| NOTA |
(★)(Translated by Charles Dunn)(´Panic´ [Titulo original : パニック (panikku)], written in 1957, relates the story of Shunsuke, a hardworking young bureaucrat, as he tries to steer his own course through a corrupt world of officialdom. An employee of the forestry department of a local government, Shunsuke predicts a plague of rats and submits a detailed report outlining countermeasures against the pending disaster. First the report is snubbed, then, when the plague becomes reality and the town begins to panic, Shunsuke´s superiors react in stereotypically bunging bureaucratic fashion.／ ´The Runaway´ [Titulo original : 流亡記 (ruboki)], published two years after ´Panic´ is set in China in the third century a.C., a brief peaceful period following unification of the country under the first emperor. The narrator, a Chinese peasant, is abruptly wrenched from his quiet life, one of hundreds of thousands of men conscripted into a ruthless corvee system to build the Great Wall in an effort to keep out the barbaric Central Asian Hsiung-nu, from the newly established empire. The historic events of the time are visible only in dim outline, as they affect the life of the narrator.／ Both ´Panic´, revealing modern man in his everyday situation, and ´The Runaway´, a historical novel of sustained imagination, are thoroughly good stories. Perhaps, with the departure of some of the more aesthetic and psychological writers from the scene, Kaiko may be heralding a new style in Japanese literature. These translations of two of his representative works will bring Kaiko much-deserved recognition as a lively describer of human existence against a realistic background and a writer of universal appeal.／ ◆Takeshi Kaiko, born in Osaka in 1930, is one of Japan´s outstanding short story and essay writers. Charles Dunn is professor of Japanese at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London University. ▼CONTENTS／ ●PANIC ●THE RUNAWAY／) |
BASE de DATOS, Biblioteca del Centro Cultural de la Embajada de Japon
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