Junichi Watanabe's medical novels that observe the fate of life from the perspective of a surgeon are unique and thought-provoking. I have selected and translated his short stories "Breast Cancer Surgery" and "The Monkey's Rebellion" (published in Foreign Literature and Art, No. 2, 1983), the novella "Light and Shadow" (published in the second issue of "Japanese Literature" in 1984), and the novel "Flower Burial" (published by Writers Publishing House in 1988) to introduce this Japanese writer who abandoned medicine and literature to Chinese readers.
"Flower Burial" by Junichi Watanabe, translated by Chen Xiru, Writers Publishing House
Junichi Watanabe was born in Hokkaido in 1933 to parents who were teachers and came from a well-to-do family. He has been fond of literature since middle school, and after being admitted to Sapporo Medical University, he also joined the Faculty of Literature and Art, publishing works in the alumni magazine Artery and the fan magazine Frozen Tree. After graduating from university and obtaining a medical license, he specialized in plastic surgery, received a doctorate, and worked as a lecturer in plastic surgery at Sapporo Medical University. While practicing medicine, teaching and creating, he published many influential works in journals such as "Literary Circles", "New Wave", "Literature and Art", and "Popular Readers". But his job is still as a doctor and a teacher, and his literary creation is only a hobby, and even he does not know whether he will continue to write in the future. If he hadn't encountered a "heart transplant incident", he might not have become a professional writer.
The first heart transplant at Sapporo Medical University was performed on August 7, 1968, by Thoracic Surgery Professor Shotaro Wada. At first, Junichi Watanabe felt that although this operation had some experimental nature, the purpose was to save the lives of patients, and from a clinical medical point of view, it should be considered a good thing. However, some doctors believe that it will put the potentially surviving heart provider to death, and it is a matter of life, human rights, ethics and morality. Junichi Watanabe, out of a defense of his alma mater's reputation, claimed that the doctors did not prejudge the death of the patient, but after a while, he heard a lot of discussion, and then doubted the rationality of the operation - the patient whose heart was removed was not judged to be a real brain death! It was like a thunderbolt on a sunny day, which completely collapsed the deep-rooted sacred belief in his heart to save lives and help the injured. Of course, he could remain silent and continue to hang out in school, but out of the doctor's conscience, he learned about the inside story of the operation through various channels and decided to make the results of the investigation public. He wanted to publish the results of the investigation in the form of an investigation report, but considering that he was still working at the school, he "made a makeover" and wrote the novel "Heart Transplant". In fact, no one read "Heart Transplant" as a fictional novel, so some people attacked him for eating inside and out, bursting the black material of his alma mater, and smearing his alma mater. Unable to continue his work at a hierarchical and intricately interpersonal institution, he resigned in anger and went to Tokyo to find another way out.
In Japan, doctors are high-income professions, medical school tuition is high, poor families can not afford to study, some even say that Japanese doctors are "inbreeding", only the children of doctors can afford medical school. Before Junichi Watanabe left Sapporo, several writers and friends advised him to "think twice before acting" at the practice banquet, but he had already decided that he could support his family with only one pen. After arriving in Tokyo, he went to work in a small hospital three days a week, earning living expenses, and the rest of the time he spent writing hard. The successful launch of "Flower Burial" and "Light and Shadow" not only laid his position in the literary world, but also gave him the confidence to make a living from literature, and since then he has quit all medical work and focused on building the colorful hall of "Watanabe Literature".
I remember when I translated "Flower Burial", there was a small episode.
Coinciding with the booming tide of reform and opening up and the increasingly frequent exchange of literature with foreign countries, the departmentS I work for often travel on business, and about one-third of the time every year is spent wandering around outside. I didn't have the whole piece of time to calm down and do translation, but I could only piecemeal and stitch, and even carry a heavy dictionary and manuscript paper when I was accompanying the group in China. The text of "Flower Burial" is plain, the plot is clean, the characters are fresh, the difficulty is that it involves a lot of medical professional terms, although I bought several thick medical dictionaries such as "Japanese and Chinese Medical Vocabulary", but there are still some words that cannot be found, and it is necessary to ask experts and scholars for advice from time to time.
After translating the last chapter of "Flower Burial", I was in Hangzhou with a delegation of Japanese writers. I was so excited that I stayed up all night, specially bought a pack of good cigarettes, made a good cup of tea, and in the bright moonlight, looked at the floating west lake and celebrated myself. However, le was extremely sad, and this 260,000-word translation was almost stillborn—there was no contract signed at the time, but before translating "Flower Burial", I had already reported the topic to an editor of a publishing house, who not only agreed to this, but also agreed to be my responsible editor. I had just translated two chapters when a young man came to me and said that a novel of 330,000 words translated by the couple had been changed twice, and that the editor-in-charge had to change a chapter himself and ask them to "go according to this", but the third draft was still not passed. Because the editor-in-charge knew me, he suggested that the young man come to me for consultation and see if he could help revise it. At first, I did not agree, but he came three times in a row, almost pleading, I was embarrassed to refuse again, had to put down the "Flower Burial", "for others to make a wedding dress." I didn't expect that this "wedding dress" was really difficult to make, so I also realized that it was not easy for editors who "made wedding dresses" for others all day. Each translator's understanding of the original text is not the same, the expression is very different, the words of many people gathered together, but also smooth, harmonious, to the greatest extent possible to the original text, the original meaning, the original style, it is really too difficult! After thinking about it again and again, I decided to start from scratch and change it to the end according to the original text, never to be done, and I would retranslate it where it really didn't come. In this way, it took me more than half a year to finally pass the final review, but the translation of "Flower Burial" was submitted a year later than originally planned, and the editor I knew had been transferred away, and "Flower Burial" became an "abandoned child". At that time, Junichi Watanabe was not yet famous in China, and he had unsuccessfully invested in a number of publishing houses, and later I asked Congwei Xi, who was the president of the Writers Publishing House at the time, to take a look, and he said" "Very good, we want", and finally published by the Writers Publishing House.
"Flower Burial" is Junichi Watanabe's first long documentary novel, and it is also a representative work of his early medical novels.
In the summer of 1966, while sorting out the lecturer's room in plastic surgery, Junichi Watanabe fell from his bookshelf a pamphlet, Hokkaido Medical Journal, which contained "A Brief Biography of Ogino Ginko" written by Sapporo Physician Association President Shotaro Matsumoto. Before that, he did not know that there was such a woman in the world, and this little biography was like a breeze that blew away the dust of history, so that the pioneer of the women's liberation movement in the early Meiji period and the first female doctor in Japanese history to obtain a government medical license appeared in front of his eyes.
Yinzi is everyone's bridesmaid, zhishu Dali. After getting married, because her husband who was looking for flowers asked Willow to infect her with strene diseases, she divorced in anger, returned to her mother's house, and resolved to study medicine, saving herself and saving her sisters who were ashamed to seek medical treatment because of STDs. Umiko's intelligence, elegance, willfulness, stubbornness, Umiko's desire for love, loyalty, and bravery, Ginko's physical and mental torture and suffering, and the insults, bullying, ridicule, and ridicule she suffered during her medical treatment and medical studies all made Watanabe Junichi feel the same way, and he was determined to make Ginko "resurrect" from black and white.
In order to write a good ginko, Watanabe Junichi repeatedly went to the village of Qin in Ōsato County, Saitama Prefecture, where she practiced medicine, where he lived, where imai, where he lived, and komecho in Tokyo, where he was ill, where he listened to Ginko's adopted daughter and relatives talk about what they saw as ginko, and also visited Professor Kogawa Dingzo of Shuntendo University School of Medicine to learn about the customs and medical conditions of the Meiji era. From the summer of 1969 to the spring of 1970, Junichi Watanabe spent more than half a year kneading a large amount of material obtained from the investigation like noodles, thus presenting a pure, reserved, innocent, and kind bard in front of the reader's eyes, winning wide acclaim.
The Japanese name of this novel is "Flower Burial", some people translate it as "Flower Death", some people translate it as "Burial Flower", and the reason why I translate it as "Flower Burial" is for two reasons: First, There are many burial methods such as burial, cremation, and tree burial in China, while Ginko fell into the snow due to a sudden heart attack, buried by white snowflakes, and was found and sent to the hospital; second, the critic Masaaki Kawanishi said in "The Legend of Falling Spring Cold - The World of Junichi Watanabe" that until the press release, the novel did not have a name, and later Watanabe Junichi was buried in the Waka" The rain of flowers buried the path with the wind, leaving people to stay and love the soul" ("Collection of Collected Remains and Songs", vol. 1, 303rd, Zeng Mi Hao Zhongzuo, Xu Qian), was inspired and named "Flower Burial", that is, the deceased was buried with flowers. In view of this, I think the literal translation of "flower burial" is the best, concise and clear, and perhaps a little poetic.
Even more astonishing is that Junichi Watanabe, while consulting medical texts during the Meiji period, stumbled upon Tadatoku Ishiguro's (1845-1941) "Ninety Years of Nostalgia". Ishiguro Tadatoshi once held an important position as the military medical director of the army, was open-minded and had great powers, and he advised Yinzi to go to medical school and obtain a medical license, and was Yinzi's benefactor. Junichi Watanabe found in "Ninety Years of Nostalgia" that in the Meiji Decade (1877), army captains Keisuke Kobu and Terauchi Shouzaburo suffered penetrating gunshot wounds to their upper arms in the Southwest Japan War, resulting in a crushing fracture, and Kobu Keisuke quickly recovered after amputation, and after retiring from the army, he became a commoner in the city and did nothing for a lifetime. Because of the "sudden whim" of the military doctor, Terauchi Shouzaburo did not amputate his limbs, adopted conservative treatment, and the wound was suppurative and high fever, and he was tortured and miserable for this reason, so that he took the initiative to ask for "cutting it off"; after the doctor's kind words and persuasion, Terauchi Shouzaburo finally saved a dangling useless arm and continued to serve in the army. Although he was disabled in the arm, he was an official and prosperous official, and he became the Minister of War and the Prime Minister. The military doctor's whim created a fate of two people. Based on this, Junichi Watanabe created "Light and Shadow", for which he won the 63rd Naoki Literature Award. Junichi Watanabe said: "If I hadn't written 'Flower Burial', I wouldn't have seen 'Ninety Years of Nostalgia', and I wouldn't have 'Light and Shadow'. ”
In July 1986, Liaoning's Chunfeng Literature and Art Publishing House put together the short and medium stories of Junichi Watanabe published by domestic translation and published the novel collection "Light and Shadow", and asked Junichi Watanabe to write a preface. This is the first collection of works published by Junichi Watanabe in mainland China, containing eleven novels, translated by Kim Jung, Jiang Chongyong and me. Junichi Watanabe said in the preface: "I used to be a doctor and started my writing career more than a decade ago. Some people say that the distance from physician to writer is too far, but I think it is no different in terms of exploring the meaning of 'man'. Medicine is dealing with the human body, while literature is the study of the human spirit, but the means taken are different. For me, writing fiction is about exploring the inner world of people. During the day, I realized the existence of others and whitewashed myself, and only in the middle of the night did I ask myself before I could tell my own voice..."
Original title: "Flower Burial" trivia
Text/Chen Xiru
Source/Beijing Evening News
![Junichi Watanabe: When people reach middle age, the best health care is "good forgetfulness"[fig]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAP///wAAACwAAAAAAQABAAACAkQBADs=)