Men in their 40s and 50s such as Haruki Murakami, Ryu Murakami and Jiro Asada are already elder statesmen of their craft. Now, a younger generation of Japanese writers in their teens and early 20s is becoming popular in Korea, especially among female readers, and among young women in particular. Korean writer Chung I-hyeon sounded almost peeved when she said, "Even friends who don’t read my books raced through Kaori Ekuni’s new book."

From left: Risa Wataya, Kaori Ekuni, Banana Yoshimoto, Ryu Murakami and Jiro Asada

Eight of the top 20 books borrowed from Seoul National University library are Japanese novels. In 2000, it was five. At Korea University, eight of the top 20 library rentals were Japanese novels. The same goes for Sogang University library. On the list were several works by writers like Kaori Ekuni, Banana Yoshimoto, Haruki Murakami and Risa Wataya. At the Internet book store Aladdin, sales of Japanese novels between January and August grew 130 percent compared to the same period last year.

Ekuni is at the core of the wave. Since she first burst onto the scene in 2001, she has published seven novels in four years, including “Between Calm and Passion”, “Twinkle Twinkle” and “Hotel Cactus.” Each of them sold more than 20,000 copies, and the first more than 700,000. Yoshimoto also enjoys steady popularity. She has produced about 10 novels from her 1999 debut “Kitchen” to her most recent novel “Hardboiled and Hard Luck”. “Kitchen” went through 52 printings and is estimated to have sold more than 300,000 times here, while her other books have seen 20 printings or more. Minumsa, Yoshimoto’s Korean publisher, says it sells more than 100,000 copies a year.

Why Japanese novels? Yonsei University students Cho Hye-won, Choe Shin-yeong and Byeon Sang-won offer their reasons. “You can read them easily without having to think too deeply.” “They seem like stories of our daily lives.” “They have a fine emotional touch, and they are smoothly translated.” But others say they are horrified by the depression and emptiness that characterize these books.

In a literary journal, critic Park Ji-hyeon analyzed the kind of Japanese novels that are popular in Korea. They deal, he says, with the gloom of relationships or loss in the prosperous daily lives of free and “cool” characters -- often unmarried professional women who don’t care about the disapproval of those around them. This is ground already well trodden by Korean movies like “Singles” and TV dramas like “Attic Cat”. But in Korean writing, which remains confined by its characteristic gravity and high literary ambition, such issues have yet to be taken up.

Freshness, shock and striking new talent are the keys to success for Japan's rising literary stars. Writers like Keisuke Hada, Sayo Ikuta, Naokora Yamazaki, and Ken Shiraiwa were born in the 1980s and are in their 20s. Natsu Minami, who won an award this year for her book “Heisei Machine Guns,” is a third-year middle school student. Several publishers are said to have made offers already.

“Korean novels are too serious and heavy," says Chung Jeong-nan, the president of Hwangmae, which publishes many Japanese novels. "Compared to them, Japanese writers are writing works that reflect the interests and concerns of those in their teens and 20s, and the Japanese literary world is accepting this freely.”

(englishnews@chosun.com )