Tokoro-de... - Trinity version - Science

Japan is a remarkable country, among other things, because it cares about what people think about it outside its borders. And outside of it, all sorts of different ideas are formed about it, including thanks to books. But there are a lot of books, how to choose? Lists are formed, criteria are developed, texts are queued. What Japanese books are recommended for translation into different foreign languages? How is the queue formed? Who rules the show here: the writer himself, his translator, his publisher? All of them and a bunch of other people, or, as smart people now like to write, “actors.” In fact, in Japan there is an entire institution that is dedicated to solving this difficult and completely unsolvable problem: selecting books for translation. It is called (literally translated) “Japanese Literary Publishing Project” 1 . A certain community of experts is trying to imagine the reaction of a foreign readership, making forecasts of the potential commercial success of the enterprise... in general, the whole thing. And it is clear that in almost all cases it is completely unprofitable (we do not take Haruki Murakami into account). Nevertheless, there is an idealistic idea in Japan that cultural and literary values, which do not bring quick profit, are still more important in themselves than other more profitable and commercially justifiable forms of investment. Or at least that's what I want to believe, and there is every reason for this belief. (Although, in general, real faith does not need foundations, otherwise what is the feat?) This idea of ​​​​the value of culture as such exists at the level of discourse, and at the level of the establishment, and in historical memory, and simply in modern practice. Here's a simple example.

In one of the lists of books that caught my eye (this was about ten years ago), recommended by Japanese experts for translation, I came across a book called “Kawaii-ron” authored by a certain Yomota Inuhiko, unknown to me at that time. Thought: why not try to translate something popular science, non-fiction from Japanese? The subject itself, however, does not in any way correlate with my subjective taste preferences, but maybe this is good for a detached, critical look at a (foreign) cultural phenomenon? The advantage of the phenomenon is that it will certainly attract the attention of publishers; this is clear even to me with my humanitarian ideas. It turns out, however, not quite beautifully, as if calculation is mixed in and almost even prevails over the “choice for love”... I hesitated, but not for long. As a result, my doubts were completely dispelled by an excellent Japanese translator, Slavic philologist, Professor Numano Mitsuyoshi. He reassured me: “Yomota is my old colleague, my acquaintance, a great encyclopedist and bookworm, everything he writes is smart, interesting and curious.” In short, you have to take it. As a result, although with a delay due to my carelessness (thanks to the publishers for their patience), “Kawaii Theory” was published in Russian. The author was truly happy about this event and, to celebrate, even proposed organizing a symposium in Moscow at some university dedicated to the Japanese phenomenon of kawaii. Like, come on, I’ll come, we’ll organize a movement, all that. For a number of reasons it didn’t work out. The main one is organization. What kind of organizer am I? No nerves are enough. Then: how to explain to Yomota that in our Palestines, fans of manga and anime are one thing, and the academic public is another, practically non-overlapping sets? If in Japan comics and cartoons are studied by specialists in the same way as literature and cinema, then in our country pop culture rarely attracts the attention of serious specialists. I’m certainly not one of those. Moreover, to act as a conductor of all this nonsense - no, excuse me. Here the reader might catch me in a contradiction: so why the hell are you, my dear, undertaking to translate something for which you are not going to answer later? And I will answer this like this: Japanese kawaii itself is absolutely nothing to me, the point is not in it at all, but in the fact that in Yomota’s book there is a lot of all sorts of interesting things in the margins, in comparisons, in connection and about, thrown in, just by chance, along a chain of associations. It's all about the conversation with the author, since translation is a conversation. And when the interlocutor says “by the way!..” (this is the most Japanese “tokoro-de”, dear to the heart of any Japanese student), then the most interesting thing begins. Therefore, it is best to read only the footnotes in this book, there is a lot of unobtrusive culture-trade. Kuki Shuzo and Minakata Kumagusu, Roger Caillois and Roland Barthes, Frederic Jameson and Susan Stewart are mentioned. And Sailor Moon and Hello Kitty are just that, pictures to attract the attention of a certain audience.

Besides everything else, needless to say that this book by Yomota became for me another example of what modern Japanese essay writing is: it is not for nothing that the author is considered the “golden pen” of Japan and was awarded the Kodansha Publishing House Prize for the best essay (2000), as well as the Japanese Essay Club award (2002). In the first case - for a book about Morocco, in the second - about South Korea.

Of course, “The Theory of Kawaii” cannot be called a fundamental study, but still there is a lot of interesting things in the book. The author's method is this: do not exhaust to the bottom, but only slightly; tease, hint and move on, or rather, swim on the waves of rhetoric. Rhetoric, elegance of writing, whimsical structure of construction, unobtrusiveness. Rather, taste it, but under no circumstances gnaw it to the bone. Such delicacy, a sense of proportion and tact, somewhat methodologically close to my favorite French theorist Roland Barthes.

Among the many things and phenomena of everyday life, the book talks about collections, and here Yomota refers to the American poet, translator and critic Susan Stewart, who wrote about all kinds of collections, about miniature, about small, reduced 2 . A separate letter, sent to me by the author in the course of subsequent correspondence, is devoted to the collections. A curious piece of the collection, indeed! Despite the difference in countries and generations, there is a certain similarity and even kinship between Yomota and the author of these lines. Yomota tells me about what stamps he collected (USSR stamps with space included), and I immediately remember my childhood, my collections of stamps and badges. We’ll leave the nostalgic excursion into childhood for later, but now I’d like to remember just one stamp, issued by the USSR in 1958. The stamp features the Chinese artist Qi Baishi (1864–1957), not only an artist, but also a calligrapher and an outstanding seal carver. This stamp was not in my collection, so in order to compensate, let at least the masterpieces of Qi Baishi appear in addition to this essay, thereby adding to the collection-anthology of oriental calligraphy, which, God willing, will be formed in the end.

Alexander Belyaev

1 jlpp.go.jp/index-en.html

2 Stewart S. On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection. Durham: Duke University Press, 1993.