Tomoyuki Tanaka: Receiving the Japan Translation Culture Award for "A New Translation of Jin Ping Mei"

Thank you very much. When I received the award, I thought, "Oh, I actually won it." It is a prestigious award with a long history, and past winners include legendary translators like Teiji Seta and Professor Motoyuki Shibata. Being among such a distinguished lineup is truly humbling and came as a surprise.

In terms of its external structure, it is a spin-off of "Water Margin"—what we might call a "parallel world" story today. In "Water Margin," there is a hero named Wu Song who kills a tiger with his bare hands. His older brother, Wu Da, is an unattractive, unremarkable man, but he is married to the peerless beauty Pan Jinlian. However, Pan Jinlian loathes her husband from the bottom of her heart. She initially makes advances toward Wu Song, but after being rejected, she enters into an illicit affair with a man named Ximen Qing. In the original "Water Margin," these two poison Wu Da and are eventually killed by Wu Song in revenge. In "Jin Ping Mei," the story is framed so that Wu Song kills a companion who was with Ximen Qing instead of Ximen Qing himself, and the narrative follows the lives the two survivors lead afterward.

Ximen Qing has other wives and concubines, so the work is most often read as a domestic or social novel, depicting their family life and the world of officials to which Ximen Qing belongs.

It is traditionally counted among the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature. While the other three—"Romance of the Three Kingdoms," "Water Margin," and "Journey to the West"—are action-packed tales of heroes and warriors, this work lacks those blood-pumping scenes. Yet, the reason it moves the reader's emotions is largely due to the meticulous detail of its realistic descriptions. For example, what kind of houses they lived in, what furnishings they had, and what food they ate. It was written by someone very skilled with prose, so it can be savored and enjoyed. Moreover, those details breathe organically within the world of the work, making it a story where there is truly never a dull moment.

In traditional Chinese discourse, even if someone thought the eroticism was wonderful, it was almost never recorded. The narrative becomes: "There are such scenes, but they are written as a warning." Even descriptions that might draw a reader into the realm of "lewdness" are framed as showing how such behavior ultimately brings disaster. In a sense, it is understood as a form of preaching that draws the reader in as a cautionary tale.

In the modern era, voices re-evaluating "Jin Ping Mei" from the perspective of a social novel or a work of realism have increased in China as well.

I think it depends on the definition of the word "lewd." For example, it is "lewd" or excessive in its treatment of food and clothing as well. In that sense, it is certainly not a novel where concrete and graphic descriptions continue only in a sexual sense.

Yes. He said that no other novel of the same period surpasses it. It is simply an interesting novel that, including its more worldly interests, continues with descriptions that penetrate every corner of human psychology. This is evident in the nuances of the dialogue, which I think stands out compared to other novels of the era. Therefore, one must translate it while carefully considering the intention behind each line.

The Heibonsha version, which has been commonly read in Japan until now, and the Iwanami Bunko version, which is a revised translation by the same translators, have various parts that were not translated, including sexual descriptions.

"Jin Ping Mei" is a novel that is difficult to understand through summaries or skim-reading. The sexual descriptions are an indispensable element of the work in many ways, so if you cut certain parts, the plot doesn't connect, and you can't experience the emotional stirring of the reader that the author intended.

I initially read the Heibonsha translation and didn't understand it at all. When I was studying for my graduate school entrance exams, I requested the first volume of Professor David Roy's life's work from the University of Chicago, an English translation titled The Plum in the Golden Vase or, Chin P’ing Mei, at the Mita library. When I started reading it alongside the original text, I found it incredibly interesting. I thought then that if the original were translated precisely, it would surely be interesting in Japanese as well.

For example, Ximen Qing has sworn brothers among his playmates, and there is a scene where one of these brothers reproaches Ximen Qing for keeping a secret from them. After saying, "Brother, you're being distant," he says, "We weren't born together like you, brother, but we think it's better if we die separately too." This is a parody of the oath in "Romance of the Three Kingdoms," which says, "Though we were born on different days, we hope to die on the same day."

However, the Heibonsha and Iwanami translations translate it in the direction of "we will die together" without any note. The startling humor within the talkative dialogue cannot be savored in previous translations.

One difficulty was the variety of styles. For example, there are political denunciations, memorials to the throne, and judicial rulings, as well as excerpts from plays and quoted poetry—a variety of styles are packed into a single work. I think this is one of the charms of "Jin Ping Mei," but I struggled to reproduce those stylistic variations in Japanese.

I also wanted to ensure that the humor of multi-layered words, like puns, would be understood by Japanese readers. I was conscious of, for example, the playful writings of Hisashi Inoue. Of course, our talents are completely different, but I wondered if I could translate the puns of "Jin Ping Mei" with that kind of feel, and I put a lot of effort into that.

First, the reading phase was incredibly difficult, and then I had to start thinking with a different part of my brain about how to reflect what I had read into the translation. I did this back-and-forth word by word for 2,500 pages, including illustrations, so the volume of work became enormous.

I switched to being a morning person because I had no other choice. My children were very small, so I would read picture books with them and fall asleep by 9:00 or 10:00 PM. But if I slept at 10:00, I could wake up at 4:00 even with six hours of sleep, so I figured I could secure about two hours from then.

Once I started, it wasn't bad. I could concentrate in the morning, and no emails came in. Also, I found the sense of being torn between two extremes—translating a hedonistic work ascetically in the morning—to be interesting. The contrast of waking up early and diligently, seriously translating "Jin Ping Mei" became strangely enjoyable halfway through.

When I was at the Keio Futsubu School, I did a summary of "Journey to the West" for the Labor Exhibition. I divided all 100 chapters of "Journey to the West" into two halves of 50 chapters. Since I had to summarize them in 50 days, I couldn't take a single day off. So even when we went on family trips, I was writing the manuscript every day. At that time, doing something steadily every day stopped being a hardship. It felt as though that 50 days had simply extended to ten years, and it wasn't as painful as it might look from the outside.

It's true that a while after I finished translating, I felt as though it wasn't something I had worked on myself. I suppose that is the power of the work.

I don't feel that my understanding of humanity has deepened that much, but I do feel that I can write more easily than before when I write prose. I feel I've developed a knack for it. A critic from the Qing dynasty also said that if your writing doesn't change after reading "Jin Ping Mei," you should stop making writing your profession.

Ultimately, I think understanding the classics is a kind of communication. When I first read it in Japanese, I didn't understand what was interesting about it. From a small spark, I began to think it might actually be a great and interesting work, and I started reading it earnestly. Then I understood its appeal more and more, and eventually reached the point of translating the whole thing over ten years.

It's like meeting someone who seems difficult to approach and hard to understand at first, but thinking they seem interesting and communicating with them through repeated meetings until you become close friends. In the case of the classics, it's a one-way street where you have no choice but to approach it yourself, but I've recently come to think that the process of gradually digging into a work is similar to the process of understanding a person.

Ever since I researched "Journey to the West" for the Labor Exhibition at the Keio Futsubu School, I thought it was a very interesting world. When I was at Keio Senior High School and debating whether to go to the Faculty of Letters, there was a time when Mr. Akuzawa gave me a push.

Regarding "Jin Ping Mei," the trigger was when I decided to try studying English and classical Chinese vernacular (colloquial) prose all at once for my graduate school entrance exams. When I read it, I felt that the "Jin Ping Mei" described in introductory books was somehow different from the work I was reading right then. Being young, I was somewhat conceited and thought, "Maybe not many people understand how interesting this is? There must be value in putting this into words."

Of course, at the time it was nothing more than intuition, but I don't think my hunch that there was a problem to be solved here was far off. So, rather than choosing it as a researcher, it's more like I fortunately became a researcher while working on it.

I felt that I had to do "Jin Ping Mei" properly since my master's days, and I had the thought that the only way to read it properly was to translate it in full. I had been reading while making notes since my master's days, but in my late 30s to 40s, I decided to try doing a "ten-year Labor Exhibition" once more by translating everything from scratch. I might want to praise myself a little for that.

Thank you. I think there are similarities to my work from the Labor Exhibition. The stacks of manuscript paper I made in the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd years become a thick three-volume set when I'm an adult.

There were various circumstances, but I had a feeling that I had to do this no matter what, and I never compromised on waking up at 4:00 or 4:30 AM to do it. It might have been a kind of obsession I held only within myself, but it became an irreplaceable job for me, and fortunately, I reached the point of releasing it to the world and even received an award, so I think I am very happy.

Generative AI processes and handles data to derive different results. On the other hand, sentences written by humans have a person who wrote them, and there are various processes behind what was ultimately written. Therefore, even if the answer provided is the same as generative AI, behind it lies that person's unique life and social background.

I think for a human to read what a human has written means understanding it as fellow living beings, including what lies deep within. That might be something the writer couldn't answer even if asked.

Generative AI sometimes makes things up when it doesn't know and says, "I understand." However, sensing an attractive mystery in what is not understood, searching for some basis, and confronting it is what's interesting, and I think that is what "reading" is. I feel that is different from the AI's style of processing what has come to the surface.

That's right. Looking back, I think it was a happy thing to have had such time every day in my 40s.

I first felt something from "Jin Ping Mei" around my fourth year of university to my first year of my master's. I think the awareness of issues one holds during that period is very important.

Going back even further, I started by summarizing "Journey to the West" when I was at the Keio Futsubu School. Summarizing is like making a map; it's good training for grasping how to navigate, for example, long-form vernacular novels of the Ming dynasty. "Jin Ping Mei" is a bit of a curveball compared to "Journey to the West," but when I read it alongside the English translation in my fourth year of university, I felt I could finally see the trajectory of the ball—what it was trying to do. I thought that even if I swung the bat and didn't hit it now, I should surely be able to hit this ball back if I trained.

Conversely, I don't think you should "overcome" things through study by thinking you must think a certain way because the mainstream or authorities of the academic society say so when you are young. Things you understand by truly pushing through yourself are bound to be more precious, at least to you. Of course, study is necessary, but I think it's wrong to pretend to think something you don't. At the starting point, I think it's necessary to believe in your own interests, almost to the point of being stubbornly honest.