Japanese literature in French and German

English is the global lingua franca and not surprisingly, most literature from the Japanese has been translated into that language. That is a good thing, but there is also quite a lot in French and German, two other languages I learned in the past and am trying hard no to forget. So recently, I started buying some Japanese novels that are only available in (original) German or French translation. And I discovered some interesting things.

When we look at the great classical authors, like Tanizaki, Kawabata and Mishima, the picture is not so different, as these authors are covered well in all three languages. Natsume Soseki has been well-covered in French, but not so much in German. Anyway, generally speaking as translations go, the French are much more Japan-minded than the Germans.

Nagai Kafu is disappointing in both languages, Akutagawa does not differ much. Striking is the German interest in Inoue Yasushi. You can find several classical novels not available in English, as Der Tod des Teemeisters (The Death of the Tea Master), a compact historical tale about the mysterious circumstances surrounding the suicide-on-demand (by Hideyoshi) of Sen Rikyu; Die Eiswand (The Ice Cliff), a long novel about a love triangle and about mountain climbing; Der Stierkampf (The Bullfight), an early story about a newspaper reporter organizing a bullfight in the chaotic years after the war; and Schwarze Flut (Black Tide), the mystery surrounding the death of a public figure. Of course, the famous historical novels and stories (such as Das Tempeldach) are also available, making a good assessment of this author about human loneliness and elegiac failure possible.

Also in German, some novels by Oe Kenzabuto not available in English have been translated: Der Weise Regenbaum (Women Listening to the Rain Tree) or the trilogy Grüner Baum in Flammen (Green Tree in Flames). Another "difficult" author from whom much more has been translated - this time into French - than English is Nakagami Kenji: Milles ans de plaisir, La mer aux arbres morts, Miracle, Hymne, and Sur les ailes du soleil.

While Murakami Haruki has on the average been as completely translated in both languages as in English, in the case of that other "Murakami" author, Murakami Ryu, in French we find many novels not available in English: Ecstasy, Raffles Hotel, Melancholia, Thanatos, Kyoko, Lignes, Parasites, La Guerre commence au dela de la mer, and Topaze. In other words, Murakami Ryu is one of the best translated Japanese authors in French (of course the novels available in English have also been translated into French).

In French, there are even novels by authors not at all available in English. Two authors to whom much attention has been given are Ikezawa Natsuki and Kawakami Hiromi. I saw their names for the first time on these French translations! Ikezawa (born 1945; I still have to read him!) writes about the contrast between civilization and nature - three of his stories appeared in English but I have never seen them, while at least seven of his novels are readily available in French. Kawakami Hiromi (born 1958; also new to me) is a popular woman writer who received the Akutagawa prize for Tread on a Snake. Nothing is available in English, while in French we have five novels.

Other (often young) Japanese authors only available in French (and sometimes German) include Wataya Risa, Tsuji Hitonari, Machida Ko, Oba Minako, Kitano Takeshi, Matsuura Rieko and Ishida Ira, to name a few. I was surprised at the richness of choice. Even quite a lot of thrillers are available, as Hara Ryo's classic Nuit sur la Ville.

[To find these books on the internet, the best way is to go to the French or German Amazon. To find them in bookstores in Japan, check out the large stores in Tokyo as Maruzen (Oaza and Nihonbashi) or the Kinokuniya in Times Square (Shinjuku)]

Gourmet Manga

In a previous post I have written about Japan's most interesting gourmet manga Oishinbo. Now, the SFGate reports, the first few volumes have been translated and are popular in the U.S.:

Oishinbo, or the Gourmet, is considered the comic that defined manga's cooking genre. Created in 1983 by Tetsu Kariya and illustrated by Akira Hanasaki, Oishinbo follows young journalist Shiro Yamaoka on his search for the Ultimate Menu to celebrate his fictional newspaper's 100th anniversary.

The first volume of Oishinbo: a La Carte offers 10 courses or chapters, from "The Secret of Dashi" to "The Principles of Japanese Cuisine." Upcoming volumes include Sake; Ramen and Gyoza; and Fish, Sushi and Sashimi.

This reminds me that last year I have started a small series of posts about such gourmet manga. Besides Oishinbo, I have written about The Solitary Gourmand and Moyashimon. Both are favorites of mine.

The latest issue (No. 59) of Japanese Book News (published by the Japan Foundation) says about Moyashimon:

Since early childhood, Sawaki　Sōemon Tadayasu has had an uncanny　ability to sense the existence of bacteria,　viruses, and other germs and to communicate　with them. This manga series describes　the strange disturbances involving the microorganisms that Sawaki and his unique classmates, older students, and an out-of-touch professor get mixed up in after he embarks on his studies at an agriculture university.

While reading the book, it becomes clear that the real heroes of the story are not the students but the bacteria, yeast,
lactobacilli, viruses, and other germs.

That is the nice thing about manga - you get some information about a new field - here you learn the mysteries of fermentation, including the Japanese terminology (this one has not yet been translated).

And this all reminds me I still have to write about Aji Ichimonme, Ramen Hakkenden, Shota no Sushi and many others... not to forget Natsuko no Sake (see a list of gourmet manga on Japanese Wikipedia).

Enlightenment Guaranteed (Film review)

Enlightenment Guaranteed (Erleuchtung garantiert) is a German film from 1999 by Doris Dörrie about the tribulations of two middle-aged brothers staying in a Japanese Zen monastery. The brothers are played very naturally by Uwe Ochsenknecht and Gustav-Peter Wöhler.

The story is has a deep human touch, but is also light and humoristic - as light as the swinging movement of the hand-held cameras and the improvised street scenes. The first part of the film, situated in a town in Germany, is full of snappy comedy. One brother, Uwe, is a smart kitchen salesman who thinks he is doing very well, but is so engrossed in himself that he does not notice how much he is neglecting his wife and kids. So they suddenly leave him which makes him tumble into a psychological black hole.

The other brother, Gustav, is a rather vague Fengshui consultant who in his free time practices Zen meditation. He has booked a trip to the Monzen monastery on the beautiful Noto Peninsula in rural Japan for a few weeks of intense meditation practice　and like his brother he is so lost in his quest for enlightenment that he doesn't notice the needs of his wife.

After he suddenly finds himself alone, Uwe begs Gustav to take him along on the trip to Japan. After some hesitation on the part of Gustav, who considers his non-Buddhist brother as pure ballast, they leave together and their first stop is Tokyo.

On their first night in Tokyo, while going into town for a snack, they get lost and can't find their hotel where their passports and luggage are anymore. The brothers spend their last money on a taxi ride in the wrong direction and their credit cards are swallowed by the difficult-to-understand Japanese cash machines.

They really are at Point Zero in their lives and even have to sleep on the streets. This is Lost in Translation to the nth degree! In Buddhism you have to go back to nothingness and discard all earthly possessions, but the situation is forced upon them rather suddenly!

First they sleep in cardboard boxes in a park, among Tokyo's homeless, but Uwe, whose practicality now comes in handy, "fixes" a modern tent. Later they meet several interesting people, such as a German woman who helps them find a job in a Bavarian-type beer-hall where they work as waiters to earn the money for the long trip to Monzen.

Next follows their stay in Sojiji, the famous Soto Zen temple in Monzen, Ishikawa Prefecture, which is like we know all stays in Zen temples to be: cold, hard, little sleep, little food. Clean the floor to cleanse your heart. Sweep the garden to sweep your mind. This part is filmed in a more traditional way, with nice impressions of the Buddhist service (this is a very special ceremony where the monks walk as if in a Noh play - joining this service alone is worth the trip to the Noto Peninsula). The temple scenes are interspersed by commentary from the brothers on Uwe's video camera, as a sort of video journal.

Surprisingly, it is Uwe who excels not only in running along the floors with a cloth to clean (Gustav is rather corpulent) but who also bests his brother in meditation practice. In a reversal of roles, he really gets the hang of it, although Gustav also struggles bravely on.

The time to leave the temple finally comes - the brothers have not reached anything like enlightenment (impossible in such a short time!) but they are both a bit wiser and have learned to accept life as it comes. Thus spiritually fortified, they return to the world.

Tokyo Fiancée (Review)

It is a mystery why publishers can't keep their hands off titles in translation. The English title of this book, the rather bland Tokyo Fiancée is in the original French Ni d'Ève Ni d'Adam, "Neither of Eve, nor of Adam" as used in the expression "Ne connaitre ni d'Ève Ni d'Adam" which means "to be totally in the dark about something."

The author must be talking about the intercultural misunderstandings that are central to this highly funny and engaging novel.

The author Amelie Nothomb was born in Japan of Belgian parents - her father served as consul and later ambassador. After a paradisaical five years in Japan as a small child (described in The Character of Rain, another book with a different title in English) duty calls Amelie's father to China, and later Belgium. It is only after her university study that as a young woman she again returns to Japan, full of hope to renew the acquaintance with the country of which she has such beautiful memories. How the hope of a career at one of Japan's foremost companies was crushed, is described in an earlier novel, Fear and Trembling.

Tokyo Fiancée takes place mostly before she enters corporate life, when she is studying Japanese in Tokyo for a year. "The most efficient way to study Japanese, it seemed, would be to teach French" the protagonist of the novel, Amelie correctly observes. Her first and only pupil is a nice young man trying not so hard to study French, Rinri. It is 1989, the height of the Bubble Period and they meet in an upscale cafe in Omotesando. Rinri, it appears, has rich parents, a white Mercedes and for the rest just floats through life, "playing" as he calls it ("Playing what?" asks Amelie, until a friend tells her that the Japanese asobu is a description for the state of not being engaged in work or study.)

Although Amelie and Rinri become friends and lovers, this is not a love story: the temperature is tepid at most, and the relationship is hampered by intercultural misunderstandings - as the later office work would be.

A funny misunderstanding also occurs in her Japanese class, where she has the habit of raising her hand and asking the teacher all kinds of questions, almost causing heart attacks:

"One must not ask questions of the Sensei," scolded the teacher.
"But-if I do not understand?"
"You understand!"
I now knew why language instruction in Japan was so wobbly.

It is indeed true that children in Japanese schools are sometimes taught not to ask questions.

But back to the relationship of Amelie and Rinri. It struck me how large the role played by food is in their friendship. When at the beginning of the story Rinri invites her to dinner at the home of a friend, he cooks okonomiyaki (with Hiroshima sauce), the favorite dish of Amelie who spent her early youth in the Kansai.

"The aroma of cabbage, shrimp and ginger sizzling together carried me sixteen years into the past, to the era when my gentle governess Nishio-san would concoct the same treat for me, and which I have not tasted since."

Prey to a deep emotion, Amelie looses her veneer of civilization and devours her okonomiyaki, "with eyes glazed over, and uttering faint little cries of delight."

Other dishes also mark her amorous relation with Rinri. At Rinri's place, both indulge themselves with Swiss-cheese fondue, made in a sort of high-tech contraption that gives the cheese the taste of molten plastic. At a certain moment Amelie playfully dips her hands into the fondue so that a thick layer of fake cheese gives her gloves. As she can't wash her yellow mittens off, she tries to scrape the cheese away with a kitchen knife, cutting her palm. "The boy" (as she class Rinri) then gets down on his knees and delicately uses his teeth to scrape the polystyrene from Amelie's hands.

"Never in my life had I been so confounded by gallantry. [...] The episode had been a catharsis for him. He took me in his arms and kept me there."

This could well have heralded the start of a deeper relation, but Amelie feels only "koi" and no "ai" for Rinri. When they climb Mt Fuji together she races to the top, while he follows as a panting wreck, something which seems symbolical of their relationship.

Another food event seals the beginning of the end of their relation. On a winter trip to the island of Sado, they have little octopuses for dinner, kept alive until the final moment so that they are still as fresh as possible.

"It would be impolite to refuse the dish. [...] I shoved it into my mouth and tried to plant my teeth into it. Then the most dreadful thing happened: the octopus's nerves, still alive, fastened into my tongue with all its tentacles. And would not let go. I was screaming as loudly as you can scream when you have had your tongue swallowed whole by an octopus. I tried to detach the beast with my fingers: impossible, the suction cups were firmly stuck."

Later that dinner, Rinri proposes marriage. Futile, of course, although Amelie doesn't not want to hurt his feelings and for many months puts off giving a clear answer. But the sticky octopus was an unfortunate prelude - needless to say that there is no happy marriage in their future.

The Cannery Ship redux

Norma Field, writing on Ikjeld.com, has an interesting and detailed account of how The Cannery Ship rose to current popularity. She tells why the boom was improbable (left-wing writer Kobayashi Takiji was almost forgotten, the young had lost interest in politics), but also how the boom was "manufactured" by a media figure, a newspaper article and an interested store cleck who ordered a stack of Cannery Ship novels to put in a prominent place in the store. So the ship started its high ride and the rest was history when commercial appetite kicked in...

P.S. Recently I rediscovered my copy of the out-of-print English translation of The Factory Ship. Despite the ideological asides, and the lack of an individual protagonist, it is a vivid story, telling how the fishermen revolt against the inhuman conditions on the ship, only to be surpressed with the help of the Japanese navy.

Norma Field also wrote in Japanese about the rise of The Cannery Ship: