On January 25, Hayakawa Shobo released a message on the social platform that the Mao Dun Literature Award-winning work "Blossoms" was officially released in Japan. Peng Lun, the international copyright agent of "Blossoms", also released the news on social platforms.
Jin Yucheng, executive editor of Shanghai Literature, is known as the "lurker" of the Chinese novel industry. He began publishing in 1985, including the novel "Blossoms", the short and medium story collection "Lost Night", and the essay collection "The Age of Shuffling". The picture shows Kim Woo-cheng's self-portrait.
Blossoms is a novel by Shanghainese writer Jin Yucheng, originally published in Harvest magazine in 2012. The story begins with the 10-year-old Ah Bao and ends with the death of the middle-aged Xiao Mao, focusing on Shanghai from the 1960s to the 1990s. The novel fully borrows and absorbs the advantages of the novel, showing the historical memory and cultural background of the city.
After its publication, "Blossoms" received a lot of praise, ranked first in the 2012 Chinese novel list, won the first Lu Xun Cultural Award for Annual Novel, the Ninth Mao Dun Literature Award, and was selected into the "New China 70 Years and 70 Novels Collection", which attracted continuous attention from the publishing circles at home and abroad.
Hayakawa Shobo, a publishing house authorized for the Japanese edition of Blossoms, is one of the publishing houses with the most translated literature in Japan, and is unique in the field of science fiction and mystery novels, including the introduction and publication of Chinese writer Liu Cixin's "Three-Body Problem" and the works of Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro.
Blossom Japanese Edition (Upper and Lower Volumes) Book Cover.
The translator of the Japanese version of "Blossoms" is a professor at osaka University of Economics Chinese. She has long been engaged in the study of modern and contemporary Chinese literature, and she also masters Mandarin, as well as dialects such as Shanghainese and Suzhou dialects. According to an interview article with Pu Yuanlihua published in April 2020 by Oriental Translation, Pu Yuanlihua studied the Chinese writer Xiao Hong's work "Ma Bole" at the master's degree stage, and the protagonist of the novel fled from Qingdao to Shanghai during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, so Pu Yuanlihua had a strong interest in the culture of the city of Shanghai.
Before translating "Blossoms", Pu Yuanlihua had already translated other novel works of Jin Yucheng and was highly recognized by the writer himself. Kim Woo-sung had previously said in an interview with the media that he hoped that Hayakawa Shobo would be able to use a translated version of Uramoto Rika. Pu Yuanli Hua once told Jin Yucheng that the translation of "Blossoms" was purely out of liking.
According to earlier media reports, in addition to the Japanese version, Blossoms has authorized farrar, Strauss and Giroux (FSG), an American publisher, to translate and publish a global English version, and will use the translation that American translator and Professor john Balcom of the Monterrey School of International Studies has been translating for two years.
Resources:
"Dialogue with The Japanese translator of "Blossoms" Pu Yuanlihua: Shanghai is my spiritual hometown", https://wenhui.whb.cn/third/baidu/201812/12/229953.html
"Jin Yucheng's "Blossoms" has successively sold global English and Japanese copyrights, and will be published in the United States and Japan," https://www.cnki.com.cn/Article/CJFDTotal-DFFY202004011.htm
The author | Li Yongbo
Edited | Rodong
Proofreader | Guo Li