Perception of Heian era Japanese literature in the USSR and Russia

Abstract

In this paper, I discuss the history of translation of Heian era literature in the Soviet Union and in post-Soviet Russia. It is demonstrated that Soviet attitudes to Japanese literature to a signifcant degree were affected by the political trends of the epoch. Thus, while in the 1920s Japanese culture was considered to be unique and exotic, in the 1930s Soviet philologists rather tended to regard Japan as a subject of Marxist theory and Japanese aristocratic literature was appreciated as “realistic”. After the Second World War, there was a strong tendency to consider classical Japanese poetry as a form of folk culture. Conversely, in the 1970s Japanese literature became highly appreciated by Russian intellectuals because they considered Japan of the Heian epoch as an “ideal dreamland”, free of false ideology and politicization.