Although Nobel Prize winner Oe Kenzaburo is sadly lingering in the shadows, with too many important novels still going untranslated, today more popular fiction is being translated than ever before. Long established companies like Kodansha International are playing a role in this, but surprisingly, the main actor is a tiny publisher called Vertical, Inc. (The name goes back to the fact that the Japanese script is (originally) written vertically.)
As the New York Times reported some years ago, the company was founded by Sakai Hiroki, a former book editor and business journalist, who in 1998 moved from Japan to the United States. With financial backing from a large Japanese newspaper (his former employer) and a trading house, he started publishing Japanese popular fiction, because he saw so little of it in bookstores outside of Japan.
That is not an easy venture, the selection from the vast ocean of mass fiction is all that counts. Popular fiction is perhaps even more difficult to bring to another culture than highbrow literature. On top of that, much - very much - of Japanese fiction is just cheap rubbish. That is the case everywhere, but especially so in Japan where authors are paid little and so have to go on writing and writing, churning out several books a year. After the initial few inspired books, even famous popular authors like Matsumoto Seicho descend into the hell of hack-work.
So what has Vertical come up with?
- They started with a coup: the novels of Suzuki Koji, such as the complete Ring trilogy, Dark water etc.
- Riding the manga wave, the first volumes of Buddha by Tezuka Osama, the godfather of Japanese comic art.
- The Guin Saga by Kurimoto Kaoru. Vertical has published the first volumes of what promises to become a 100-volume series in the original Japanese. Pure escapist fantasy, about princely twins Rinda and Remus, who loose their kingdom but are helped by Guin, a creature with a human body but the head of a leopard. Think Edgar Rice Burroughs at his most unapologetic.
- Shinjuku Shark by Osawa Arimasa. a hard-boiled police novel set in seedy Kabukicho. Review by Mark Schreiber.
- Filmmaker Kitano Takeshi's Boy, three stories from his youth. Reviewed enthousiastically by Donald Richie in the Japan Times.
- Zero over Berlin by Sasaki Joh tells about a (fictional) effort in 1940 to fly two prototype Zero fighters to Berlin, to help the Germans manufacture better planes. Review by Mark Schreiber.
- Outlet. An intriguing New Age mystery by Taguchi Randy.
- Naoko by bestseller mystery author Higashino Keigo. About a man whose wife dies in an accident after which their young daughter seems to be inhabited by the mother's personality.
- The Crimson Labyrinth by Kishi Yusuke, a potboiler about something that seems to start out like a mysterious survival game...
- And of course J-Horror by David Kalat, reviewed in these pages.
And much more, in all about 40 titles. It certainly is a very mixed bag and nothing if not exotic, although the publisher tries to stay away from cherryblossoms and other Japonisms.
Although this is a very laudable effort, I have the following small criticism (apart from the fact that I do not like all books selected and that some translations are rather monotonous): It would be more interesting to have novels written today, rather than fiction from the vast reservoir of the last decades, as is now the case. And when they start with an author, I would like Vertical to continue following that writer and continue translating his or her work (not only the odd trilogy).
Most of the books have been beautifully published, with cover art by Chip Kidd (now replaced by Peter Mendelsund). Certainly worth checking out for your next holiday reading.
