Iwa ni Hana

Photo of Harada Munenori (1959 - present).

Harada Munenori [原田宗典] is one of the finest humorists in Japan today.

Once upon a time when I was still a university student, I often translated newspaper articles I picked in random from English into Japanese and vice versa, not for homework (though there was a lot of similar exercises for homework too) but for my own practice. One day, it occurred to me that one of the true tests of translation is translating the humour of one language into another, and dry materials like Asahi Shinbun’s editorial Tensei Jingo [天声人語] would probably not cut it. To challenge myself, I asked my profs for recommendations of humorists in contemporary Japan, and Harada Munenori was one of the names that came up.

17-Sai Datta [17歳だった] was the first book by Harada Munenori that I read. It is a collection of articles in which he reminiscences about his happier days as a teenager in the 1970s. I consumed the book mostly on my way to class by bus. I think I laughed aloud so hard, that on more than one occasion other passengers on the bus nearly called for medical assistance.

I have posted below my translation (dated 2005) of one of the articles in that book. The original title is Bungaku Seinen he no Michi [文学青年への道] but to translate it literally as “The Road to Being a Young Man of Literature” sounds somewhat flat in English, and so (with apologies to James Joyce) I translated it as A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Man.

I think I will let his writing and sense of humour speak for themselves. Enjoy.

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There ought to be a word for Japanese films in which two people fall in love, and then nothing much happens.

A screencapture of the official website of the film "Yamazakura" (山桜), based on a novel written by Fujisawa Shūhei (藤沢周平).

A while ago, I was watching Yamazakura (2008), an above-average film in which two people fall in love, and then nothing much happens. Before that, I was watching The Invitation from Cinema Orion (2007), an average film in which two people fall in love, and then nothing much happens. There are many other Japanese films in which the love story is characterized by what never happened (I mean this in a positive way). These films are a genre in themselves.

History’s sense of black humour

Before I go on, I would like to take a moment to mention the two people – Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. I think it must be history’s sense of black humour that just when all the traditional barriers to love such as class, wealth, religion, race and nationality fell apart to a large extent (though not entirely) after the WWI, this pair came along and turned “freedom” itself into a barrier to love.

Personally, I found their idea of “freedom” dubious, but I suppose one must give them credit for managing to turn “freedom” into a prison. I say it is a prison because it seems that under their credo you have the freedom to do what whatever you like… except for the freedom to refrain from doing whatever you like.

Love and harmony

The Japanese humorist Harada Munenori [原田宗典] once mused in his writing that the translation of “love” as ai [愛] back in the Meiji era was a mistake; instead, the more correct expression should have been the word wa [和], or “harmony”. So instead of a girlfriend asking her boyfriend, “do you love me?” [愛してる?], she would ask, “do we harmonize?” [和してる?] and he in turn would reply, “yup, we are harmonized” [うん、和してるよ]. And instead of saying things “love will save the world,” you would say “harmony will save the world”.*

The below is just my opinion. If you look at the word wa, it is comprised of the words for “thousand” [千] and “mouth” [口]. In other words, harmony is made of a thousand voices. Naturally, these thousand voices may all say different things. This makes me think of Yoshinaga Fumi’s Ôoku, a manga series I have been reading. You can read more my introduction of this series here.

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