Rising Stars of Japanese Literature

By Bailey Foster

Unlike the Pulitzer or the Man Booker Prize, Japan's most prestigious literary prize is not awarded to an author for the excellence of a particular piece of work, or for the author's body of work or lifetime achievement, but for an author's promise. The Akutagawa Prize is generally given to authors beginning their careers, which means that most Akutagawa recipients are young. For many years, this meant men in their thirties, the youngest at twenty-three, including Oe Kenzaburo, who later went on to become a Nobel Prize Laureate.

That was then. In 2003, with the 130th Akutagawa Prize, the tables turned, and two young women, Kanehara Hitomi (20) and Wataya Risa (19) took the stage. Wataya became the youngest award winner, as well as the only student to ever receive the prize.

Founded in 1935 by then-editor of Bungei Shunjû magazine Kikuchi Kan, in memory of the respected novelist Akutagawa Ryunosuke, the prize is awarded twice per year, once in January and once in July. Sponsored by the Association for the Promotion of Japanese Literature, the prize is awarded to a purely literary prose work published in a magazine or newspaper that shows the author's promise for a continuing career of excellence. The winners receive a pocket watch and a cash award of one million yen (the equivalent of around $8,800 U. S.), and their stories are published in Bungei Shunjû magazine.

The prizewinners always receive media attention, but Japanese media interest was particularly drawn to the July 2003 prize, for which three of the five finalists were women aged nineteen to twenty. When Wataya and Kanehara's tie was announced, cameras were drawn to the young women: Wataya, a student at Waseda University and a conservative dresser, and Kanehara, a school drop-out with dyed hair, gray tinted contacts, and piercings.

The two short novels by the young women are as different as their images. Wataya's novella, "Keritai Senaka" (roughly translated as "Kick Me" in English) is about two high school loners, both average, who get involved in a "giant project" and eventually grow close and form a relationship. Hatsu, the narrator, seeks out first friendship — and then more — from her classmate Ninagawa. Ninagawa has a crush on fashion model Oli Chang, who Hatsu once met; Hatsu eagerly tells him of the chance meeting she had with the model to win his attention. The two attend a fashion concert where Oli Chang is present, with Hatsu chasing after Ninagawa all the while. Eventually frustrated with his lack of attention to her, Hatsu kicks Ninagawa in the back, which leads to Ninagawa's confession that he have affectionate feelings for her after all.

In an analysis on the Japanese Literature Home Page, Mark Jewel commented on "the irony of two otherwise nondescript Japanese youths getting caught up in a 'great project' that is personal in orientation and decidedly limited in thematic intensity. . . . That Wataya may indeed be aware of creating such irony is what makes the choice of her story for the Akutagawa Prize and altogether appropriate one." Keritai Senaka has not yet been published in the United States, nor has Wataya's first novel, the title of which translates as "Install." "Install" won the Bungei Literary Award in 2002, when Wataya was only seventeen and was studying for her university exams.

"Hebi Ni Piasu," published in the United States as "Snakes and Earrings," tells the story of Lui (short for Louis Vuitton), a social misfit and school drop out unconcerned with her own future and heavily involved in a subculture that embraces drinking, violence, and pain. Lui is attracted to Ama, a young man who has had his tongue forked, like a snake's. Lui decides to get her own tongue split and moves in with Ama, who seems gentle and somewhat spineless, but proves his love for Lui by beating a man to death and giving her his victim's teeth. The piercing of Lui's tongue takes place at a shop called Desire, run by Shiba-san, who agrees to give Lui a tattoo in exchange for sadomasochistic sex. The pair have an affair behind the jealous Ama's back. By the end of the story, Ama has been murdered, and though Lui believes that Shiba is his killer, she grieves for Ama while moving in with Shiba, whom she hopes will take Ama's place.

American reviewers found "Snakes and Earrings" to be less shocking and profound than their Japanese counterparts, but nevertheless considered the work to have value. As a Kirkus Reviews contributor noted, "Snakes and Earrings" "will raise a few eyebrows stateside as well." Karen Karbo of Entertainment Weekly found the book's ending "both chilling and oddly moving." Library Journal's Prudence Peiffer commented that, like Lui, the novel is "slim, graceful, impatient, sad, unflinching in the face of pain, and often difficult to take." But what American reviewers may not notice about Snakes and Earrings is the trend it represents in both Japanese literature and culture. Kanehara is a member of the "post-bubble generation," the young Japanese who have come of age after Japan's economic prosperity of the early 1980s ended. "Unlike Japanese in, say, their thirties, the characters in ['Snakes and Earrings'] are not disillusioned at Japanese society, since they had few expectations to begin with," Norimitsu Onishi explained in the New York Times. He quoted Kanehara's response to this description of her writing: "Since I was born, I've never experienced a time of prosperity. Without my being aware, it's possible that my writing reflects that era."

Kanehara's educational history, like Lui's is also a growing trend in Japan. Kanehara quit going to school regularly when she was only eleven. In 2002, more than 131,000 Japanese students failed to attend classes, according to Onishi. This number ranges from students who have skipped thirty days of class to those who failed to attend classes altogether, and encompasses nearly three percent of junior high students in the country. This growing trend has contributed to the creation of the "freeter" subculture described in Kanehara's novel: a world of "young Japanese surviving on part-time jobs and unconcerned with their future; of unsentimental sex and a profound inability to communicate verbally; a world in which killing is viewed with amorality," explained Onishi.

Kanehara, unlike her protagonist, had her writing to keep her from despair. She often e-mailed her writings to her father, a professor and translator of children's books, who provided her with feedback, marking up her text in red ink and returning it to her by post.

As different as their histories and writings are, Kanehara and Wataya shared the media spotlight; the issue of Bungei Shunjû carrying their stories sold 1,185,000 copies — twice as many as the normal sales. Janet Ashby of the Japan Times commented, "there does seem to be an element of sexism in the media frenzy over the two girls." Ashby quoted Asahi Shimbun contributor Minako Saito as writing, "Why is it considered normal . . . for three men in their thirties to be finalists, but not young women?" Ashby noted that the win of Watay and Kanehara marks a change in Japanese literature; where in the 1950s, the winners of the prize were writing novels of rebellion, "the present generation [of young writers] is one of 'damaged youth' searching for new values and ways of living in a materially wealthy but spiritually hollow age marked by isolation, alienation, ijime [bullying], and violence."

Although American critics may pay scant attention to two young Japanese writers, the literary establishment of Japan watches them closely. "For the first time in recent memory, the Akutagawa Prize has fulfilled its mission in drawing attention to two genuinely promising young writers," commented Mark Jewel on the Japanese Literature Home Page, who concluded, "both Kanehara and Wataya must now contend . . . with the imposing and unenviable task of making good on their youthful promise."

The expectation doesn't seem to faze the young writers. In her acceptance speech, Wataya noted that she didn't feel conscious of being the youngest-ever winner of the prize, and Kanehara commented in Japan Today, "It's good to be under some kind of pressure. It will help me improve my writing."

Sources

• Columbia Spectator, http://www.columbiaspectator.com/ (May 2, 2005), Michael Jan, "The International Gap."
• Dubelman, Liz, October 6, 2005, e-mail correspondence with Abbott.
• Entertainment Weekly, May 27, 2005, Karen Karbo, review of "Snakes and Earrings," p. 146.
• Japan Times, http://www.japantimes.co.jp/ (March 4, 2004), Janet Ashby, "New Akutagawa Winners Offer Hope."
• Japan Today, http://www.japantoday.com/ (March 8, 2004), May Masangkay, "Young Prize-Winners Taking Japanese Literary Scene by Storm."
• Japanese Literature Home Page, http://www.f.waseda.jp/mjewel/jlit/index.html, (October 4, 2005), Mark Jewel, reviews of Akutagawa Prize Winners.
• Kid's Web Japan, http://web-japan.org/kidsweb/news/02-01/install.html (January, 2002), "High School Student Wins Book Award."
• Kirkus Reviews, March 15, 2005, review of "Snakes and Earrings," p. 307.
• Library Journal, March 15, 2005, Prudence Peiffer, review of "Snakes and Earrings," p. 72.
• New York Times, March 27, 2004, Norimitsu Onishi, "Just 20, She Captures Altered Japan in a Debut Novel," p. A4; June 6, 2004, Norimitsu Onishi, "An Aging Island Embraces Japan's Young Dropouts."
• Wikipedia, http://www.wikipedia.com/ (October 4, 2005).

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