The Study Of Yamasaki Toyoko's Literature

Women's University in 1944, she worked as a journalist of Literature and ArtDepartment in Osaka Honsha of"Mainichi Newspaper", serving under Inoue Yasushi,a famous writer who was the Deputy Minister of this department at that time. Afterwork, she was engaged in literary writing. Her first story Noren came out in 1957 andin the following year, she won"the 39th Naoki Prize"for her serial novel Hana Noren.She resigned from the newspaper office and started to concentrate on literary creationin the same year. Her early works were mainly descriptions of Kansai (Osaka) customs.After the 1960s, critical realism gradually played a dominant role in her works. Herserial novel Shiroikyotōhas been published in Sunday Mainichi since 1963 and strongsocial reverberation was aroused because of her incisive writing style. Once again, theJapanese literature cataclysm outburst as the"war trilogy", FumōChitai, TwoHomelands (Futatsu no Sokoku) and Daichi no Ko were published in succession. In1999, her novel Shizumanu Taiyōwas published and in 2009, she publishedUnmēnohito. Because of sharp questions interrogating the reality of Japanese societyand thorough analyses of the dark side of society in her works, she becamerepresentative of Japan's "social school". In 1991, she won the"the 39th Kikuchi KanPrize"for her enormous contribution to Japanese literature.Social novel plays an extremely important role in Japanese literature in that it getsrid of the traditional ideas that Japanese literature used to follow, such as theavoidance of major social problem and the ignorance of conflicts and that it shapesdistinctive characters boldly and creates vivid and typical images of social groupsbased on familiar people and events. Besides, it exposes deeply a variety of socialcontradictions and the real events which are"deliberately forgotten"at different stagesin Japan.Yamasaki Toyoko and her social fictions are the exotic flowers in Japanese realistliterature. Yamasaki, known as a"people's writer", used her incisive style of writingto interpret social problems and historical issues in Japan rationally. Yasunari Kawabata (1899-1972) was"amazed at the author's acute observation and livelylanguage", he felt that after reading Yamasaki's works,"when you know her valuefinally, you will again respect her and her works."This is because"From Osaka senbawhere businessmen gathered to the prostitutes in the red-light districts, she hasinvestigated personally, trying her best to describe every scene and character vividly.Her description cannot be described into simple compliment. It is an excellent workcombined with her interests and the materials that she is familiar with."Yamasaki Toyoko has so far created 8 short stories, 1novella and 16 novels. Inher writing career, her material-choosing is always comprehensive, detailed andin-depth and her writing style is always bold, real and objective. In order to reflectsocial problems as truly as possible, Yamasaki Toyoko visited many places in Japanand abroad. Yamasaki went abroad several times to create"war trilogy"whose themeis anti-war, going through hardships and persisted in finding true material and shecovered more than ten countries and regions including Asia, Europe and Americatotally.However, during her writing process, Yamasaki was often isolated and evenattacked for exposing too many deep social problems and secret events. She exposedthe upper class and government behavior in her works boldly through her keen senseof smell and unique insight. Therefore, although nearly each of her works waslong-selling, she did not get too many literary awards. She is such a social novelist,who is plain, dare to love and hate, and take literary creation as her first life at any time.Characters in her works are imagery, of different personalities and full of flavor of thetimes. By describing these typical characters and events, various realistic problems andcomplex conflicts in all aspects and all strata of Japanese society are fully exposed, andthus caused wide concern in society and create the greatest resonance with readers.Japanese literature scholar Zhao Deyuan said:"Outstanding long novels, such asShiroikyotō, Karei naru Ichizoku and FumōChitai, marked the new peak of popularliterature of realism."In today's Japan, popular literature is becoming more and more active.Yamasaki's novels catch tens of thousands of readers'eyes in Japan and abroad for hertypical materials and distinct writing style. The evaluation of Yamasaki who is nownearly ninety as well as the evaluation of the literary value and social value of herworks is a far-reaching work. Summarizing the rules and characteristics of her novel will not only help the popularity and study of social novel even popular literature butalso help people understand Japan through the mirror of literature.Although Yamasaki Toyoko's social novels are transmitted through books, filmsand televisions, etc. in Japan widely and she herself has become a well-known"socialschool"writer for a long time, few researches about her original works have beencarried out yet. In Japan, since 1960, the number of papers about Yamasaki or hernovel is about 100 or so and there are only three exclusive books contributed to thestudy of Yamasaki Toyoko, all of them were published after 2000. In China, hernovels have been published in succession in the latest 40 years. Film and televisionworks based on her original works are also put up. Now,"Yamasaki Toyoko"is aname familiar to those who are paying attention to Japan. In China, relevantinformation about Yamasaki and her works can be roughly divided into two parts:some are the compilations of Yamasaki's original works as well as descriptions of herworks; others are the papers based on literary criticism and interview notes. Theformer from the perspective of quantity and influence is significantly more and higherthan the latter. At present, no special research results have been found thatsystematically and deeply explore Yamasaki's works from the perspective of literaryconnotation, writing technique and characterization etc. in China. Published literaturereviews that can be found are mainly comparative studies of her social novels fromsocial impact perspective. The thesis analyzes from the following aspects.Chapter 1 is the introduction, mainly makes the necessary instructions about thesignificance of the research, the past and present studies and the research questions andmethods etc. It establishes the long novel-based principle; carries on traditional textanalysis through characters in original works, traces to the source and tries to avoid theinterference of film and television works to literary criticism. Also, this chapter unifiesthe Chinese translations of the novel titles, and defines the key concepts such as"Japanese orphans", "Siberian labor" etc.Chapter 2 discusses about how to interpret literariness of social novels. Generallyspeaking, social novel has a strong sense of social criticism, and people focus more onthe distinct perspective and careful selection of the work. In essence, any work ischaracterized by the characteristics embodied in the literature itself. Thus, how to putsocial novel back to the range of literature and then consider its unique artisticcharacteristics is particularly important. Chapter 3 focuses on the introduction of literary creation stages of YamasakiToyoko and provides the prerequisites for follow-up study. There are various means ofclassification for Yamasaki Toyoko's literary creation stages. Classification methodsdiffer due to different periods, countries and perspectives. In 1975, up to Toyoko'screation of Karei-naru ichizoku, literary critic Aochi Shin (1909-1984) once dividedYamasaki Toyoko's works into three stages. In 1982, Tang Yuemei, expert onJapanese literature, took Yamasaki Toyoko's Shiroikyotōas the divide and consideredYamasaki's works before Shiroikyotōas the first stage, the works after Shiroikyotōasthe second stage. This thesis divides Yamasaki's literary creation into four stagesaccording to the time and content of creation. These four stages are: trial period,development period, peak period and low production period.Chapter 4 emphasizes aesthetic sense in Yamasaki's novels. Throughout all herworks, the usage of Kansai dialect and female language, the description of customs andtraditions in Osaka and the portrayal of vivid characters all reflect her unique writingstyle, and make her works stand on Japanese literary world.Chapter 5 makes a detailed study of anti-war thought of Yamasaki's novels. Fromher first story Noren, Yamasaki's idea of"respect for life, promote harmony"runsthrough her entire writing career. The interwoven elements of"return"and"peace"reflect more of her revulsion of war. Anti-war thought reflects more in her later work"War Trilogy". Taking"sadness"as the main tone, her novel avoids too many grandwar scenes, only uses the special time and environment of war, and reveals thevicissitudes of life in order to reflect the cruelty of war and express war-weariness andantiwar feelings. How to shape typical characters by literary techniques and reflect thetheme in a subtle way by means of depicting character's psychological activity andpersonality changes etc. are the key to accurately comprehend the true meaning ofYamasaki's work and her anti-war thought.Chapter 6 summarizes the social value of Yamasaki's novel. The essence ofYamasaki's work is the strong sense of responsibility and mission. Having a longexperience of newspaper correspondents, she always insists wide, thorough materialselection and makes reasonable artistic material processing. Yamasaki's literarycreation is not driven by any profits and she is considered as "The national writer". Thevalue of her works is far beyond the scope of literature. It causes a strong reaction in society and has significant social value.Yamasaki Toyoko's novels have complicated plots and large number ofcharacters, but rarely let readers feel aesthetic fatigue. The artistry can be summarizedas"exquisiteness" and "fantasticality". The exquisiteness of Yamasaki's novels isbased on detailed investigation and evidence collection. There are few abstract orconceptual things and rich real elements give the reader extremely strong sense ofreality. Exquisite description can portray abstract, hidden things and make complicatedstructures and relationships become structured and hierarchical. It helps the readerunderstand the invisible things and look at the whole picture of society. Anotherartistic characteristic of Yamasaki's novels is"fantasticality". She likes challengesvery much and with her novels, she always brings the readers to the unknown worldand let them make their own exploration. With rare but perceivable themes andcharacters of varying personalities, every piece of her works can be amazing andarouse readers'abundant emotion. When you read Yamasaki Toyoko's works, youmay understand the true meaning of life, explore the beauty of the world and gain realand true move.