Taichi Yamada: In Search of a Distant Voice
Taichi Yamada made his English language debut a few years ago with an excellent ghost story called Strangers, which dealt with a recent divorcee finding his dead parents alive and well. It was followed last year by this novel, which is actually taken from earlier in the writer’s career, having originally been published in Japanese in the mid-80s. It’s not even nearly as good as Strangers, but it does demonstrate a recent positive trend in Japanese literature in translation.
In Search of a Distant Voice is the story of Tsuneo, an immigration officer with a shady past who, as he begins preparations for an arranged marriage, starts to hear a woman’s voice. The voice becomes a haunting preoccupation for him to the point where it ruins his chances of marriage and he’s forced to take time off work. Once he confesses what happened when he was living in California, the mysterious woman agrees to meet with him.
Now, as an outline, that’s not a bad story – on paper it makes a decent supernatural thriller. Sadly, the execution is poor. The impetus of the story is governed by two major questions: ‘what happened in Tsuneo’s past?’ and ‘who is the woman?’, with an implicit link that there will be some sort of connection between the two that explains why Tsuneo can hear this voice, or why the woman is able to talk only to him. But ultimately, the revelation about Tsuneo’s past is anticlimactic. Now, this may be a cultural difference or just my broad pragmatic streak, but it’s nothing that shocking. To make matters worse, the mysterious woman’s identity is never revealed, and there no connection given between the two. It’s a potentially interesting plot chased down dead ends.
The other major interesting idea in the novel – the possibility that there is no voice and Tsuneo is just suffering from a mental illness - is dismissed, even though this would meld well with the revelation of his past, if it were revealed that he had post-traumatic stress syndrome. However, the novel goes out of its way to tell us that this voice does belong to another person, and then completely fails to provide a satisfactory denouement. One plus is that Tsuneo is a well-drawn character – an everyman at odds with his environment, as portrayed through the parallels between his current job and his situation while living in America. It’s a shame he finds himself stuck in such an ill-conceived plot.
But while the book isn’t wildly successful in its own right, it signifies a larger trend in Japanese literature in translation, and in literature in translation in general. Literature translated from other languages has long been regarded as intellectual. There are two major reasons for this. Firstly, many of the academics who work as literary translators on the side tend to turn there attention to more literary texts. Further, literary translation is a poorly paid enterprise and, particularly in Japanese literature, subsidies are awarded for translating more literary texts. These combined means that many of the works which are selected for translation into English are academic tomes with little interest for anyone outside of academia.
There are two results of this situation. Firstly, it’s very rare for a literary work in translation to be a commercial success, and as a result a publisher is hesitant when approached with any literature in translation. Secondly, it gives a skewed impression of foreign literatures: imagine if someone thought that English literature was just Austen, Dickens, Rushdie and other academic texts without King, Koontz, Asimov and all the other genre writers to set them off. The recent trend has seen more foreign genre literature being translated, making literature in translation, and the work of literary translators, more financially viable, and going a way to dispelling the myth that foreign literature is difficult, intellectual and impenetrable. So while In Search of a Distant Voice isn’t a particularly good story, I’m nevertheless glad it exists in English.
In Search of a Distant Voice is the story of Tsuneo, an immigration officer with a shady past who, as he begins preparations for an arranged marriage, starts to hear a woman’s voice. The voice becomes a haunting preoccupation for him to the point where it ruins his chances of marriage and he’s forced to take time off work. Once he confesses what happened when he was living in California, the mysterious woman agrees to meet with him.
Now, as an outline, that’s not a bad story – on paper it makes a decent supernatural thriller. Sadly, the execution is poor. The impetus of the story is governed by two major questions: ‘what happened in Tsuneo’s past?’ and ‘who is the woman?’, with an implicit link that there will be some sort of connection between the two that explains why Tsuneo can hear this voice, or why the woman is able to talk only to him. But ultimately, the revelation about Tsuneo’s past is anticlimactic. Now, this may be a cultural difference or just my broad pragmatic streak, but it’s nothing that shocking. To make matters worse, the mysterious woman’s identity is never revealed, and there no connection given between the two. It’s a potentially interesting plot chased down dead ends.
The other major interesting idea in the novel – the possibility that there is no voice and Tsuneo is just suffering from a mental illness - is dismissed, even though this would meld well with the revelation of his past, if it were revealed that he had post-traumatic stress syndrome. However, the novel goes out of its way to tell us that this voice does belong to another person, and then completely fails to provide a satisfactory denouement. One plus is that Tsuneo is a well-drawn character – an everyman at odds with his environment, as portrayed through the parallels between his current job and his situation while living in America. It’s a shame he finds himself stuck in such an ill-conceived plot.
But while the book isn’t wildly successful in its own right, it signifies a larger trend in Japanese literature in translation, and in literature in translation in general. Literature translated from other languages has long been regarded as intellectual. There are two major reasons for this. Firstly, many of the academics who work as literary translators on the side tend to turn there attention to more literary texts. Further, literary translation is a poorly paid enterprise and, particularly in Japanese literature, subsidies are awarded for translating more literary texts. These combined means that many of the works which are selected for translation into English are academic tomes with little interest for anyone outside of academia.
There are two results of this situation. Firstly, it’s very rare for a literary work in translation to be a commercial success, and as a result a publisher is hesitant when approached with any literature in translation. Secondly, it gives a skewed impression of foreign literatures: imagine if someone thought that English literature was just Austen, Dickens, Rushdie and other academic texts without King, Koontz, Asimov and all the other genre writers to set them off. The recent trend has seen more foreign genre literature being translated, making literature in translation, and the work of literary translators, more financially viable, and going a way to dispelling the myth that foreign literature is difficult, intellectual and impenetrable. So while In Search of a Distant Voice isn’t a particularly good story, I’m nevertheless glad it exists in English.
posted by Ryan Stephens at 5:49 AM
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