|
Article Excerpt
Translators' Introduction
Kurahashi Yumiko (1935-2005) was, for more than four decades, one of Japan's most innovative and original writers. Acclaimed for her political satire, experimental novels, and fantastic short stories, Kurahashi was also the author of two collections of fairy tales. Born in Tosayamada, Kochi prefecture, in Shikoku, Kurahashi had initially intended to pursue a career in dentistry; however, in 1957 she entered Meiji University, Tokyo, where she studied French literature. Kurahashi first gained critical attention in 1960 when her short story "Parutai" (from the German Partei [party]) won the Meiji University President's Prize.) "Partutai," which was also nominated for the prestigious Akutagawa Prize, was only the second story that Kurahashi had written, and it is clearly influenced by French existentialism; she herself described it as being an "imitation of Sartre." (1) Although the story's satirical portrayal of the Communist Party attracted a great deal of attention, not all of it was favorable; indeed, it was as controversial as it was successful, but the controversy surrounding this and other early short stories was merely a prelude to the negative criticism of Kurahashi's work that would persist even as she established herself as one of the leading intellectual writers of her generation. The best known of Kurahashi's early antirealist novels include Kurai tabi (Blue Journey, 1961) and Sei shojo (Divine Maiden, 1965). In 1966 Kurahashi was invited to spend twelve months in the United States as a Fulbright scholar in the creative writing program at the University of Iowa. On returning to Japan she had further successes with Sumiyakisuto Q no boken (The Adventures of Sumiyakist Q, 1969), Bajinia (Virginia, 1970) and Yume no ukihashi (The Floating Bridge of Dreams, 1971), the latter of which reworks the final chapter of Genji monogatari (The Tale of Genji). In 1972 Kurahashi moved to Portugal with her husband and their two children; they stayed for two years but returned to Japan in 1974 because of the political unrest. Kurahashi published a collection of grotesque tales in 198.5, (2) and in the following year published what is arguably the best known of her later experimental novels: Amanonkoku okanki (Record of a Journey to Amanon Country). Her last completed work, Hoshi no ojisama, was a translation of Antoine de Saint-Exupery's Le petit prince, which was published posthumously in 2005.
Kurahashi's first engagement with the fairy-tale genre came in 1984 with the publication of Otona no tame no zankoku dowa (Cruel Fairy Tales for Adults), a collection of twenty-six short stories in which fairy tales by Hans Christian Andersen, the Grimm brothers, and Charles Perrault are rewritten and juxtaposed with revisions of Japanese tales appropriated from the eighteenth-century collection Otogi zoshi and the twelfth-century Konjaku monogatari. Cruel Fairy Tales for Adults also draws on sources as diverse as Franz Kafka, Tanizaki Junichiro, Hayashi Tatsuo, and Oscar Wilde, as well as Greek myths and British folktales. Citing G. K. Chesterton in the afterword, Kurahashi describes fairy tales as perfectly logical and rational; she also maintains that they are cruel because they are governed by standards of retributive justice and didactic morals, and, in the case of her own tales, for adults because their erotic nature might be considered too "poisonous" (dokusei)for children.
"A Mermaid's Tears" ("Ningyo no namida"), the first of the stories presented here, is based on Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Mermaid." Kurahashi's retelling of the tale closely follows the source text, but there are crucial differences, especially in the description of the youngest and most beautiful of the mermaids; a description that perhaps owes something to Rene Magritte's "L'invention collective" ("The Collective Invention"). (3) Kurahashi 's surreal and, from the outset, sexually active mermaid is afar cry from the necessarily pure and virginal little mermaid of Andersen's tale, but the two mermaids do have a number of things in common, including a desire to rid themselves of their piscine characteristics in order to join the handsome prince in the world above the sea. They are also both willing to make sacrifices to get what they want, and in both versions the sea-witch is more than willing to oblige. The mermaid at the beginning of Kurahashi's tale may well owe something to Magritte's painting, but what of the androgynous being created by the sea-witch at the end? Kurahashi could be alluding to Plato's Symposium, in which the Platonic Aristophanes suggests that there were originally three human genders: male, female, and a combination of the other two. However, combining genders and questioning sexual binarism is a recurring theme in Kurahashi's work, and it is therefore not surprising that the distinction between male and female, and self and other should continue to be blurred in "A Mermaid's Tears." (4)
"Issun Boshi no koi," translated here as "The Love Affair of Issun Boshi," is based on one of the best-known and best-loved children's stories in Japan. "Issun Boshi" was collected in the above-mentioned Otogi zoshi anthology (c. 1700); however, it actually has its origins in the Muromachi period (c. 1336-1573). It is related both to enchanted bridegroom stories and Tom Thumb tale types like Perrault's "Little Thumbling" ("Le petit Poucet"). In common with Tom Thumb, Issun Boshi's name refers to his size: a sun is...
|
