Cavesa wrote:It would be interested in seeing a list like this compiled by an asian author. For example the japanese kids must be learning about their tradition and this one too, it might be interesting to see what works they get to learn about. Perhaps the Canon looks a bit different from the outside.
There's a compiled list of the top 100 books recommended to new students at four of Japan's leading universities. Here's the first 25:
1 「銃・病原菌・鉄」 Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond
2 「オリエンタリズム」Orientalism by Edward Said
3 「利己的な遺伝子」 The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
4 「カラマーゾフの兄弟」 Братья Карамазовы by Dostoevsky
5 「日本人の英語」 by Mark Petersen ("Japanese English")
6 「解析概論」 by Teiji Takagi ("Introduction to Mathematical Analysis")
7 「沈黙の春」 Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
8 「理科系の作文技術」 by Koreo Kinoshita ("Techniques for Science Writing")
9 「ワンダフル・ライフ」Wonderful Life by Stephen Jay Gould
10 「夜と霧」 …trotzdem Ja zum Leben sagen: Ein Psychologe erlebt das Konzentrationslager by Viktor Frankl
11 「人間を幸福にしない日本というシステム」The False Realities of a Politicized Society by Karel van Wolferen
12 「ご冗談でしょう、ファインマンさん」Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! by Richard Feynman
13 「ヘラクレイトスの火」 Heraclitean Fire by Erwin Chargaff
14 「ワイルド・スワン」Wild Swans by Jung Chang
15 「栽培植物と農耕の起源」 by Sasuke Nakao ("Cultivated Plants and The Origin of Agriculture")
16 「種の起源」 On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
17 「進化と人間行動」 by Toshikazu Hasegawa ("Evolution and Human Behavior")
18 「知的複眼思考法」 by Takehiko Kariya ("Intelligent Multifaceted Thinking")
19 「中島敦全集」 Collected Works of Atsushi Nakajima
20 「方法序説」 Discours de la méthode by Descartes
21 「理解とは何か」by Yutaka Saeki ("What is Understanding?")
22 「南方熊楠」 Minakata Kumagusu by Kazuko Tsurumi
23 「それから」And Then by Natsume Soseki
24 「三四郎」 Sanshiro by Natsume Soseki
25 「失われた時を求めて」À la recherche du temps perdu by Proust
東大・京大・北大・広大の教師が薦める100冊Titles in parentheses are my translations.