An author known primarily for writing in the languages of these two countries chronicled an artistically inclined lineage of the title animals in Memoirs of a Polar Bear. For 10 points each:
[10h] Name these two countries. A student from one of these two countries falls in love with a dancer from the other in the short story “The Dancing Girl.”
ANSWER: Japan and Germany [accept answers in either order] (Memoirs of a Polar Bear is by Yoko Tawada. "The Dancing Girl" is by Mori Ōgai.)
[10m] At the start of this novel, a then-37-year-old Japanese man recalls the sensory details of the Hamburg meadow where his plane lands. In Germany, this novel was published as Naoko’s Smile.
ANSWER: Norwegian Wood [or Noruwei no mori]
[10e] This author expressed frustration with his frequent collaborator Alfred Birnbaum for his “flat, literal, artless” translation of his novel Norwegian Wood.
ANSWER: Haruki Murakami
<Darren Petrosino, World Literature>