{"id":1825,"date":"2008-07-17T14:05:19","date_gmt":"2008-07-17T05:05:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=1825"},"modified":"2008-07-17T14:08:37","modified_gmt":"2008-07-17T05:08:37","slug":"good-news-2-non-native-nj-wins-akutagawa-japans-most-coveted-book-award","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=1825","title":{"rendered":"Good News #2: Non-native NJ wins Akutagawa, Japan’s most coveted book award"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Handbook<\/a>\"\\\"<\/a>\"Foreign<\/a>\"\\\"<\/a>\"\u300c\u30b8\u30e3\u30d1\u30cb\u30fc\u30ba\u30fb\u30aa\u30f3\u30ea\u30fc\u3000\u5c0f\u6a3d\u5165\u6d74\u62d2\u5426\u554f\u984c\u3068\u4eba\u7a2e\u5dee\u5225\u300d\uff08\u660e\u77f3\u66f8\u5e97\uff09\"<\/a>\"JAPANESE<\/a><\/p>\n

Hi Blog. \u00a0Good news. \u00a0A NJ (not a Zainichi, which would be good news too, but a non-native NJ to boot) has just won Japan’s most coveted literary award. \u00a0Congratulations!<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
This is not the first time a NJ (or even a non-native) has won a prestigious book award (hark way back to Dave Zopetti’s Subaru-sho<\/a>). (Japan Times jpg here<\/a>.) \u00a0But it’s the first non-native for an Akutagawa, and that says something positive about Japan’s assimilation. \u00a0Well done all around! \u00a0 Article and interview follow. \u00a0Arudou Debito in Sapporo<\/div>\n
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Chinese novelist Yang wins Akutagawa Prize<\/strong><\/div>\n
Kyodo News\/The Japan Times: Wednesday, July 16, 2008<\/strong><\/div>\n
http:\/\/search.japantimes.co.jp\/cgi-bin\/nn20080716a2.html<\/a><\/div>\n
\n

Author Yang Yi won the Akutagawa Prize on Tuesday to become the first Chinese to receive the prestigious literary award, the prize’s organizers said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
\"News<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Best book: Chinese writer Yang Yi is all smiles in Tokyo on Tuesday following news that her novel “Tokiga nijimu asa” won the coveted Akutagawa Prize.\u00a0<\/strong>KYODO PHOTO<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

The 44-year-old Yang’s award-winning work “Tokiga nijimu asa” (literally, “A Morning When Time Blurs”), written in Japanese, is set during and after China’s democratization movement centering on the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.<\/p>\n

It follows a Chinese man who lives through those times and later moves to Japan, still holding on to his ideals.<\/p>\n

“I’m very, very happy. I feel that I have been accepted,” Yang told reporters outside her Tokyo home.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the Naoki Prize, a major literature award for popular fiction, went to Areno Inoue, 47, daughter of the late novelist Mitsuharu Inoue.<\/p>\n

Inoue’s “Kiriha e” (“To the Mine Face”) is a love story about a teacher who lives with her husband on a remote island.<\/p>\n

A previous book by Yang was nominated for the biannual Akutagawa Prize in January but was not chosen.<\/p>\n

“I had thought that I may not be chosen this time. I could still not be confident of my own Japanese. Now I feel that I have blended well into Japan, and I am happy that I have been able to write and to have been evaluated,” a smiling Yang said.<\/p>\n

She said she learned of the news in a call to her cell phone while having dinner with one of her publisher’s editors.<\/p>\n

\n

“I suddenly became tense when I got the call and totally forgot what (the caller) told me. Even after I hung up, I wasn’t sure if it was really true,” she said.<\/p>\n

Yang began learning Japanese after arriving in Japan in 1987. She has lived here 21 years and started writing novels while teaching Chinese.<\/p>\n

Born in Harbin, Heilongjiang Province, Yang’s real name is Liu Qiao.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The Japan Times: Wednesday, July 16, 2008<\/div>\n
======================================<\/div>\n
\n

INTERVIEW WITH YANG YI<\/strong><\/p>\n

By TOMOKO OTAKE Japan Times\u00a0Staff writer<\/p>\n

The Japan Times Sunday, Feb. 3, 2008<\/p>\n

\n

Bridging an East Asia divide<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Unpretentious, hard-working and humble, writer Yang Yi bears more than a passing similarity to the eponymous lead character in her novel “Wang-chan,” titled after the nickname of a Chinese woman who moved to Japan as the bride of a Japanese factory worker and then tried to carve out a career as a marriage broker for other Chinese women seeking to marry Japanese men living out in the sticks.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
\"News<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Yang Yi laughs during her recent interview with The Japan Times.<\/strong>YOSHIAKI MIURA PHOTO<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

In “Wang-chan,” 43-year-old Yang’s first attempt at a Japanese-language novel, first published late last year in a literary magazine, the rural cultures and customs of China and Japan are colorfully contrasted \u2014 along with rich and bittersweet interactions between the central character and others, including her dying Japanese mother-in-law and a sex-starved Japanese man in search of a Chinese wife.<\/p>\n

The native of Harbin in northeastern China (former Manchuria) caused a sensation in Japan when, in October last year, she won the literary magazine Bungakukai’s prestigious biannual award for new writers. She created even more ripples last month when she became one of the seven nominees for the Akutagawa Award, one of Japan’s most glittering literary accolades.<\/p>\n

Although she actually missed out on that top honor, Yang, who teaches Chinese as a day job, was a much talked-about candidate, being the first-ever Chinese to be considered for the highly publicized award. Nonetheless, Yang remains humble about her literary feat, saying she will never become a celebrity novelist. “I am more like a craftsman,” she said when asked about her aspirations as a writer.<\/p>\n

Last month, Yang published her first book, titled “Wang-chan,” which comprises that story and “Roshojo (Old Virgin),” another story that is a tragi-comic account of an unmarried Chinese psychology researcher who fantasizes about a romantic relationship with a handsome Japanese professor.<\/p>\n

Yang, who is divorced from a Japanese husband and now lives with her teenage son and daughter in Tokyo’s Chuo Ward, recently sat down for an interview with The Japan Times to recount some episodes in her adaptation to life in Japan and how she picked up the language at supermarkets. She also shared her impressions of the enormous changes in people’s values in China these days, along with her take on the often thorny matter of Japan-China relations.<\/p>\n

Interview continues at\u00a0http:\/\/search.japantimes.co.jp\/cgi-bin\/fl20080203x1.html<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi Blog. Good news. Yang Yi, a NJ (not a Zainichi, which would be good news too, but a non-native NJ to boot), has just won Japan’s most coveted literary award. Congratulations!<\/p>\n

This is not the first time a NJ (or even a non-native) has won a prestigious book award (hark way back to Dave Zopetti’s Subaru-sho). But it’s the first for an Akutagawa, and that says something positive about Japan’s assimilation. Well done all around! Article and interview blogged here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,35,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cultural-issue","category-good-news","category-immigration-assimilation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1825"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1825\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}