Heaven and Hell

A Novel of a Manchukuo Childhood
Erscheinungsjahr 2018
ISBN: 978-0-8248-7655-5
Verlag: University of Hawaii Press

Buch, Englisch, 176 Seiten, Paperback, Format (B × H): 132 mm x 213 mm, Gewicht: 200 g

Takarabe Toriko’s autobiographical novel Heaven and Hell is a beautiful, chilling account of her childhood in Manchukuo, the puppet state established by the Japanese in northeast China in 1932. As seen through the eyes of a precocious young girl named Masuko, the frontier town of Jiamusi and its inhabitants are by turns enchanting, bemusing, and horrifying. Takarabe skillfully captures Masuko’s voice with language that savors Manchukuo’s lush forests and vast terrain, but violence and murder are ever present, as much a part of the scenery as the grand Sungari River.

Masuko recounts the “Heaven” of her early life in Jiamusi, a place so cold in winter her joints freeze as she walks to school. She accepts this world, with its gentle ways and terrible brutality, because it is the only home she has known. Masuko feels at ease wandering among the street vendors hawking their hot and sticky steamed cakes or watching the cook slaughter ducks for dinner, and takes pleasure in following the routines of her Chinese, Russian, and Japanese neighbors. Her world is shattered in 1945, when she and her family must flee their adopted home and struggle, along with other Japanese settlers, to return to Japan. This second half of the book, the “Hell” of refugee life, is heartbreaking and disturbing, yet described with ferocious honesty.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Takarabe, Toriko

Weitere Mitwirkende

Birnbaum, Phyllis

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Asiatische Geschichte

Über Autor(innen)

Takarabe Toriko was born in 1933 in Niigata prefecture. Two months after her birth, she left with her parents to live in Manchukuo. Following repatriation with her family in 1946, she went on to become one of Japan’s most eminent poets. She is particularly noted for her evocations of her youth and has received numerous prizes for her work over a long career.

Phyllis Birnbaum is a novelist, biographer, journalist, and translator. Her translation Confessions of Love, a novel by Uno Chiyo, won the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature. Her most recent biography is Manchu Princess, Japanese Spy: The Story of Kawashima Yoshiko, the Cross-Dressing Spy Who Commanded Her Own Army.