Shuhei Fujisawa: Not that kind of martial arts novel

Author: Zhou Yu

During the Edo period in Japan, there was political stability and economic prosperity. As a samurai in this era, if you are lucky, you will not have to draw a sword and fight with people for a lifetime, you can do a job within the system in peace and stability, according to the level of rank, lead 20 stones to 200 stones of Feng Lu, start a family, and spend this life peacefully.

However, the human life is long, the elbow is deformed, and it is not enough to keep it, because it is involved in some kind of disaster, and the well-behaved samurai in ordinary days must use the sword skills he has learned all his life to meet with human life. Shuhei Fujisawa wrote such a story.

Yilin Publishing House introduced the works of Shuhei Fujisawa (1927-1997), including three short story collections" "The Qingbing Guard at Dusk", "Hidden Sword Autumn Wind Copy", "Hidden Sword Lone Shadow Copy", and a long novel "Cicada Time Rain".

The publisher advertised Shuhei Fujisawa as a "master of Japanese martial arts fiction," a claim that might make Chinese readers accustomed to Jin Yong's cologne a bit uncomfortable. Because the protagonist of Shuhei Fujisawa's pen is not a great hero and a hero, but a low-level samurai who works for the lord of the domain.

These samurai do a very ordinary job - kurasawa ("Hanakosuke Hachi"), accountant ("Twilight Kiyobei"), civil engineering team members ("The Half Flat of The Whirring"), village patrol officials ("Cicada Rain") ... Usually, people who are richer are reluctant to marry their daughters to them.

They have a family to support - wives, children, old servants, no mouth can be hungry, if the salary is not enough, they have to engage in side business, weave bamboo cages to earn money to subsidize the family ("The Qingbing Guard at Dusk"),there are all kinds of troubles to deal with--the wife suspects that the family is poor ("Call Hanako Helps Eight"), the daughter-in-law suspects that the father-in-law eats idle meals ("The Sixteen Who Loves to Forget Things"), accidentally gets involved in the scandal with the widow of the boss ("Raw Melon and right guard"), and leads the factional struggle to ask him to choose a side ("Wall View and Jiro") ... They are all the troubles of the laypeople in the city, and they are mediocre and obscene, and they cannot be on the table.

Moreover, there are many problems with the samurai themselves, some are stalkers who are obsessed with sex ("Lustful Sword Flowing Water"), some are cowards who hide in the arms of their wives before the duel ("Timid Sword Loose Wind"), some are alcoholics with small salaries who go around begging for guests ("Drunken Sword Broken Stone"), and some are simply the leading horse ass spirits ("Horse Ass Essence Even Inside"). In short, it is too difficult for them to worry about the country and the people like Guo Jing, like Yang Guo, although tens of millions of people are looking forward to love, and like Ling Huchong. In most cases, they are pawns who cannot even meet the faces of high-level figures such as the lord of the clan and the elder of the family, working diligently, supporting their families, and thinking about living their own small lives, only when they are forced to be cornered, they have to give up their lives and compete with their opponents with the secret swordplay. After winning the duel, it will not be famous to raise an eyebrow, but just complete the task given by fate, wipe the cold sweat, say luck, and go home to continue to live the ordinary life of "cabbage and tofu".

If Shuhei Fujisawa can be regarded as a "martial arts novel", then such a martial arts novel has no object in China. There are no big rivers and lakes here, and the main place of the story, "Kaisaka Domain", is only one of the hundreds of small counties in Japan's Edo period, so the clan factional struggle driven by the samurai in the novel is actually "the official situation of the prefectural government", and there is no momentum to be said to be chasing the deer in the Central Plains.

The fight scene does not have the internal strength of the overwhelming sea, and the divine sword technique. The so-called secret swordplay in the novel is not a mysterious and difficult to understand divine skill, its tricks are described very clearly, very immersive, readers who know a little Japanese kendo can restore the form of the trick in their minds, "The Sword Bird Thorn", "Invisible Sword Ghost Claw", "Evil Sword Dragon Tail" and other articles have movie versions, which perfectly presents the secret sword description in the novel. In contrast, When Chinese martial arts novels write about martial arts, they only seek mysteries, not realism, and "Smiling Proud of the Rivers and Lakes" has made many versions, and who can understand how the lonely nine swords are played?

As for the refreshing feelings of "Zhang Wuji counterattacked all the way from an orphan to the lord of the Wulin League", "Wei Xiaobao and the Seven Beauties were sleeping together", "Qiao Feng Juxian Zhuang singled out the heroes", Fujisawa Shuhei could not provide, and his protagonist had such a life experience.

The Japanese critic Saka nobu once said it well – if you ask "who built Edo Castle", the answer to "Ota Michiru" (the shogun who presided over the construction of Edo Castle) will be regarded as the correct answer, the answer to "carpenter cementer" will be laughed at, and Fujisawa Shuhei's novel is written from the perspective of the carpenter cementer.

He wrote that "the Qingbing Guards at Dusk" were shopping for vegetables on the way from work, with a circle of beard stubble on their faces, dirty clothes, carrying tofu and onions with soil, and walking under the surprised eyes of passers-by in the shape of a scruffy samurai. When you get home, put the onions on the mud, draw water, sink the tofu in the bucket, then greet the sick wife, take off the knife, change clothes, tie the sleeves, do housework... The mood is meticulous, the movements are orderly, and the characters are completely not inferior to Sun Li and Wang Zengqi; writing "drunken sword broken stones" begging colleagues to invite guests to drink, at the beginning pretending to be a relaxed invitation, staring at each other's eyes, slightly sweating palms, to the stomach like a fire, the chest almost bursting, eager to grab the sleeves of colleagues and drag them into the tavern, from dialogue to psychological state layer by layer, drawing the depravity of a poor drunkard, such a literary texture is difficult to see in martial arts novels.

Compared with martial arts novels, Shuhei Fujisawa's works are closer to serious novels with samurai as the theme, emphasizing that he is a martial arts writer, a bit like promoting Pu Songling as the "king of horror stories", and the martial arts fans who are attracted are afraid that they will be disappointed, and the literary fans who are really interested in the appetite may take a detour and miss this excellent writer who won the Naoki Prize, the Kikuchi Hiroshi Award, the Yoshikawa Eiji Literature Award, and the reward for Haruki Murakami and Hou Takahito.

Lao She has a short masterpiece "Broken Soul Gun", which tells that an old dart master in the Republic of China period, with extraordinary skills, hidden in the downtown, all kinds of people came to visit the teacher, wanted to learn his "Five Tigers Broken Soul Gun" in the mighty rivers and lakes, the old man just refused to teach. The end is under the moonlight, the old man practiced his gun in the backyard, stabbed 64 guns down in one breath, looked at the moon and said to himself: No transmission, is not passed!

If you like Soul Breaker, don't miss Shuhei Fujisawa, because "Soul Breaker" is the Chinese novel that is closest in temperament to Shuhei Fujisawa.

Perhaps, if Lao She and Wang Zengqi were to write martial arts, it might be this way. (Zhou Yu)