(Kagura, an orange-haired girl in the popular 2006 Japanese anime series Gintama, can be seen from the fan's accent "Ah-woo" or the bun-headed cheongsam outfit as a Chinese.) In the play, she is set as a night rabbit from the universe, with a straightforward and outgoing personality. ）
Haruki Murakami's Chinese
Text│ Lin Shaohua
It seems that the writing of famous foreign writers in the world today seems to have rarely appeared Chinese, and Japan's Haruki Murakami is probably an exception. Indeed, as he himself said, his novels often Chinese appear. For example, The owner of The Jie's Bar in "Listen to the Wind", "1973 Pinball", "The Adventure of finding sheep", the Chinese teacher in "The Boat to China", the Chinese girl and the Chinese salesman, and basically belong to the positive image, at least not the bad guys.
Jay doesn't speak much, but he is empathetic, compassionate, and humorous, "although he is a Chinese, he speaks Much more playful Japanese than I do." Therefore, both "I" and "Rat" get along well with him, and may even be said to be the only friends that the two can make friends, so that in "Sheep Hunting Adventure", "I" gave him a check for an "awesome amount" without looking at it.
(In 2001, Kansai Television KTV produced stills from the TV series "Make It True".) Faye Wong plays a Chinese girl pursuing her design dreams in Tokyo. ）
The Chinese girl in "The Boat to China" is a nineteen-year-old female college student that "I" met when she was working, "it is not impossible to say that she is beautiful", and "I am very enthusiastic about working", "I" earnestly tell her that "I am very happy with you... I think you're a very, very authentic person."
Twenty years later, "I" can still remember his image and what he said before the exam: "Raise your head, straighten your chest, and feel proud!" For the high school classmates who reunited more than ten years apart and the Chinese who sold the encyclopedia, "as I don't know why I feel kind."
(The anthropomorphic Chinese character Wang Yao in the 2010 Japanese anime work "Black Talia on the Screen".) Because he was the oldest and had many religious beliefs and special customs, he was called a "fairy" by other national figures, shrewd and capable, and outspoken. ）
I met Murakami in Tokyo the year before, and Murakami specifically emphasized that this short story was based on "personal experience" in Kobe as a child. He also said that he grew up in Kobe, there are many overseas Chinese in Kobe, and there are many overseas Chinese children in the class. "That is to say, since I was a child, there has been a Chinese factor in me. When my father was a college student, he traveled to China for a short time and often talked about China to me. In this sense, I am very close to China. ”
Last September, Murakami published a new novel called "After Dark," in which Chinese and Chinese girls reappear. The girl was also nineteen years old, equally beautiful or even prettier, but not a college student, but a "prostitute" smuggled into Japan by an illegal Chinese and forced to pick up customers. Another difference is that the novel's Chinese spoke Chinese for the first time, saying that his name was "Guo Dongli". Shortly after the beginning of the novel, a tragic scene appears: when picking up a guest at the Love Hotel after dark, he is beaten by a Japanese named Shirakawa because of a sudden menstruation, his nose is swollen, his clothes are stripped and robbed, he curls up naked in the corner of the wall and cries, and the sheets are covered with blood. The heroine Mary (her sister's name is Allie, from the pronunciation of the name, she is like a sister to Dongli), who reads in the restaurant in the middle of the night, is asked by the female manager of the Love Hotel to help deal with this trouble because she speaks Chinese.
(Stills from the 2009 film Shinjuku Incident directed by Er Dongsheng.) In the play, Fan Bingbing played a Chinese who worked in the customs industry in Shinjuku. ）
To be honest, my heart pounded when I saw this. Although I heard about similar things from time to time during my time in Japan, and I am afraid that I knew about them in Japan, it is still worrying to appear in the writings of writers like Haruki Murakami. Worried that the image of the Chinese in Murakami's previous works has been damaged, worried that the People of The Country, especially Murakami fans, have read it with disappointment and unhappiness, and they are terrified to see how the plot develops. Fortunately, Murakami quickly turned his pen to the criticism of the evil deeds of the prostitute Shirakawa. The author said through the mouth of the female manager of the hotel: "In order not to let the police, strip a naked, despicable guy, worthless!" Determined to punish evil, she quickly printed out the picture of Shirakawa in the protective camera and gave it to the lawless Chinese man, so that the other party would cut off one of Shirakawa's ears and at least make it "impossible to wear glasses." Mary said that from the first glance, she wanted to be friends with the Chinese girl, very, very much, "I think that girl is now completely in me, as if she has become a part of me." 」
It can be said that murakami here shows more sympathy for the suffering of Chinese girls than for the manifestation of the good that transcends the nation and the hatred and lashing out at the Shirakawa-style evil, thus showing a broad sense of compassion and the conscience that intellectuals should have. This is rare among contemporary Japanese writers. Perhaps as one Japanese scholar put it, "Finding a different route from the norms and norms of good and evil that prevails in society is an important motif (theme) in Murakami's works." (Senta Ya, Asahi Shimbun, November 12, 2004).
(Stills from the 2009 film Shinjuku Incident directed by Er Dongsheng.) The male and female protagonists come to a Chinese residence in Shinjuku for the New Year. ）
Interestingly, the heroine Mary, who finally makes her sister and regenerate herself with love in "After Dark", speaks Chinese. From an early age, he went to a "Chinese school", and the university was a Chinese studying at a foreign Chinese university, and he is about to study in Beijing. In Murakami's "Boat to China" written more than 20 years ago, "I" sit on the stone steps of the port, "waiting for the small boat to go to China that will appear sooner or later on the level of the desert." I think of the glorious rooftops of Chinese cities, and I think of the grasslands that meet the sky." Now, the boat to China has finally appeared from the horizontal line, and the protagonist is about to set off for China...
In this sense, it seems that it can be said that China, Chinese is both a "fate" of Haruki Murakami and a metaphor for him.
About the author: Lin Shaohua, a famous translator and scholar, the most important Chinese translator of Haruki Murakami's works, most of the Chinese readers of Haruki Murakami have grown up reading his translations of "Norwegian Forest", "Kafka by the Sea", "Strange Bird Line" and other works.
(Some pictures from the Internet)
(This article is from Qingdao Publishing House's May 2016 edition of "The Beauty of Falling Flowers", by Lin Shaohua/ author)
Edit │ two points
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