joo's publishing house has released about 100 Japanese fictions since 2003. Some of them have been very successful. Hideo Okuda's “A Swing in the Air” published by his company, for example, has sold over 1 million copies.

In 2012 alone, 289 books written by Japanese writers were released in Korea. The number of Japanese books decreased slightly after that but it rebounded in 2016. People in their 30s are the main readers.

The popularity of Japanese fiction stands in stark contrast to poor book sales of Korean novels.

The 2014 survey of Statistics Korea showed the average Korean spends six minutes daily reading books. It also found four out of every 10 Koreans don't read books at all for the entire year. The same survey taken in 1994 showed only one out of every 10 Koreans didn't read books, proving Koreans have increasingly stopped reading books.

From a publisher's point of view, Joo said, Japanese fiction sold well due to literary sophistication and meeting younger Korean readers' higher standards.

“I think one of the reasons behind relatively good sales of Japanese books is because they were proven pieces in Japan. Korean publishers select pieces among the ones that were successful in the country of origin. Hence, the chances for the selectively chosen books to find success in Korea are higher than average Korean books,” he said.