The Black Cat

Having read short stories translated and published sporadically in literary newspapers and magazines in recent years, now re-reading 28 selected short stories in the collection "Black Cat" (translated by Nguyen Thong Nhat, Thuan Hoa Publishing House - 2023), I still have the same interesting feeling, strange impression when approaching modern and contemporary Japanese literary authors.

I chose to read “Hate Wine” first because I could not ignore the author’s name. Vietnamese readers are certainly familiar with the masterpiece “Lost in the Human World” by Dazai Osamu, a famous writer of the “rogue school” after World War II, with a tendency to rebel and self-destruct, reflected in his own life tragedy. “Drinking for two days. The night before yesterday and yesterday, drinking continuously for two days, this morning I had to work so I woke up early, went to the bathroom to wash my face, suddenly saw a box of 4 bottles. In two days, I had finished 4 boxes”. “Hate Wine” is essentially the feeling of struggling to deal with a few bottles of wine with friends, but readers see his familiar humorous and melancholy writing style, expressing all the despair in the most honest way, the loss in the human world.

I also read “The Black Cat”, a short story by Shimaki Kensaku that served as the title of the book. A male cat, black, one and a half times bigger than a normal cat, majestic, “lonely but proud and arrogant, full of fighting spirit…”, “if it were a human, it would of course be a lord”. “While its fellow insects, vile and sycophants, had a warm place to sleep, were fed and drank, it was abandoned”. The hated black cat was finally killed, “mother had already taken care of it”, disappeared very quickly, “only the lowly ones were left wandering around”. The simple plot about a cat expressed the boredom and hatred of the world as well as the silent rebellion against the contemporary society, a society “dull and stupid like a disease that never knew when it would be cured”.

Just like that, the reader goes through 28 literary faces that are not necessarily famous and familiar authors, but are randomly selected by "a normal reader who enjoys and learns" to bring a broader and richer perspective on Japanese literature in the modern and contemporary periods. Many short stories have a detective feel (Night in the Thorn Field, Spider, An Tu Thuat, The Barbarian, The Sole of the Foot); a mysterious and magical style (The Egg); social realism (The Headless Dragonfly, Sorrow of the World...). And especially short stories about love that are entangled with the beauty of loss, injustice, and melancholy (The Embroidered Painting, The Transition, Artificial Reproduction, In the Rainy Season...)

The short stories in the collection “Black Cat” were written from the second half of the Meiji Restoration to the first half of the Showa period, a period that marked the formation of modern and contemporary literary schools in Japan, demonstrating the strong integration and cultural exchange between Japan and the West, reflecting not only the current situation and political and social developments in Japan during the transitional period of reform and opening up to the world, but also a mirror reflecting the complex ideological attitudes of Japanese writers.

We have read famous works of modern Japanese literature translated into Vietnamese, such as “Snow Country” by Kawabata, “Norwegian Wood” by Murakami Haruki, “Shadowless Lamp” by Watanabe Jyun-ichi, etc. However, most of these works are usually translated into English, French or Russian and only a few are translated directly from Japanese, which is extremely complicated and ambiguous. Therefore, the translation from the original Japanese by Nguyen Thong Nhat brings readers soaring, radiant, delicate, and melancholy pages of literature, which is a very commendable effort. And even more joyfully, Hue now has another dignified literary translator.

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