Japanese Literature

Do books from Japanese authors always have uncomfortable things going on that none of the characters seem uncomfortable with, like pedophilia, incest, suicide? Or is it just the Japanese books that end up being translated into english, because that's what westerners want to hear about the Japanese?

Here's my review of N.P.

N.P. by Banana Yoshimoto

rating: 2 of 5 stars
I was unsure how to rate N.P., because I might have given it a better rating if I had read it at another time, in the 90s or when I was a teenager. I think maybe to me something was lost in translation - the short, matter-of-fact sentences didn't really engage me in the story or the characters. And there was a mistranslation: the word stepbrother is used when in the context of the story we see that she means half brother, as they are related by blood and have the same father.

It's always a bit strange as well to see characters talk about uncomfortable topics (like incest and suicide in this book) as if they were nothing out of the ordinary. The main character even points out that

"The man's love for her as a daughter and as a woman are one and the same, and this powerful feeling expands to fill the whole universe. It's uplifting."

I'm not at all saying that people shouldn't write about incest, but I felt that the way it was written alienated me a bit. But it was really the last sentence of the book that made me think I really didn't get the point:

"Everything that had happened was shockingly beautiful, enough to make you crazy."

I didn't feel it.