Shuhei Fujisawa: I don't write about jianghu but only people

Not long ago, Mr. Jin Yong passed away, which triggered everyone's remembrance and nostalgia for martial arts novels. This reminds me of our neighbor, Japanese martial arts literature with a very different style.

"A real man will not die for the honor of a hero, but for his beloved." These are the words written by Shuhei Fujisawa in his masterpiece "Dusk Kiyobei".

Qingbingwei is a typical "anti-martial artist", he is disloyal to the lord, insincere to his colleagues, often dozes off while on duty, and is ridiculed by everyone as "dusk" because of his muddled nightmares. The family has a sick wife, and the Qingbing guards are responsible for the chores of buying vegetables, cooking, and serving people every day.

Theoretically, samurai should die for their lords and not bargain. However, when the lord asked the Qingbing guards to serve him, he refused, until the lord promised to ask his wife for a cure.

Like most of Fujisawa's novels, Kiyobei solves the problem with a single knife and then returns to his usual state of life.

"Twilight Kiyobei" embodies Shuhei Fujisawa's standard writing routine — abandoning heroic narratives, focusing on the hesitation of individuals when facing choices, and combing out the hidden beauty in daily, static descriptions.

Shuhei Fujisawa's martial arts all have a strong "middle-aged color", they do not believe in concepts, do not want to be controlled by passion, they are only loyal to life itself, preferring to live without direction. They are more like white-collar workers struggling in the modern lattice than superhuman who changed history.

This unique way of writing is related to the diversity of Japanese martial arts literature (known in Japan as the period novel).

In Japan, the era novel is similar to historical novels, and is divided into categories such as catcher accounts, legendary novels, sword and ho novels, Ichii novels, and stock travels. The trap tent is equivalent to the ancient Chinese public case novel, the legendary novel is similar to the Chinese "Water Margin", the Jianhao novel is a bit like the Jin Yong style martial arts novel, the Ichijing novel mainly depicts ordinary people, and the stock travel is focused on depicting violent groups.

The well-classified genre of the period novels is a product of Japan's modern commercial boom. At the height of Edo (now Tokyo), there were 16,000 registered restaurants, not counting the stalls, far more than all the cities in the world during the same period. Commerce subdivides people's needs, creating a constant demand for different text styles, and Shuhei Fujisawa inherits the tradition of writing Ichii novels.

This path is chosen for two reasons. First, Shuhei Fujisawa was ill as a teenager, started writing novels late, and only started writing in his 30s, plus his wife died of cancer. For a long time, he had to work while caring for his children while writing novels, and at the age of 47 he became a professional writer. The twists and turns of his life experience have made him feel close to the culture of the city. Second, after the war, Japan gradually abandoned the idea of "culture against civilization" and passively accepted the transformation of modernity, as everyone fell to the dust and the ideal gradually faded away, people needed to confirm their own existence through daily life, and Fujisawa Shuhei's novel just met the needs of this era.

It is interesting to compare Jin Yong's novel with Fujisawa's Shuhei novel, and in my opinion, the biggest difference between the two is in the jianghu.

Jin Yong's novel is inseparable from the jianghu, which is not only the place where the chivalrous guests are famous, but also the return of the moral order. The inherent routine of Jin Yong's novel is: the evil person is threatening the order of the jianghu, and the chivalrous must turn the tide, because there is something to do, so in the game with the evil person, the chivalrous guest is always at the disadvantage, but in the end, it will reverse and win.

Implicit in this is the sustenance of Chinese readers: they have realistic care, but they can't find a way to achieve it, and can only rely on consumption to locate themselves. The fact that "the great hero is great for the country and the people" makes so many ordinary readers feel happy shows that it is the desire in their hearts.

However, under the pen of Shuhei Fujisawa, the jianghu disappeared, and the samurai lived a gray-headed and wretched life, supporting them only with the most basic desire to survive and the most ordinary emotions. Behind them, there are no miracles, no adventures, no magic medicines such as clams, all stories stem from misunderstandings and inevitability, and all results are fate and helplessness.

This way of writing reflects a certain national characteristic of Japan — attention to detail. A scholar studying in Japan recorded such an encounter: he took Japanese students to Beijing Shichahai to sketch, and to his surprise, everyone was looking for bricks, stones, doors and windows to paint, and few people paid attention to the panorama. Even if you barely paint a panorama, you lack layers and distances. In the eyes of these students, Shichahai is made up of details, and they don't care about how it is as a whole.

The overall conception is ordinary, the details are wonderful, which is the characteristic of many Japanese writers, who do not want to enlighten the reader, but only want to infect the reader.

This is understandable why Shuhei Fujisawa's language is so sculpted and beautiful. His novels are clean and polished, and when grasping the plot, they always hide behind the narrative with extreme caution, and there are almost no condescending lessons in sight. This restrained statement is both a need for flaubert's "sleek as ball" narrative aesthetic as well as a perception of reality: life has always been like this, and no matter how much we struggle, we can't change anything.

Shuhei Fujisawa's novels come from tradition, but their appeal is in tune with the contemporary. In this sense, the deeper into modern society, the world of Jin Yong will become more and more distant, and the world of Shuhei Fujisawa will become closer and closer.

Read Jin Yong read Fujisawa

He is known as the master of Japanese era novels, and has won numerous awards, a large number of works have been adapted into film and television dramas, and many of his works have been selected for Japanese middle school textbooks.

Throughout his life, he was low-key and rigorous, and his people and works were "calm and powerful, ordinary to the truth". Away from fanaticism and popularity, with a unique literary and artistic temperament of martial arts classics, solo chanting "the proud bones of ordinary people".

The first 5 books in The first 5 books in The Collection of Works of Shuhei Fujisawa (a total of 12 books) were recently launched as the 2018 key books of Yilin Publishing House, in addition to the "Dusk QingbingWei" familiar to Chinese readers, it also includes "Cicada Time Rain", "Novel Peripheral", "Hidden Sword Lonely Shadow Copy", "Hidden Sword Autumn Wind Copy".

The Japanese era novel industry first promoted "Ichihei Ertaro", but Fujisawa Shuhei and Sima Liaotaro, Ikeba Shotaro's hero Haojie will be diametrically opposed, and the world of his works is still that old and beautiful era, the earth is fragrant, the people's hearts are constant; women are quiet and strong, and men's love is hidden. Sky light cloud shadows, miscanthus cooking smoke, Aoyama green shirts, tired urbanites, from Fujisawa Shuhei's book to see "nostalgia", see the "original scenery" of the soul, get comfort and release.

The cumulative total sales of Fujisawa Shuhei's works exceeded 23 million copies. Japanese readers commented that his book was "hard to read" and lamented that "it is a blessing to live in the same era as such a writer." Fujisawa's works are also popular in the Japanese film and television industry, and the famous director Yoji Yamada has adapted it three times and won dozens of awards. Masters such as Gu Long and Hou Xiaoxian also drew inspiration from the works of Shuhei Fujisawa and admired them. Nine Knives, Fu Yue'an, Yang Zhao, and others have also jointly recommended it.

There is a saying that "read Jin Yong read Fujisawa", in fact, Fujisawa martial arts and Chinese martial arts styles are very different. For Fujisawa's protagonist, the worldly society of power struggle is "jianghu". With the heart of a hermit, they walk the rivers and lakes of "nine to five", practicing a special skill, not to make the tide, but to maintain the strength to resist the tide. Forced to cast the "secret sword", the sparks were only between the whiskers, and the matter was whisked away, hiding deep in the name. On the 20th anniversary of Shuhei Fujisawa's death in 2016, Japan aired his biographical film "Ordinary Supremacy". In the name of Makoto, Fujisawa Martial Arts writes the deeply hidden pride of ordinary people, and is the story of ordinary people fighting for life and dignity.

Flat and true, light and sweet. After reading Fujisawa Shuhei, I knew that the martial arts were so moist and silent, and the aftertaste was long.