A quirky tale of obsession from metropolitan Japan thestar.com.my - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from thestar.com.my Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
T
his unignorably strange collection of stories evokes warring responses of admiration and disgust in the reader: Taeko Kono is a writer who puts the toxic into intoxicating. The selection, written between 1961 and 1971, is a brave choice for one of the launch titles in W&Nâs new list of modern classics. (Though the publisher that first gave us
Lolita in this country has never shirked controversy.)
The recurring motifs are sexual violence and masochism, the protagonists women who occupy mid-century Japanese society quietly, but conceal taboo longings. âFukuko liked physical pain during sex,â weâre told of one character; of another, âYuko had never been able to be satisfied by ordinary sex. she would demand violent methods of arousal.â
Apr 25, 2021
British translator Ginny Tapley Takemori has become a recognizable name in translated fiction in recent years. Her work on Sayaka Murata’s “Convenience Store Woman” (2018) and “Earthlings” (2020), as well as Kyoko Nakajima’s “The Little House” (2019), garnered praise, but in an alternate universe she could still be translating works from Spanish or Catalan in sunny Barcelona.
After graduating high school in the 1980s, Takemori took a gap year (that extended into several), enjoying her work in London’s music scene. An eye-opening vacation to Spain, however, convinced Takemori to take a leap and move from her base in England.
Japanese literature in translation has won plenty of acclaim in recent years acclaim that only continues to increase. 2018’s “Convenience Store Woman” by Sayaka Murata and translated by Ginny Takemori sold more than 650,000 copies, made the shortlist for multiple major book awards, and was named a best book of the year by 14+ major publications from
The New Yorker to
Buzzfeed.
The next year, “The Memory Police” by Yoko Ogawa and translated by Stephen Snyder was a finalist for the National Book Award and the International Booker Prize. And in 2020, Yu Miri’s “Tokyo Ueno Station” (translated by Morgan Giles) one-upped “The Memory Police” and actually won the National Book Award.