"The Far Shore" - A Short Story by Yoko Tawada (2014, traslated from Japanese)

Japanese Literature on The Reading Life

Information on Women in Translation, August, 2017

Information on Japanese Literature 11 - Hosted by Dolce Bellezza

You can read "The Far Shore" at Words Without Borders

Short stories I have read so far for Women In Translation Month - August, 2017

1. "Happy New Year" by Ajaat Cour - Translated from Punjabi
2. "The Floating Forest" by Natsuo Kirino- Translated from Japanese
3. " A Home Near the Sea" by Kamala Das - Translated from Malayalam
4. "Maria" by Dacia Maraini- Translated from Italian
5. "Zletka" by Maja Hrgovic - Translated from Croatian
6. "Arshingar" by Jharna Raham - Translated from Bengali
7. "Tsipke" by Salomea Perl - Translated from Yiddish
8. "Mother" by Urmilaw Pawar - Translated from Marathi
9. "My Creator, My Creation" by Tiina Raevaara - Translated from Finnish
10. "Cast Offs" by Wajida Tabassum - Translated from Urdu
11. It's All Up to You" by Slywia Chutnik - Translated from Polish
12. "Covert Joy" by Clarice Lispector- Translated from Portuguese 
13. "The Daughter, The Wife, and the Mother" by Arupa Kilita - Translated from Assam
14. "Red Glow of the New Moon" by Kundanika Kapadia - translated from Gujarati
15. "Breaking Point" by Usha Mahajan- translated from Hindu
16. "The Gentleman Thief" by Goli Taraghi - translated from Persian
17. "Spider Web" by Mariana Enriguez- translated from Spanish
18. "My New Home" by Glaydah Namukasa - translated from Swahil
19. "Maybe Not Yem" by Etik Juwita - translated from Indonesia 
20. "Baking the National Cake" by Hilda Twongyeirne - translated from Runyankole, also called Nkore
21. "The Pomegranate Lady and Her Sons" by Goli Taraghi - translated from Persian
22. "Magnet" by Amy Yamada - translated from Japanese
23. "The Far Shore" by Yoko Tawada - Translated from Japanese 

"The Far Shore" by Yoko Tawada is a very imaginative dystopian vision of what happens to Japan after a huge nuclear melt down caused when a plane crashes into a huge nuclear reactor.

After the March 11, 2011 disaster at a nuclear power plant precipitated by a terrible tsunami that caused many Japanese to ponder the soundness of Japan's reliance on nuclear power.  "The Far Shore" is about what happens when all of Japan is made uninhabitable by nuclear contamination.  China and Russia agree to take in Japanese refugees.  A central character is a Japanese politician who has been a long time harsh critic of the Chinese, he fears they will not accept him so he disguises himself. Tawada does a great job depicting the passage on the refugee ships and the immigration process.  

The story can also be seen as a satire on international politics, on refugee issues world wide.  I greatly enjoyed this story.

Called “magnificently strange” by The New Yorker and frequently compared to Kafka, Pynchon, and Murakami, Yoko Tawada (b. 1960) is one of the most creative, theoretically provocative, and unflinchingly original writers in the world. Her work often deals with the ways that nationhood, languages, gender, and other types of identities affect people in contemporary society, especially in our postmodern world of shifting, fluid boundaries.  She is one of the rare writers who has achieved critical success writing in two languages, both in her native Japanese and in German, the language of the country where she has lived since 1982. Five volumes of her work in English translation have been published by New Directions and Kodansha, and her work has been translated into many other languages. Her numerous literary prizes in both Japan and Europe include the Gunzo Prize for New Writers for "Missing Heels,” the Akutagawa Prize (Japan's most important prize for young writers) for "The Bridegroom Was a Dog," the Adelbert von Chamisso Prize for her contributions to German-language literature, the Izumi Kyōka Prize, and the Goethe Medal. Japanese Literature on The Reading Life