Cradle by the water

Author: (Japan) Yumiko Kashiwagi
Translator: Zhu Jiarong
Japan/Japan
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-09-01
Features: Some say reading Yumiko Kashiwagi's works evokes a "heart-wrenching" feeling. With 16 years of writing experience, many of her early novels drew bold and explicit inspiration from her own broken family, bullying, sexual harassment, and suicide attempts. Her detached yet meticulous style resembles a sharp, icy scalpel, dissecting herself raw before the audience. Her turbulent life has become the raw material for her writing. The original family that abandoned her long ago left her with the greatest wealth—her past tragedies. In recent years, she has written about her unmarried pregnancy and her journey of forming a family with her cancer-stricken friend, Toshikazu Higashiyama, in the form of private novels. In Japan, it is not uncommon for writers to expose their privacy as the theme of their novels, and Kashiwagi's works have received polarized reviews. However, Zhang Beilei, a translator who has lived in Japan for over 22 years and translated multiple works by Kashiwagi, believes that her continued creation after winning the Akutagawa Prize remains a key factor in establishing her irreplaceable position among Japan's new generation of writers. The Cradle by the Water depicts the growth of a girl born into a Korean family in Japan. Family traditions, parents' discord, domestic violence, and the extreme cruelty she faces at school are all vividly portrayed by the author, who follows her own figure as it navigates the relentless conflicts and struggles between family, school, and society. Her pen transforms these experiences into an unparalleled "story," leaving readers unable to help but shed tears of sorrow.