Liu Xingyu: The wonder of Chinese and Japanese literature

Chinese Guide Literature Garden

Author: Liu Xingyu (Representative of LXY Institute of International Exchange)

——Commenting on the Japanese version of the novel "Cherry Blossoms" with a Chinese and Japanese theme

In the early autumn of the Japan archipelago, the author was pleased to hear that the Japanese version of the novel "Cherry Blossoms" with a Chinese and Japanese theme was released, and I immediately purchased the book. The Japanese version of the novel, titled Sakura の かがやき, was released by Tokyo Book Publishing Co., Ltd. on September 6, 2024. It is divided into upper and lower volumes, with a novel cover design and exquisite binding.

The novel was written by Mr. Yu Qiang, a member of the Chinese Writers Association, and published by Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House in the autumn of 2006.

Born in 1945, the author graduated from the Department of International Politics of Peking University, and successively served as the director of the Foreign Affairs Office and the director of the Tourism Bureau of Ma'anshan City, Anhui Province, and the director of the International Cultural Exchange Center of the Shanghai Modern Management Research Center. His Chinese-Japanese novels "Wind Medium Flower" (Japanese version "Wind Media Flower"), "Hanmo Love Yuan" (Japanese version "Li Haitian の書法"), "Foreign Country Unfinished Love" (Japanese version "夫よJapanの何処に"), "Tsunami Life and Death" (Japanese version "津波、命がけの絆") were all published in China and Japan, and in 1992, the Japan Library Association selected "Li Haitian の書法" as the 1946th Selected Book.

Zhang Shi photography

The Japanese translation of "Sakura Blossom" (桜の花のかがやき) is by Mr. INAMI HARUO, a Japan entrepreneur. Born in 1955, he graduated from the Department of Economics at the University of Distribution and Economics in Japan, and has been yearning for the landscape of Guilin since his youth and has a passion for Chinese culture. Since 2002, he has been based in Shanghai as an entrepreneur. He is fluent in Chinese, depicts the beauty of China's mountains and rivers with a brush, and is good at creating oil paintings, and is currently the chairman and general manager of Shanghai Xia Tong Trading Co., Ltd.

In 2011, he used his spare time to translate Mr. Qiang's 400,000-word novel "Cherry Blossoms" into Japanese, which was serialized by Heilongjiang Province's "Northeast Net" in 2011. For the first time in 13 years, this Japanese e-novel has been published by Tokyo Books, highlighting the literary value of the book. Chinese literary works once again show Dongying, which can be regarded as the fruit of Sino-Japanese cultural exchanges.

Regarding the creative process of "Cherry Blossoms", the author interviewed the author Yu Qiang and obtained the true record of the novel's materials. During his tenure as director of the Ma'anshan Foreign Affairs Office from 1983 to 1995, Yu Qiang wrote the novel "Wind Flower", which reflected the bumpy experiences of Japan's war orphans, and wrote the novel "Unfinished Love in a Foreign Country", which describes the tragic fate of a Chinese woman and a Japanese technician after marriage during the war, and the novel "Hanmo Love", which is a theme of Sino-Japanese cultural exchange. After these three novels were published in China and Japan, they caused a sensation, and Japan parliamentarians, mayors, professors, monks, citizens, etc., wrote to Yu Qiang to talk freely about their feelings after reading, and Japan literary giant Ryotaro Sima also sent letters to express his admiration, and some readers also sent money to ask the author to transfer the protagonist in the book.

In 1994, Zhu Jiaping, a Chinese-Japanese mixed-race child in Shanghai, sent a letter to Yu Qiang, saying that his life was more tragic than that of the orphans in "Wind Medium Flower" and "Unfinished Love in a Foreign Country", and implored the writer to write against his heartless biological father in order to seek justice. Zhu Jiaping showed him a love letter written by Japan biological father to his mother 40 years ago and a stack of letters looking for his biological father in the past 20 years, and told with tears in his eyes that during the Japan invasion of China, his biological mother Han Fengyun (pseudonym) and a Japan soldier named Shenjing (pseudonym) fell in love and gave birth to him, and then the suffering of the family, as well as the human tragedy that he went through hardships to find his father, and his biological father lost his conscience......

There is a Confucian temple in Jiading, Shanghai, which was built in the Southern Song Dynasty, which is a symbol of Jiading's feng shui treasure and sacred majesty. Across the wall from the Confucian Temple, there is a large family surnamed Zhu, the head of the household is doing business in Shanghai, his wife Han is a local famous doctor, and their 15-year-old beloved daughter Fengyun is in high school in Shanghai. One day in 1944, Shen Jing came to Dr. Han's clinic for medical treatment, and when he saw Fengyun's beauty, he came forward to talk to him, and later Shen Jing helped Dr. Han buy rare herbs from the city and became a frequent visitor to the Zhu family. Who knew that he was eyeing Feng Yun, and often made Feng Yun fall in love with sweet words such as "I like China", "I hate this war", "I love you", and when the family wanted to stop her daughter from interacting with Shen Jing, she was already pregnant because she secretly ate forbidden fruits. Dr. Han and her husband insisted on getting rid of the fetus, but Fengyun was reluctant, and Fukatsui also swore that he wanted the child. In the early morning of the spring of 1945, a Japanese soldier and the descendant of a Chinese girl were born in the Zhu family next to the Confucian Temple. This news spread far and wide, and the city of Jiading was boiling, and the world believed that this "Japan cub" had defiled the gods of the Confucian Temple, and a human tragedy began.

After the birth of the baby, Dr. Han and her husband agreed to the marriage against their will, and adopted the baby and named it Jiaping, hoping for the peace of Jiading, but it backfired, and bad luck followed. 16-year-old Feng Yun dropped out of school after giving birth to raise a baby, looking forward to the end of the war all day long, and the deep well of Zeng Shan League's sea vow returned to his mother and son. However, shortly after she received a letter from Fukai that "the troops are transferred to defense, hoping to bring good children", Japan was defeated and Fukai returned to China, and has not been heard from since. It is conceivable that at that time, the descendants of a Japanese soldier who invaded China and his relatives would be scolded and discriminated against by the world, Feng Yun left his children in a fit of anger and returned to Shanghai to repeat his studies. In order to make the innocent little life feel the mother's love, Dr. Han took care of the child as a "mother", while Feng Yun silently came back to visit the "younger brother" occasionally as the child's "sister". Zhu Jiaping only learned of this ethical dislocation when he was in junior high school, and he was deeply wounded in his soul that could not be healed.

During the Cultural Revolution, this Chinese-Japanese mixed-race family was criticized countless times because it was the "Black Five Category", the family property was looted, and Zhu Jiaping's love and marriage were also full of twists and turns. In those unbearable days and nights, Zhu Jia usually washed his face with tears, and he secretly vowed that even if he stepped on the iron shoes to find the ends of the earth, he would find the whereabouts of his biological father who left orphans and widows and harmed the whole family.

In 1972, Sino-Japanese diplomatic relations were normalized, and the Cultural Revolution ended in 1976, and Zhu Jiaping's family finally got out of the bitter sea. He heard the good news that some Japanese war orphans had found their relatives to return to Japan for reunion, and his desire to find his father became stronger. Since the 1970s, he has sent a large number of letters to relevant organizations in Japan to find his father, and with the enthusiastic help of friendly people and relevant organizations between Japan and China, it took him 7 years and 8 months to finally find his incognito biological father, Fukai. However, at this time, Fukai was already a senior entrepreneur in a city in Yamanashi Prefecture, and he was afraid that recognizing his relatives would affect his reputation and family, so he flatly denied that he had a son in China, and had to admit that Zhu Jiaping was his own flesh and blood in front of human and material evidence, but he played tricks and lost his humanity, refused to sign the claim form at the Tokyo Family Court, and kept his biological son out of Japan, and finally disappeared. When Zhu Jiaping heard that his biological father refused to claim it, it was like five thunderbolts, and he was in pain. He went through more than 3,000 days and nights to find his biological father, and waited for more than 2,000 days and nights to go through the procedures for Japan nationality certification, but his dream of reuniting father and son came to naught due to his biological father's desperation. He was full of anger and wrote hard, denouncing his biological father Shenjing: "Is there a father like you in the world!?"

Zhu Jiaping's daughter grew up in the hardships of her father's search for relatives, and she knew the hardships and hardships of finding her father after her father's birth, and she also witnessed her grandfather's desperation. She is determined to study in Japan, and one day use the two sharp swords of law and humanity to force her grandfather, who has lost his conscience, to confess his guilt in front of her suffering father and grandmother, and to seek justice for her father and grandmother.

In order to fulfill Zhu Jiaping's wishes and expose the evil consequences of Japan's war of aggression against China, writer Yu Qiang spent several years completing the 400,000-word novel "Cherry Blossoms". The novel describes the journey of studying in Japan for the indignant father of a Chinese-Japanese mixed-race child and her grandmother and the great-grandmother who died without a dead eye, Tian Yingying, a female college student in Shanghai, who embarked on a journey to study in Japan after countless hardships such as study, life, and love, and with the selfless assistance of many Japanese friends full of a sense of justice, she pushed the Japanese grandfather, who pretended to be deaf and dumb and lost his conscience to the call of humanity, to the dock of the court, and finally won the case. Because the author has been engaged in Sino-Japanese cultural exchanges for a long time and has made a wide range of friends, coupled with the author's dozens of visits to Japan and traveled all over the East, the novel is based on many real people and real events, the characters are vividly portrayed, and the scenes are depicted as if they were on the scene. The plot of the whole book is ups and downs, touching and tear-jerking. In the text, there are not only the twists and turns of love and absurd human inversions that occurred on the banks of the Huangpu River during the war years, but also the shocking changes and encounters in modern Shanghai; There are not only the endless sorrows and lifelong hatreds brought about by foreign marriages during the war years, but also the love, marriage, and wrong love entanglements of today's young people in Dongying; There is not only the exposure and whipping of the ugly souls of a very small number of ruthless people in the Japan, but also the eulogy and praise of the Japanese and Chinese feelings of many kind and upright Japan friends......

Another golden autumn harvest season for the Japan archipelago is approaching. The author sincerely wishes that the Japanese version of the novel "桜の花のかがやき" will radiate as dazzling in the Japan archipelago as the author's first four masterpieces in the Japanese version, and pray that the Chinese and Japanese people will be friendly for generations to come, so that the human tragedy in the novel material will not be repeated. At the same time, I wish the author and translator to work hard and create more brilliance in the Sino-Japanese cultural exchange garden.

Early Autumn 2024 Written in Kobe