MANOA online v. 3

The 2007 Kiriyama Prize winners have been announced. Congratulations to the authors of the winning selections and the finalists!

Fiction Prize: Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, a collection of short stories by Haruki Murakami
“While anyone can tell a story that resembles a dream,” Laura Miller wrote in The New York Times Book Review, “it’s the rare artist, like this one, who can make us feel that we are dreaming it ourselves”—a feat performed anew twenty-four times in this career-spanning book. (Source: Random House)
Other links: New York Times archived reviews and excerpts (registration necessary)

Nonfiction Prize: Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace…One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
Three Cups of Tea is at once an unforgettable adventure and the inspiring true story of how one man really is changing the world—one school at a time. (Source: Penguin)
Other links: PBS Audio Interview with Greg Mortenson

Fiction Finalists:
The Inheritance of Loss, Kirin Desai (Grove Atlantic)
Stick Out Your Tongue, Ma Jian, translated by Flora Drew (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Certainty, Madeleine Thien (McClelland & Stewart, Canada; Little, Brown, USA)
Behold the Many, Lois-Ann Yamanaka (Farrar, Straus & Giroux/Picador)

Nonfiction Finalists:
The Haiku Apprentice, Abigail Friedman (Stone Bridge Press)
Blonde Indian: An Alaska Native Memoir, Ernestine Hayes (University of Arizona Press)
Tigers in Red Weather: A Quest for the Last Wild Tigers, Ruth Padel (Walker & Company)
Chinese Lessons: An American, His Classmates, and the Story of the New China, John Pomfret (Henry Holt)

Visit the Kiriyama Prize site for a complete list of notable books.

The Kiriyama Prize recognizes outstanding books about the Pacific Rim and South Asia. It is administered by Pacific Rim Voices, an organization whose aim is “to encourage greater understanding of and among the peoples and nations of the Pacific Rim and South Asia.”

—Compiled by Sharon Fujimoto-Johnson

Andrew Lam has received Pen American’s Beyond the Margins Award for his book Perfume Dreams. His story “The Palmist,” which originally appeared in the winter 2004 issue of MANOA, was reprinted in New Sudden Fiction (Norton) and chosen by Symphony Space for “Selected Shorts: A Celebration of the Short Story.”

Symphony Space will be presenting Lam’s “The Palmist” and Ha Jin’s “A Bad Joke”—another short story published in MANOA—on January 24th. The performances will be taped live for airing on NPR’s “Selected Shorts,” a series of readings of work from New Sudden Fiction.

The pilot issue of no man’s land will be launched on December 7, 2006. A special English 10th anniversary edition of the alternative Berlin literary magazine lauter niemand, it features acclaimed young writers such as Hendrik Jackson and Uljana Wolf. For the translations, the project also drew on the talents of the local Anglophone literary scene, organizing a translation workshop at the Literarisches Colloquium Berlin. The print edition will be available internationally at Goethe Institutes, other cultural institutions and expat bookshops, while the online edition is also designed as an information resource for literature enthusiasts, translators and those interested in expat cultural initiatives. The project is sponsored by Berlin’s Culture Senate.

Details of the launch are as follows: December 7, 9 p.m., Ballhaus Ost, Pappelallee 15; reading in English and German with Daniel Falb, Andrej Glusgold, Orsolya Kalász, Ulf Stolterfoht, Donna Stonecipher and Ron Winkler. Contact: Isabel Cole at isabel@no-mans-land.org.

Waterbridge Review has some wonderful interviews with writers, as well as reviews of books related to the Pacific Rim. Maxine Hong Kingston and Gail Tsukiyama review books for them, and recent interviews include those with the winners of the Kiriyama Prize.

The summer 2006 issue of MANOA features Yoko Tawada, Nguyen Chi Thien, Martha Collins, and many other writers and translators. In this volume—illustrated with beautiful photographs of Asia by Linda Connor—prominent and emerging Asian writers talk about the conditions under which they work, their relationships with their home countries, and the convictions that guide them. Beyond Words is ideal for classes in Asian studies, creative writing, world literature, and related subjects.

The Mainichi is seeking media organizations to actively participate in spreading the news of the Hibakusha Project. If your organization would like to be involved and you need more details, contact them at mdnmsn@mbx.mainichi.co.jp.

Book Review by Lindsay M. Timarong Pangelinan

Rainbow Over Hell by Tsuneyuki Mohri
Translated by Sharon Fujimoto-Johnson
Pacific Press 2006
Soft cover; 192 pages; US$14.99

Based on the true-life story of a young Japanese civilian named Saburo Arakaki who survived the Battle of Saipan during World War II, Rainbow Over Hell is about the triumph of the human spirit and the return of hope after great loss and sacrifice. In the Western world, there are few accounts of what happened during this period in history, much less this horrific battle, from the Japanese standpoint, and Saburo Arakaki’s story is one of renewed hope and forgiveness after the conditions of war sparked hatred and animosity towards Americans.

Saburo Arakaki was 18 years old and a student at the Japanese-run Saipan Vocational School in 1944 when the Battle of Saipan began in the West Pacific. When the U.S. Marines landed on the beaches of Saipan, he fled with thousands of other Japanese civilians, rescuing a Japanese army officer, to what is today known as Suicide Cliff, where many people chose to leap to their deaths rather than surrender to U.S. Marines. He narrowly escaped death a number of times, and ended up joining a group of Japanese militants in which he followed orders to assassinate two fellow Japanese prisoners of war who were thought to be cooperating with U.S. forces. Arakaki was eventually captured together with the historic group of 48 stragglers who were the last to surrender to U.S. troops on the island of Saipan.

Saburo Arakaki was sentenced to death for the two murders he committed at the Japanese prisoners-of-war camp on Saipan, and so was sent to Guam for execution. However, he unexpectedly received a life-imprisonment sentence and was subsequently sent to Hawaii to serve out his life sentence on the island of Oahu. In prison, Arakaki had given up on life altogether when a chance encounter with Christianity changed him so much that his own warden began petitioning for his release. He received full pardon from President Eisenhower in 1954, and returned to Japan, where he became a Seventh-day Adventist Christian preacher.

Saburo Arakaki’s story is an inspiring account of survival. It is beautifully written and colorfully descriptive of the ravages of war and the objectivity of duty. It is not overly religious and yet it captures the spiritual basis of emotional and psychological transformation. It is an easy and interesting read for casual readers and serious war history buffs alike.

The book was originally written in Japanese by award-winning author Tsuneyuki Mohri, and published by two major Japanese publishing companies. It was subsequently translated into English by writer and translator Sharon Fujimoto-Johnson and made available in English in March 2006 by Pacific Press.

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This review originally appeared in June 2006 in PACIFIC ISLANDS REPORT.

Lindsay M. Timarong Pangelinan is assistant editor at Pacific Islands Report.

Tsuneyuki Mohri is an award-winning Japanese author, playwright and producer whose work encompasses fiction and nonfiction books, TV, film, radio, and stage. His work often explores issues in war. The recipient of numerous awards, Mohri was scriptwriter and producer of the successful Japanese film, Summer of Moonlight Sonata, adapted from his novel of the same title.

Sharon Fujimoto-Johnson is a writer and translator in Sacramento, California. Previously, she worked as assistant editor and designer for Spectrum. Her work has been published in such magazines as Dimsum, Spectrum, Japanophile, and Fibromyalgia Aware. Rainbow Over Hell is her first book-length work to be published.