Japanese business novels

[Brian G Turner]

The BBC has a feature piece about how business genre novels in Japan have appeared - and become regular bestsellers:
Japan's curious passion for the business novel - BBC News

It's an interesting window on novel writing and publishing in Japanese culture - not least how the stories aim to tackle long-standing concerns about the future, as well as social taboos.

 

[Denise Tanaka]

Cool article. Thanks for sharing, Brian! It has always fascinated me how to the company/corporation structure sprang up to replace the old feudalism. Instead of a samurai lord, you have a CEO to answer to.

 

[Parson]

Brian: Interesting insights! Thanks for sharing the article. Denise: That's a fairly profound insight. It might be old, but it was new to me.

 

[Montero]

Not read the article (yet) - just dropping by to comment that a few years back there was a documentary series on Japan, regarding employment, especially post University. Showed the suits going for their corporate jobs (and some being disappointed as they wanted something else) and the corporate care they were signing into.
There was also a strong sub-culture of intelligent folk turning round and saying "stuff that" to the corporate culture and pushing off to be soy bean curd salesmen (literally on a bicycle going door to door) and other low paid, self employment, because they'd rather have their freedom.

 

[JC Kang]

I have TV Japan and there are several dramas surrounding corporations and businesses. Some of them are quite fascinating. Not sure I could read through a book, though... most Japanese novels in genres I usually love don't do it for me.

 

[E.Maree]

This is really fascinating. It's interesting to see how much the Japanese market is driven by the consumer -- they have a massive market for books, comics and games for the female audience, while in the Western world, despite similar demographics of female gamers and comic readers, the market remains very male-focused. It's led to a lot of interesting splits, with YA novels in the West being marketed with manga covers in Japan, and Western games like recently award-winner Life is Strange using a Japanese publisher because nobody in the US would take a game with a female protagonist.

It's really interesting to watch how the different markets grow. The Japanese market isn't without its own issues, especially a lack of diversity due to Japanese social expectations and inbuilt prejudice, but it's quick to throw aside prejudices when a commercial opportunity presents itself.

I think we've got our own type of 'business novel' here in the West, but it's a lot less fun. There's a long tradition of literary fiction using the cold grey cubicle office as a metaphor, and portal fantasy books like Neverwhere jumping from a dull 9 to 5 into an exciting adventure. Balancing the day job *and* ninja baddies sounds like a great, fun story!

 

[Montero]

Having now read the article - its interesting - a few comments:

I think we do have business novels of a sort - the family saga variety - not my cup of tea so can't name any, but thinking Mr Selfridge type of books.

Where business appears in fantasy, as eMaree says - we are getting away from it asap.

We also have a lot of TV Series like Suits, The Good Wife.

Of course we also have documentaries, from Back to the Floor, to the one recently on Iceland, to hidden cameras on beef, to Dragons Lair etc. Which is what Japan doesn't have.

 

[ralphkern]

A suggestion of an older novel is Rising Sun by Micheal Crichton.

It likely isn't relevant to the modern business climate (Its from the early nineties), and in any case was less of a business novel than a thriller involving a large corporation with some thinly veiled parallels drawn between Shoguns and CEOs. I suspect it only ever did as well as it did off the back of Jurassic Park. Still a decent yarn though, and spawned a movie adaption starring Sean Connery, Wesley Snipes and Harvey Keitel.