Foreigners writing in Japanese

[Ady001]

Ei, new here! I was wondering if somebody knows this, so i've decided to ask it here...

does anyone know of foreigners writing in Japanese? Writers that are really FAMOUS; those who are really published?

[ben]

I'm sure that ther are a few, because i was reading that to be a poet or a literature writer that you have to know about 5,000 to 6,000 kanji, something like that...

i donno, i read that in a book, but i can't remember it that well so i am kinda guessing but im sure that was around that.

Im sorry that this doesn't answer your question, but i was just letting you know that i think ther are some foreign writers and poets.

[Ady001]

Ouch, big headache if that's so...

But Donald Keene translated Genji Monogatari, so I think he's a foreigner writing in Japanese...

[Mukade]

Perhaps the most famous is Lafcadio Hearn. He was Irish, and came to Japan in the late 1800s, if I remember correctly.

Most of the famous foreigners writing in Japanese these days, however, are journalists like Dave Spector. There's really no one really FAMOUS writing in Japanese right now.

Writing in a foreign language is difficult enough; writing artistically in a foreign language is another story altogether. So, to find people that can manage it is pretty rare.

[Mukade]

Ady001 wrote:
But Donald Keene translated Genji Monogatari, so I think he's a foreigner writing in Japanese...

Donald Keene wrote several essays in Japanese - essays that have been well-recieved by Japanese literature professors. He didn't write any literature in Japanese, however.