Sōkyū Gen'yū

Sōkyū Gen'yū ( Japanese 玄 侑 宗 久 , Gen'yū Sōkyū ; born April 28, 1956 in Miharu , Fukushima Prefecture ) is a Japanese writer and Buddhist priest. In 2001 he received the Akutagawa Prize .

Life

Gen'yū was born the son of a temple priest. Gen'yū studied Chinese literature at Keiō University , became a monk at the age of 28 and is currently a Zen priest at his father's temple in Miharu. Gen'yū started his literary career in 2000, his debut text is Mizu no hesaki (bow water). In 2001 he received the renowned Akutagawa Prize for Chūin no hana (Flowers of the Intermediate Realm ). Other texts are: Aburakusasu no matsuri (The Festival of Abraxas, German 2007) 2001, Kechō sange (The gift of butterfly coins ) 2001, Gokaichō kitan (The fantastic story of the public presentation of a secret Buddha statue) 2002, Amitâbâ Muryokomyo (Amitabha) 2003 , Rîra - Kami no niwa no yūgi (gods roam the gardens) 2004, Tashō no en - Gen'yū Sōkyū taidanshū (lucky coincidences - dialogues with Gen'yū Sōkyū) 2007

Literary work

Gen'yū Sōkyū had a successful debut as an author relatively late at the age of forty-five, and he has an unusual "secondary occupation" for a writer of contemporary Japanese literature: he is a Zen priest and does pastoral work in a temple community. His lyrics play in this milieu. With their theming of the religious, they meet an esoteric-spiritually oriented zeitgeist. In Japan, too, in recent years, based on painful globalization experiences, there have been increasing doubts about a way of life that is exclusively oriented towards materialism and the pursuit of success. In the course of a frequently noted crisis of meaning, people turned to the religious, interested in alternative lifestyles, in “healing” (Japanese iyashi ), Japanese empirical religiosity and a rediscovered “Japanese spirituality”.

In Gen'yū's literary works, however, the topic of the spiritual is not dealt with in a superficial manner; they continue a long tradition of contact between literature and religion in Japan (keyword shūkyō to bungaku ). The author, who himself came into contact with various Japanese new religious communities in his younger years, describes the fascinating element of religion as embodied by fortune tellers and prophets, describes the ecstatic moments understood as unio mystica and evokes the echo of puzzling coincidences. In his numerous non-fictional texts (essays, dialogues), in which he deals with essential questions about life and death in the manner of advisory literature ( ikikata no hon ), he approaches the trend towards the therapeutic (keyword iyashi) and spiritual and in this respect adeptly serves the expectations of the Japanese media society.

The feast of Abraxas

One of the most interesting texts of Gen'yū is “The Feast of Abraxas”. In this story, the author merges Zen, rock music and an occult Japanese underground culture of the 1960s and 1970s; a lively illustration of the parallel worlds to the Japanese performance society and its problematic conditions for the individual emerges. Jōnen, the protagonist, works together with the priest Genshū in a Zen temple. Jōnen has had an eventful life. After a failed career as a rock musician, the Buddhism student attempted suicide at the age of twenty-seven, which he also attributes to a growing depressive anxiety disorder. His illness, first diagnosed as “neurosis”, then as depression with manic phases and schizophrenic attacks, means that he is dependent on psychotropic drugs. Nonetheless, he made every effort to work at the temple of his friend and mentor Genshū, to cope with everyday life, to do justice to his wife Tae and his little son Riu, as well as the duties in the temple. He tries to overcome self-doubt and isolation with alcohol. Loneliness, illness, alcohol and medication are one side of Jonens; the other, beyond these limits, points to a brilliant musician and a capable priest. “The Festival of Abraxas” is also a captivating portrait of the Japanese generation of the 1960s, who are looking for an exit from society and find niches for survival in an inhospitable present.

literature

• Lisette Gebhardt : Japan's New Spirituality . Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2001.
• Lisette Gebhardt: Searching for Meaning - an Intercultural Phenomenon: Contemporary Japanese literature under the sign of religion and esotericism . In: Journal for German Studies , New Series 3, pp. 523-531, 2002.
• Lisette Gebhardt: Epilogue, Glossary . In: Gen'yū Sōkyū: The festival of Abraxas . Novel. From the Japanese and with an afterword by Lisette Gebhardt. Pp. 139–158, bebra Verlag (= japan edition), Berlin 2007.

Web links

• Gen'yū Sōkyū - Homepage
• Literature by and about Sōkyū Gen'yū in the catalog of the German National Library