Page not found – Showcasing Japan through the lens of storytelling and fine writing https://www.redcircleauthors.com Showcasing Japan through the lens of storytelling and fine writing Wed, 25 Oct 2023 06:28:17 +0000 en-US hourly 1 Genji Shines Anew: Paperback edition of Mitsuyo Kakuta’s critically acclaimed ‘Tale of Genji’ adaptation released in Japan https://www.redcircleauthors.com/announcements/genji-shines-anew-paperback-edition-of-mitsuyo-kakutas-critically-acclaimed-tale-of-genji-adaptation-released-in-japan/ Wed, 25 Oct 2023 06:28:17 +0000 https://www.redcircleauthors.com/?post_type=announcements&p=9047 Read more »]]> Cover and promotional photo of Mitsuyo Kakuta’s adaption of The Tale of Genji, published in bunko (paperback) October 2023 by Kawade Shobo Shinsha.

The first, 322-page, volume of a new eight-volume paperback edition of The Tale of Genji, often-described as the world’s first novel, adapted and translated into modern Japanese by Mitsuyo Kakuta, one of Japan’s most popular contemporary writers, was released earlier this month. Volume two, slightly shorter in extent at 320-pages, will be published in November.  

The Tale of Genji, written in the eleventh century by the Japanese noble-woman Murasaki Shikibu (978-1014), is already an international publishing sensation, with translations, spin-offs and adaptations for manga, anime, film and theatre. The release of the first volume of Kakuta’s new paperback edition is another high impact publishing moment for this seminal Japanese tale.  

Kakuta is following in a long tradition of Japan’s leading author from each generation updating and publishing a new version of the seductive novel about the life of “Shinning Genji” set in Japan’s Heian Period (794-1185). A very peaceful period in Japanese history often referred to as the “first golden age of female writers”.

Article in the Asahi Shimbun, Evening Edition, published 26 February 2020 on the publication of Mitsuyo Kakuta’s final hardback volume and completion of her adaption of The Tale of Genji.

This multi-generational trend has helped keep the rather long and esoteric tale, which in its original version consists of 54 scrolls or chapters; around a million words; about 430 different characters; 800 poems; as well as 8 or so love interests, fresh, and relevant to contemporary readers. A new generation of expectant readers, however, will have to wait until late next year for all eight volumes of Kakuta’s “refresh” edition to be published in paperback.  

According to the Japan expert and former Editor of The New York Review of Books, Ian Buruma, The Tale of Genji, which is replete with rather promiscuous characters, is a novel all “about the art of seduction.”  This new edition, cleverly re-crafted by Kakuta, which was initially published in three hardback volumes, tanko-bon, between 2017 and 2020, is already successfully seducing a new generation of readers and critics across Japan. Its release in paperback is expected spread and amplify the tale’s allure. 

“Murasaki watched the sexual maneuverings, the social plots, the marital politics, the swirl of slights and flatteries that went on around her, with the keen, sometimes sardonic, and always worldly eyes of a medieval Jane Austen. Her Buddhist view of life’s fleeting nature and the vanity of human affairs added a dash of melancholy to her ornate aristocratic prose,” Buruma writes in a review, of an English language translation by Dennis Washburn published in 2015, for The New Yorker.

What counts in the seduction scenes in the original version is art, poetry, calligraphy and style. Unsurprisingly, it took Kakuta considerable time to decide on the right style and rhythm required to make the novel readable, accessible and compelling for today’s readers.

Her careful and considered approach appears to have worked wonders. Since the release of the first hardback volume, Japanese readers have continuously posted comments on social media about how amazingly easy it is to read her version and how her adaption reads like an original Kakuta novel set over thousand years ago in Japan’s Heian Period.  

Despite some of Japan’s most highly regarded writers publishing versions for previous generations of readers, Kakuta, who says she didn’t have any special affinity or connection with The Tale of Genji when she embarked on this project, didn’t feel any pressure.

A graphic included in an article about Mitsuyo Kakuta’s adaptation of The Tale of Genji published in Nikkei Style, comparing her adaptation to that of other famous Japanese authors. Top box includes a sample of her text, followed beneath by the text for the same section of the Japanese classic from Tanizaki Junichiro (1886-1965), Fumiko Enchi (1905-1986) and Jakucho Setouchi (1922-2021). Image Style Nikkei.
The first modern translation edition of The Tale of Genji is said to have been published by the feminist poet and author Akiko Yosano (1878-1942). Junichiro Tanizaki (1886-1965) and Jakucho Setouchi (1922-2021) are two other examples of leading authors who adapted and published editions, each reflecting their particular literary style and the times they lived in. 

Kakuta’s version is being published by Kawade Shobo Shinsha, one of Japan’s leading publishers founded in 1886 who publish the quarterly journal Bungei, behind the Bungei Prize that has launched the careers of many of Japan’s authors including Amy Yamada (Bedtime Eyes), Akira Kuroda (Made In Japan) and Risa Wataya (Install).

Many articles and reviews have been written about Kakuta’s new adaptation including articles that compare and contrast sections of Kakuta’s ‘translation’ and her choice of words to those made by previous generations of authors like Tanizaki, Fumiko Enchi (1905-1986) and Setouchi. And how each decided to render the exact same text in the style and words of the Japanese of their respective eras.

Kakuta, a very prolific author who is still not well known outside Japan but is often referred to in Japan as one of Japan’s best and most widely read writers, had to put all other major writing projects on hold from 2015 to focus on her three-volume hardback edition of The Tale of Genji.  

The publication of the paperback edition is expected to open a new chapter in her long and highly successful writing career. Even if she is only now, at last, coming back up for air and able to remove the all-consuming veil of Genji that has recently engulfed her professional life. Allowing Kakuta to start considering new and very different types of writing projects.

Photo: Red Circle Authors Limited
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‘The Line’ a new Kafkaesque work by Fuminori Nakamura is making headlines in Japan https://www.redcircleauthors.com/announcements/the-line-a-new-kafkaesque-work-by-fuminori-nakamura-is-making-headlines-in-japan/ Fri, 20 Oct 2023 07:07:52 +0000 https://www.redcircleauthors.com/?post_type=announcements&p=9037 Read more »]]> Cover of The Line, Retsu, by Fuminori Nakamura published by Kodansha in hardback October 2023

Earlier this month Kodansha, one of Japan’s largest and most prestigious publishers, released The Line, Retsu, a provocative new novel by the award-winning Fuminori Nakamura in tanko-bon (hardback) format. The Line, published on 5 October from an author known for fast-paced narratives that blend physiological suspense and literary fiction, has instantly generated considerable media interest across Japan and calls from readers for a sequel.

Interviews with the author and a succession of impressive reviews of this relatively short novel at 166-pages (many of Nakamura’s novels are around three times the length) have featured in a host of Japan’s most important publications, including magazines and national newspapers such as the Yomiuri and Nikkei.

Lines be those rendered, vertically or horizontally in Japanese or English, on the printed pages of a novel, in a newspaper, magazine, academic paper, a book review, or a graduation thesis, or even an eBook, may appear arranged in an orderly and predictable manner. However, the lines that dominate our contemporary lives and most modern societies, or as readers will discover the narrative arc of a twisting tale by Nakamura, narratives often cunningly replete with the strategic withholding of information, are far from predictable.

Everyone must queue for something. People join lines because they are there. Not knowing what they are waiting for. We are trained to wait, postponing gratification. It is the journey that counts, getting there. We are told to wait our turn. Some lines have openings, others not. Some move quickly, others are frustratingly slow. There are, of course, individuals who adopt, peddle and develop strategies to get ahead hoping jump the queues. But what actually awaits us at the end of the line? These are the questions that Nakamura explores in his new thought-provoking work, which some readers are devouring in single sessions, according to their online posts.

Lines and all that they represent are, Nakamura believes, a symbol of modern society. They expose us to the gaze of others; instill frustration; give us at times a deluded sense of progress; generate jealously, animal spirits and competition. Often for no apparent reason. Many are crowded and stretch far ahead, and have no discernable purpose. These are apparently, universal behaviours and sentiments that Nakamura brilliantly blends with research into macaque monkey behaviour, in zoos and in the wild, into a gripping novel that compares and contrasts the animal world and its behaviours with our own.

Cover of English translation edition (translated into English by Sam Brett) of Fuminori Nakamura’s Sono saki no michini kieru, under the title The Rope Artist. Published by Soho Crime a Penguin Random House imprint in May 2023.

The main character in The Line, an animal behaviour researcher, who like most is standing in line even though he doesn’t know it, loses his position at his institute to a younger individual advancing more quickly. His love life doesn’t progress to plan either. Fleeing into fantasy is, of course, an option, but that too can lead to a Kafka-like decent, putting an individual on an inescapable fateful gradient. In The Line, Nakamura encourages readers to stop and think, as they consider what lies ahead, not just in his beautifully crafted narrative but within the seemingly inevitable trajectories of modern existence.  

A series of data points in succession can often imply a trend, a line of sorts, and in addition to the rave reviews The Line is receiving in Japan, Nakamura has other important news on the publishing front. In September, for instance, a bunko (paperback) edition of Kaado-Shi, The Card Shark, a 528-page novel originally serialised in the Asahi Shimbun, a major national newspaper, was released by the newspaper’s publishing house.

And earlier this year in May, the Penguin Random House imprint Soho Crime published an English translation edition (translated into English by Sam Brett) of Nakamura’s Sono saki no michini kieru, under the title The Rope Artist. A complex twisting whodunnit, originally published to critical acclaim in Japanese in 2018, about the death of a bondage ‘rope-master’ a work that the Wall Street Journal has described as “an unusual police procedural that takes a deep dive into the sordid world of BDSM.”

Nakamura it would seem is destined to continue to carve out his own unusual and highly memorable line in the world of Japanese letters and beyond. Leaving many of his devoted fans eagerly awaiting his next tale, whether published in Japanese, English, German, French, Turkish, Thai or Korean.

Publicity for Fuminori Nakamura’s novel Kaado-Shi, The Card Shark



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