mytest
Author Yang Yi won the Akutagawa Prize on Tuesday to become the first Chinese to receive the prestigious literary award, the prize’s organizers said.
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| Best book: Chinese writer Yang Yi is all smiles in Tokyo on Tuesday following news that her novel “Tokiga nijimu asa” won the coveted Akutagawa Prize. KYODO PHOTO |
The 44-year-old Yang’s award-winning work “Tokiga nijimu asa” (literally, “A Morning When Time Blurs”), written in Japanese, is set during and after China’s democratization movement centering on the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.
It follows a Chinese man who lives through those times and later moves to Japan, still holding on to his ideals.
“I’m very, very happy. I feel that I have been accepted,” Yang told reporters outside her Tokyo home.
Meanwhile, the Naoki Prize, a major literature award for popular fiction, went to Areno Inoue, 47, daughter of the late novelist Mitsuharu Inoue.
Inoue’s “Kiriha e” (“To the Mine Face”) is a love story about a teacher who lives with her husband on a remote island.
A previous book by Yang was nominated for the biannual Akutagawa Prize in January but was not chosen.
“I had thought that I may not be chosen this time. I could still not be confident of my own Japanese. Now I feel that I have blended well into Japan, and I am happy that I have been able to write and to have been evaluated,” a smiling Yang said.
She said she learned of the news in a call to her cell phone while having dinner with one of her publisher’s editors.
Unpretentious, hard-working and humble, writer Yang Yi bears more than a passing similarity to the eponymous lead character in her novel “Wang-chan,” titled after the nickname of a Chinese woman who moved to Japan as the bride of a Japanese factory worker and then tried to carve out a career as a marriage broker for other Chinese women seeking to marry Japanese men living out in the sticks.
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| Yang Yi laughs during her recent interview with The Japan Times.YOSHIAKI MIURA PHOTO |
In “Wang-chan,” 43-year-old Yang’s first attempt at a Japanese-language novel, first published late last year in a literary magazine, the rural cultures and customs of China and Japan are colorfully contrasted — along with rich and bittersweet interactions between the central character and others, including her dying Japanese mother-in-law and a sex-starved Japanese man in search of a Chinese wife.
The native of Harbin in northeastern China (former Manchuria) caused a sensation in Japan when, in October last year, she won the literary magazine Bungakukai’s prestigious biannual award for new writers. She created even more ripples last month when she became one of the seven nominees for the Akutagawa Award, one of Japan’s most glittering literary accolades.
Although she actually missed out on that top honor, Yang, who teaches Chinese as a day job, was a much talked-about candidate, being the first-ever Chinese to be considered for the highly publicized award. Nonetheless, Yang remains humble about her literary feat, saying she will never become a celebrity novelist. “I am more like a craftsman,” she said when asked about her aspirations as a writer.
Last month, Yang published her first book, titled “Wang-chan,” which comprises that story and “Roshojo (Old Virgin),” another story that is a tragi-comic account of an unmarried Chinese psychology researcher who fantasizes about a romantic relationship with a handsome Japanese professor.
Yang, who is divorced from a Japanese husband and now lives with her teenage son and daughter in Tokyo’s Chuo Ward, recently sat down for an interview with The Japan Times to recount some episodes in her adaptation to life in Japan and how she picked up the language at supermarkets. She also shared her impressions of the enormous changes in people’s values in China these days, along with her take on the often thorny matter of Japan-China relations.
Interview continues at http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20080203x1.html
8 comments on “Good News #2: Non-native NJ wins Akutagawa, Japan’s most coveted book award”
Congratulations on Yang’s win. Will have to pick up the book somewhere. It sounds like a good read.
its about time, hello japan wake up its 2008 not 1908! CONGRADULATIONS..its called globalisation, japan get with the program..i think japan is scared to globalize…
Whenever I read Debito.org I usually go away feeling angry and unhappy with Japan. When I stay away I enjoy life here.
Two posts on good news is, in my opinion, good for Debito.org.
Well done Yang Yi and can we have more of these posts?
–Of course. I was worried that Debito.org was concentrating too much on the negative, and that’s why I created a special category for those who want the Good News.
http://www.debito.org/?cat=35
And yes, there’s lots of Good News (as of this morning, there are 43 posts in that category). It’s just that we in the human rights community have to show the problems before we show the solutions–otherwise people don’t appreciate what the Good News is in aid of.
Sorry if things get depressing–just be aware that the arc of human experience, to paraphrase Gandhi, bends towards justice. But by knowing the injustice we can fight against it better. That’s just the way things work, I’m afraid. Debito
Jim is the one who needs to wake up. Yang Yi is the fourth or fifth NJ to win a major literary award in Japan. Two of Japan`s bestselling and most accalimed novelists, Yu Miri and Sogil Yan, are also NJ. Add to that film directors like Yoichi Sai who are NJ and darlings of Japanese critics.
Somewhere else (sorry, I don’t have an address at this stage) said that Zainichi Koreans have won the award before, this was the first time that a non-native speaker of Japanese has won it.
Encouraging news.
Everyone here should buy the book and send in the comment card saying that you want to see more from this author and more from NJ writing in Japanese.
Interestingly, the good governer of Tokyo seems less impressed, describing the novel as “…no more than a kind of novel of manners…”.
Ishihara dismisses taxi beer furor: ‘I’d have one’
(Mainichi Japan) July 19, 2008
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/national/news/20080719p2a00m0na015000c.html
Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara played down the recent discovery that metropolitan government employees received cans of beer from cab drivers, saying he’d accept one himself.
“If a (taxi) driver said ‘You must be tired,’ and offered me a cold one, I’d probably drink it without thinking,” said Ishihara during a regular press meeting on Friday. “Does it matter at all?”
Ishihara’s remarks came following the news that 29 Tokyo Metropolitan Government bureaucrats had received cans of beer from drivers when using taxi tickets to go home after work during fiscal 2007.
“If you took money (from a taxi driver) like a kickback, it would be a problem,” said Ishihara. “But it’s not having his taxi fare discounted. It’s just a matter of service and thoughtfulness.”
Meanwhile, Ishihara snubbed his nose at the recent awarding of the prestigious Akutagawa Prize for literature to a novel written by a Chinese national.
“It’s no more than a kind of novel of manners,” Ishihara said, referring to the novel, “Toki ga Nijimu Asa” (A morning when time blurs), written by the 44-year-old writer, Yang Yi.
タクシー接待：石原都知事「おれなら飲んじゃう」
http://mainichi.jp/select/photo/archive/news/2008/07/18/20080719k0000m040079000c.html
東京都の石原慎太郎知事は１８日の定例会見で、０７年度に深夜の帰宅でタクシーチケットを使った都職員２９人が運転手から缶ビールの提供を受けていた問題について「『お疲れでしょ』って運転手が出した冷えた物を、おれならついうっかり飲んじゃうな。いけないのかね」と述べた。
石原知事は「キックバックみたいに金銭をもらったら問題だろう。いいとは言わない」と断ったうえで「料金をまけてもらうわけじゃなく、相手のサービス、心遣い。運転手さんが深夜『ご苦労さんです。またよろしくお願いします』って缶ビール１本を出したら『ありがとう』って飲むのが人情だよな」と語った。
また、石原知事は芥川賞を受賞した中国人の楊逸（ヤンイー）さん（４４）の「時が滲（にじ）む朝」について、「一種の風俗小説にすぎない」とした。【木村健二】
毎日新聞 2008年7月18日 20時06分（最終更新 7月19日 10時50分）
“It’s no more than a kind of novel of manners,” Ishihara said, referring to the novel, “Toki ga Nijimu Asa” (A morning when time blurs), written by the 44-year-old writer, Yang Yi.
“Manners”? He was much more insulting than this. Doesn’t the “fuuzoku” in 「一種の風俗小説にすぎない」refer to the infamous world of hosts and hostesses?