this might not be the most eloquently phrased post i've ever written but one of the things i have noticed and that irritates me in many reviews of foreign language literature is the way certain people are so quick to dismiss anything they don't like or understand as cultural differences they have no chance of understanding anyway as foreigners and calling it a day without bothering to examine whether the writing style or characterization they found odd actually are a cultural thing or a deliberate choice made to convey the message or simply the author's quirks all of which you complete miss out on if you distance yourself blaming it on your ignorance.
cultural differences are very much there and many things will be lost in translation too, but it's your duty as a reader to question why the book you're reading is written the way it is, what the use of language says about the author, what the way characters and events are portrayed says about their culture and look even deeper and do your research and read more of the author's books etc because foreign authors won't and nor should they!!! cater to you personally and dumb it down and spell it out for you in the footnotes
the same way you wouldn't say the curtains are just blue, you can't say the curtains are blue because they're japanese curtains and i'm not japanese therefore i'll never know why they're blue because you're just removing yourself from the equation and refusing to shoulder your responsibility as a reader and maybe not explicitly, but stating that your culture is superior and looking past cultural differences for long enough to grasp what the book you're reading is about is too much effort and understanding the history and the values at play is not really worth it, which is not only lazy but deeply disrespectful imo
stop reducing foreign literature to something either so far out of reach it's too much of a hassle to even try and understand or something to dilute into something relatable for your own consumption and especially stop saying cultural differences when what you really mean is that you personally don't know enough about culture to understand what the author's getting at because frankly it's not a very good excuse
