EDITORIAL: Yang Yi's novel

When 22-year-old Yang Yi first set foot in Japan, the only Japanese word she knew was konnichiwa (hello), she recounts in an essay. The Chinese writer is now 44. Her Japanese-language novel "Toki ga Nijimu Asa" (Morning when time bleeds) won the prestigious Akutagawa literary prize on Tuesday.

Yang is the first novelist whose native language is not Japanese to receive the honor, established in 1935 and given twice a year to up-and-coming writers.

Internationally, writers who become successful in countries other than their native land are not uncommon.

Russian-born Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977), the author of "Lolita," went to the United States and wrote novels in English. Milan Kundera, a writer of Czech origin best known for "The Unbearable Lightness of Being," is active in France where he has lived in exile since leaving his native land. Hungarian-born Agota Kristof wrote "Le Grand Cahier" (The Notebook) in French. They are all well-known in Japan, too.

But for a long time, Japanese literature has been the domain of native Japanese or foreign nationals who grew up using the language since their childhoods. Apparently, the Japanese language barrier was hard to penetrate. But in the last dozen years or so, writers and poets from Western countries who studied Japanese as adults have come to receive high accolades. Writers from foreign countries are breathing new life into Japanese literature, giving it greater depth. Yang is one such person.

Her novels have a dynamic flourish in the way they portray people with an indomitable spirit despite being swayed by the ups and downs of the times they live in.

The protagonist of her award-winning work is a young Chinese man. To pursue his idealism, he goes to university. He throws himself into the pro-democracy movement but suffers a setback. He marries the daughter of a war-displaced Japanese left behind in China and moves to Japan. The novel focuses on his feelings toward his country and the lives of Chinese residing overseas.

The 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown served as a turning point in the storyline of her novel. Personally, too, it was "the most influential event that made me think about the relationship between the state and individuals," Yang said.

A work like this, based on such emotions, stands out in the Japanese literary world, which tends to dwell in delicate terms on the sense of stagnation in contemporary society and conflicts that arise in human relationships.

The number of foreign residents in Japan is showing a sharp increase and has reached 2.15 million. In particular, the number of Chinese living in Japan topped 600,000. Many of them are highly educated people who come here to study or for other purposes. It should not be surprising, therefore, that writers like Yang are emerging.

Ian Hideo Levy, an American-born author who writes in Japanese and is considered a pioneer among "cross-border writers," writes to the effect that words, which are the essence of culture, do not discriminate against people who learn and try to use them as a means of expression. We tend to associate Japanese culture with race and ethnicity. Levy's remarks seem to suggest that writers can overcome that barrier by publishing works in Japanese without relying on translation.

Non-native writers make Japanese literature varied and richer with their "outside" perspective. At the same time, they provide readers with a chance to re-evaluate their outlook on other countries and races.

Let us look forward to the achievements of such writers.

--The Asahi Shimbun, July 17(IHT/Asahi: July 18,2008)