The short story collection Hien Dang Su (296 pages) is a work by Yoko Tawada, translated by Nguyen Thi Ai Tien and Nguyen Do An Nhien. The book was published nationwide by the Vietnam Women's Publishing House at the end of August.
Hien Dang Su was first published in Japan in 2014, in the science fiction genre, "dystopian" (used to refer to a society developing in a negative direction). But when reading the work, readers feel like Yoko Tawada is writing about the reality happening in Japan.
The work consists of four short stories and a play, set in a Japan that has been hit by a disaster that has turned life upside down. Mutations occur everywhere and Japan is forced to shut down.
The title of the work causes both curiosity and confusion for readers. "Hien Dang Su" means an envoy, selected to carry out a certain mission.
Cover of the book "Hien Dang Su" (Photo: Vietnamese Women's Publishing House).
The first and longest story - The Emperor's Envoy - tells the story of a devastated Japan where the elderly cannot die and live forever, forgetting the idea of death. Their sole purpose in life seems to be to nurture and protect the increasingly sick and prematurely dying younger generation.
At this time, Japan locked down the whole country, and other countries also stopped trading and cooperating with Japan.
The author describes Japan's problems through the eyes of Mr. Yoshino and his great-granddaughter - Mumei.
Japan wanted to escape the danger of the country disappearing, so it established the "Hien Dang Su" program - selecting and sending a number of children abroad to study and find ways to improve the future generation, lighting a ray of hope for the country that was closed off.
In the next story - Anywhere Guardian Veda, Yoko Tawada tells the story of a homosexual relationship between two women when a terrible earthquake occurs in Japan. The story is like a wordplay, from which to peel away the deep layers of the characters' psychology.
Immortal Island is the third story, written with a narrative style that interweaves a personal perspective (the character calls himself "I") with an objective perspective to tell the story of a Japan heavily affected by radiation.
Japan went from being a respected country to a country with a feared name associated with "poison".
The fourth story, titled Beyond Happiness , is about Japan, where people are gradually leaving. It is told from the perspective of Sede (a former senator), through which readers can see the author's anxiety about the possible disappearance of Japanese identity.
Finally, there is the animal play Tower of Babel, in which animals talk about their existence in a world without humans.
Author Yoko Tawada (Photo: Literary Hub).
The characters "come and go with the same faces" but Yoko Tawada puts them in different spaces constantly so that they never stand still.
The author's world - from plants, objects to people - seems to be "homogenized" in nature: This can become that, we can become it, this place can merge/separate into that place.
"Strangification" of the nature of things and phenomena is maximized by Yoko Tawada through the pages of literature. This technique has sketched out a Japan in the author's mind as being on the brink of collapse, sliding down at a heartbreaking speed.
Under the writer's language, everything blurs the lines, suddenly twists and intertwines. All of this creates an extremely graceful form that is completely opposite to the harsh reality she depicts, making Hien Dang Su a strange but fascinating work.
Readers who have read the darkest "dystopian" works - such as Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale , Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 ... - will encounter in Yoko Tawada's The Envoy the magical power of a talented writer. She is like a "witch" with the ability to fictionalize haunting, extremely absurd symbols.
Through Hien Dang Su, Yoko Tawada saw a dark, uncertain Japan. But her anxiety was not based purely on a literary trend or literature, but on one thing: her love for Japan.
The Envoy is a fascinating dystopian work, written in a calm tone, not intentionally shocking, just turning the ordinary into the strange and the strange into the ordinary. This will attract readers right from the first few pages.
The New York Times commented that Yoko Tawada's language is "as beautiful as the moon and stars", "never so attractive - so bright that it sparkles".
The Guardian said: "A mini-epic about ecological crisis, family drama and speculative fiction. Tawada's concerns are both satirical and tragic.
It is this somewhat strange and distorted perspective, amidst a somewhat harsh reality but described through flexible language, that makes Hien Dang Su a unique book.
About the author:
Novelist Yoko Tawada was born in 1960 in Japan; lives and writes in Germany. She writes in German and Japanese.
In her literary career, Yoko Tawada received many awards, including the Gunzo Prize (for newly discovered writers) for her debut work Dog Groom (1991). Also with Dog Groom , she continued to receive the prestigious Akutagawa Prize in 1993.
In 2003, she was awarded the Tanizaki Prize for The Suspect on the Night Train. In 2018, she received the National Book Award for translated literature for The Sentinel .
In Germany, Yoko Tawada received the Chamisso Prize (1996); Goethe Medal (2005); Kleist Literature Prize (2016); Carl Zuckmayer Medal (2018) for her contributions to the German language in writing.
About the translator:
Nguyen Do An Nhien has a Master's degree in Cultural Language from Meio University (Okinawa, Japan), and is currently a visiting lecturer at Meio University, Okinawa University (Japan).
Typical translated books: The Road to the Galaxy (Miyazawa Kenji, Tre Publishing House, 2002), A Season of Childhood (Higuchi Ichiyo, Literature Publishing House, 2013), The Road to Success with Kindness (Inamori Kazuo, Tre Publishing House, 2016), A Thousand Cranes (Kawabata Yasunari, IPM, 2018), Dandelion (Kawabata Yasunari, Huy Hoang Books, 2023).
Nguyen Thi Ai Tien is a PhD in Japanese Language and Culture, Osaka University, currently an editor and translator for a Japanese publishing house.
Vietnam Women's Publishing House organized the book launch of Hien Dang Su: Yoko Tawada and Haunting Realities.
Guest: Translator Nguyen Thi Ai Tien.
Researcher Nhat Chieu.
Ho Khanh Van, PhD in Literature, University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Ho Chi Minh City.
Location : Stage A, Ho Chi Minh City Book Street (Nguyen Van Binh Street, Ben Nghe Ward, District 1, Ho Chi Minh City).
Time : 6:00 p.m. - 8:30 p.m. August 26.
Source link
![[Photo] Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh chairs Government Conference with localities on economic growth](https://vstatic.vietnam.vn/vietnam/resource/IMAGE/2025/2/21/f34583484f2643a2a2b72168a0d64baa)
Comment (0)