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From Prague to Sibuya. The trajectory of Anna Tsima (Part 1)

2021.5.14

Novelist Anna Tsima's controversial work "Awakening in Shibuya", which is sweeping Europe, has arrived in Japan

``Awakening in Shibuya'' sweeps literary awards and lands in Japan

 

The Japanese version of ``Awakening in Shibuya'', which became an instant bestseller when it was published in the Czech Republic in 2018 and won numerous literary awards including the Magnesia Litera Literary Award for Newcomer, a major Czech literary award, has finally been published. It was done. In addition to the German version, it has been translated one after another in Poland and Spain, and has finally landed in Japan, where it has become a hot topic of conversation.

 

As you can see from the title, Shibuya, Tokyo is one of the important settings. As a homage to this work, the filming began by projecting the night view of Shibuya onto a projector in the studio, and ``trapping'' Anna Tsima into the cityscape of Shibuya.

 

Let me introduce Anna Tsima's background. Born in Prague, Czech Republic in 1991. After she graduated from the Department of Japanese Studies at Charles University, she studied abroad in Japan. After working as a graduate student, she is currently enrolled in a doctoral course at Charles University Graduate School, and is currently engaged in creative writing, translation, and research activities in Japan. ``Awakening in Sibuya'' is Anna Tsima's debut novel. It is a novel with a complex structure in which the main character is separated into two cities, Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, and Sibuya, and a work-in-progress written by a Japanese author born in the Meiji era forms the basis of the story.


Anna Tsima Anna Tsima

A page from the youth of a girl who lives a mysterious plot.

 

The main character is a Czech girl named Jana Kupková. Strongly influenced by her father, who taught her how to write, Yana was fascinated by Japanese films and literature since she was a child, and finally decided to visit Tokyo at the age of 17. He visited there and fell in love with it so much that he wished he could stay here forever. Her extremely strong feelings finally give birth to Yana's alter ego, and she ends up wandering around without being able to escape from Shibuya.

 

On the other hand, the other Yana is 24 years old. While studying Japanese literature at the Department of Japanese Studies at Charles University in Prague, she became attracted to a writer named Kiyomaru Kawashita, who was born and raised in Kawagoe during the Meiji period. However, there is little material about Kawakami, and only a few of his works remain. Yana began translating one of his short stories with his senior, Victor Creema, and gradually learned about the life of this writer, who lived from the Taisho era to the early Showa era.


There are many interesting characters in the story, but the main character, Yana, is the one who is overflowing with lively charm.

 

“I wanted to write about a life-sized girl living in the Czech Republic.Before I wrote this piece, I had made some studies, and when I showed them to my father, he said, ``There are enough interesting elements in Anna's life.'' ``Why do you always write protagonists who are less interesting than me?'' That's when I decided to write about my own experiences in the main character, Yana. I can't say, but I can say that I wrote fictional characters mixed with autobiographical elements.''

 

"Yana grew up in an intellectual family, and her father taught her about literature and film since she was a child. She studied Japanese literature at university and has a strong fascination with Japan. In other words, she shares the same upbringing and interests as me. It is undeniable that it is based on my own experiences at university, what I talked about with friends, and what I learned, but it is just a reflection of my own experiences as the author. It’s fiction.”


The original concept seemed to have a strong character as a coming-of-age novel about a girl named Yana. After that, I took it to a publisher, and the editor's advice gave this work a new direction.

 

“Since Yana is researching Japanese culture and literature, the editor advised me to include some scenes in Japan, so I added a chapter set in Shibuya to create a more complex structure.However, The Shibuya and Japan that I depict in this work are both fictional Shibuya and Japan that I imagined in my head.In 2009, when I was 17 years old, I had the opportunity to go to Tokyo for a month. , I stayed near Shibuya, but I didn't have much money so I couldn't go to many places, so I spent every day sitting on the streets of Shibuya and looking at the scenery around me and the people passing by. When I was able to come, I revisited Shibuya, but it had transformed into a completely different city than the one I had in mind."

 

``It's still changing so much that I get lost every time I visit.I really like that the title is written in Shibuya and Katakana instead of the kanji for Shibuya. I think it represents not Shibuya, but an imaginary city where my feelings are wandering."


An amazing story that incorporates Japanese literary history

 

The story's warp is Yana's life and sensibilities, and Yana and Victor's research while translating his work.The weft is the life of Kiyomaru Kawashita, an imaginary writer, intertwined and woven together like a tapestry. It's getting worse.

 

"Kiyomaru Kawashita is a fictional author that I created, and Czech readers have asked me, ``I want to read this author's work, but I can't find it when I look online. How can I read it?'' I get a lot of inquiries from people, and they get disappointed when I tell them that I'm a fictional character (lol).I also included a detailed biography at the end, so it's probably not surprising that readers would think so.

 

``I thought about featuring a real-life artist in a work in progress, but I couldn't change the life of a real person, so I created it from scratch, including the work. Born in Tokyo, I decided to move to Tokyo with the aim of becoming a literary figure and interact with literary figures who were active at the time, such as Riichi Yokomitsu, during the Taisho and early Showa eras, including the floods and the Great Kanto Earthquake. His life is created by incorporating Japanese history.”

 

This story, written in Czech and set in Japan, takes off when Anna Czyma begins to work in Japan as her base.

 

“I myself came to Japan and lived in Saitama Prefecture for a while with my husband, and I visited Kawagoe and researched its history and geography and wrote about it. I wrote it in Czech, keeping in mind the Japanese language used from the 1920s to the early Showa period.The translators, Kenichi Abe and Teruhiko Sudo, translated it into Japanese beautifully. I was happy because it felt like it turned into a work of art.”

 

When you actually read the work, you will find that the old Japanese expressions have been translated very well, allowing even Japanese readers to easily immerse themselves in the worldview of the time. For Anna Tsima, it must have been a deep emotional experience for her work to become ``my real work.''

Wake up in Shibuya Wake up in Shibuya

I want people to know more about Japanese literature than just Haruki Murakami.

 

Anna Tsima has a strong passion for writing novels and a strong desire to do so. She wants to introduce Japanese literature to a wider range of Czech people.

 

``The reason Jana and her friends decided to study Japanese literature from the early 20th century was to show Czech people that there were other fascinating writers in Japan besides Haruki Murakami and Ryu Murakami. There are things I wish I had.”

 

``In the Czech Republic, when we think of Japanese literature, we think of the two Murakami.Although other Japanese novelists have also been translated, these two are the most famous.Of course, their works are wonderful, but... There are many fascinating and diverse works of Japanese literature.There are many works in "Awakening in Shibuya" that have already been translated into Czech but are not well known or known at all. I mentioned the names of various Japanese authors and the titles of works written by them.I'm happy to say that many readers who enjoyed reading Awakening in Shibuya naturally went on to read Junichiro Tanizaki and Kawabata. It seems that he has read works by Yasunari, Yukio Mishima, etc.

 

“My husband Igor Cima and I are translating Japanese works that we would like Czechs to read. Genichiro Takahashi's ``Goodbye, Gangsters'' and Shoji Shimada's ``The Astrological Murder Case'' have already been translated. It's finished, and now it's being published in the Czech Republic."

 

Even in the Czech Republic during the communist era, Japanese literature was translated, but in many cases it was quite limited and one-sided. Even in modern times, Anna Tsima is trying to change the current situation, where only Haruki Murakami is little known, through her own works and her translations.


Once the topic of translation came up, the conversation turned to the translation and research activities that Anna Tsima is passionate about in addition to her creative work. Behind the birth of her fascinating masterpiece, ``Awakening in Sibuya,'' is the fact that the relationship between the Czech Republic and Japan has been firmly established in Anna Cima. In the second part, she asks where and how her passion to build a bridge between the Czech Republic and Japan was born. She will also talk about her research themes and plans for her next work.

 

(Titles omitted)

 

→From Prague to Shibuya. To the trajectory of Anna Tsima (Part 2)


Cima Anna

 

Born in Prague in 1991. After graduating from the Department of Japanese Studies at Charles University, he studied abroad in Japan. Debuted in 2018 with “Awakening in Shibuya”. She received the Czech Republic's biggest literary awards, the Magnesia Litera Newcomer's Award and the Jiří Olten Award, for this book, which attracted attention.

 

“Awakening in Shibuya” Published by Kawade Shobo Shinsha

Yana, who is studying Japanese literature in the Czech Republic, is obsessed with researching a mysterious Japanese author. Meanwhile, Yana's "alter ego" is wandering around Shibuya. A new generation fantasy Japanesque novel where Prague and Tokyo overlap. Illustration: Ryotaro Ueda

Written by Anna Tsima Translated by Kenichi Abe and Teruhiko Sudo 384 pages ISBN: 978-4-309-20826-8

 

Text by Motoko Jitsukawa
Photography by Kelly Liu (amana)

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