As usual, Mr. Yu Jizhong walked out of the office building, but this time, instead of going straight home, he bent into the newspaper staff book fair in the Times Employee Activity Center on the first side of the house. Mr. Yu carefully looked at each book on the table, and when he slowly approached the colleague who was sorting the book, he looked at him and asked, "Are you a colleague in the publishing department?" Employees responded respectfully, "Yes, Chairman." Mr. Yu looked at the human series in front of him again, and then asked, "Do you know why the Publishing Department plans the human series?" He replied, "Because we have a Human Supplement."
Mr. Yu nodded slightly and said, "The responsibility of the newspaper library is not only to report the news with conscience and introduce new knowledge, but book publishing is to completely supply the report and new knowledge to the readers, first, to facilitate preservation, and then easy to consult." In recent years, the Purpose of the Ministry of Publishing to reorganize the Times Book Department into several series of literature, culture, life, finance, and manga is here, and the Human Series is not only an extension of the "Human Supplement", but also introduces the world's good literary works to our readers."
I am convinced that Mr. Yu's concept opened up a new publishing horizon for the Taiwanese society that was not developed at that time. In 1986, the Human World Series began with the work "Dark Night" by local writer Li Ang, and vigorously injected Eastern and Western novels, new poems, essays, dramas, reporting literature and other literary works into the treasure house of the world. In the same year the British playwright Graeth. Greene's "Calm American" and "Comedian", "Mother" and "Shadow" by Shusaku Endo, a well-known post-war "third generation" writer in Japan, and "Meet 100% Girl" and "Lost Pinball Toy" by young writer Haruki Murakami, who won the Tanizaki Junichiro Award, have all been introduced.
There is a tendency for works to gradually heat up
At that time, most of the popular well-known works of Oriental literature were limited to a few heavyweight writers such as Yasunari Kawabata, Ryunosuke Wasagawa, Yukio Mishima, or Soseki Natsume, and with limited reading information, readers may not recognize these literary masters, let alone young writers who have just debuted. At that time, Haruki Murakami's two books were published in Taiwan and did not cause them to sell well. In 1987, Haruki Murakami's self-proclaimed fierce, silent, and sad pure love novel "Norwegian Forest" sold wildly after its publication in Japan, and the following year, the Times knocked on the brick again and launched his debut work "Listening to the Wind" that he talked about the community like a newcomer literary award, but unfortunately, the reader's purchase rate was still not high, and the sales did not meet expectations.
In 1989, the hometown publishing house published "Norwegian Forest" in three volumes in Taiwan, because of the moving love story, it immediately caused a response from the campus students, in 1991, the hometown merged "Norwegian Forest" into one volume, and took advantage of the trend to launch "Dance dance" two volumes, and Yuanliu Publishing Company followed up and published "The Terminal of the Trojan Horse". After optimistically estimating that Murakami's works have a gradual upward trend, The Times re-revised the three published works in one go and included them in the newly developed red novel series to fight in the market, but although the sales were stable, they failed to have a significant improvement. At this time, the sales of the book "Norwegian Forest" had already shown that Murakami's works had the conditions for hot sales in Taiwan, and in 1992, another version of "Norwegian Forest" that could be translated by the bookstore was added to share the pie.
Ten years to sharpen a sword a small amount to tens of thousands
On June 12, 1994, before the deadline for the termination of publication infringement stipulated in Taiwan's new copyright law, foreign works under the border were tacitly allowed to be freely translated, published and sold, and the Times saw the general trend of intellectual property power, and in 1992, it officially negotiated copyright matters with Japan, and after more than half a year of correspondence, finally obtained authorization, and embarked on the third revision plan, in 1993 Murakami's works were determined to be transferred to the blue novel series, the independent sub-series was operated as a collection, and Murakami's latest masterpiece "South of the Border. The "West of the Sun" series was first pioneered, and the first volume of the collection sequence was deliberately reserved for the representative work "The End of the World and the Cold Alien" published later but won the 1985 Tanizaki Junichiro Award.
Murakami's writing is concise and clear, light and smooth, the literal is simple but the meaning is abstract, the technique is like to make a first-person narrative, abandoning the social atmosphere, the characters only have code names and no names, the passages are often mixed with numbers, information and materials, and the story creates a thick "nothingness" and "blankness", which is fascinating to read and induces contradictions and suspicions. This ethereal style waited until the publication of the "Youth Sorrow Trilogy" in 1995, and Murakami was finally quickly discussed and accepted by Wenqing in Taiwan. Soon, even TV product advertisements were directly embedded in the book, nothing more than grasping the young trend.
From 1986 to 1995, Murakami's works were printed on Taiwan like pouring sugar cane, and the sales ranged from a small number to tens of thousands of copies, fulfilling the principle of "grinding a sword in ten years". In addition, the cover design of the blue novel version, the news transferred by the editor of the Japanese publishing house at that time, was Murakami himself's most satisfactory binding design, and let Murakami, who originally did not care about the Taiwan market, relax the restrictions that were originally only willing to authorize the publication of novels in Taiwan, as of now, the copyright of Murakami's works is still scattered in Many publishing houses in Japan, only the Times edition collects its masterpieces, practicing the real one-dragon Haruki Murakami collection.
Haruki Murakami has been in Taiwan for thirty years, and before the publication of the Chinese edition of his autobiographical essay "As a Professional Novelist", Times Publishing has been able to raise his voice, creating a campaign from south to north, from west to east, led by a large number of new generation writers, and connecting more than ten characteristic independent bookstores in Taiwan to jointly appeal to readers.
At this moment, flipping through this new book, in addition to being moved, I remembered the two important editors-in-chief of Murakami's works on the road to taiwan development, one is Wu Jiwen, the other is Zheng Li'er, without the persistence of their two loyal fans, perhaps today Murakami fans will not have the opportunity to explore the perfect picture of the Chinese version of the work. I will reminisce about the past and leave a little commemoration for myself who was fortunate to participate in the process.
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