Latest news with #AkutagawaPrize
29-07-2025
- Entertainment
Qudan Rie: The 'Sympathy Tower Tokyo' Author on Language and Rhythm
After Qudan Rie's Sympathy Tower Tokyo won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize last year, the author created a stir by admitting at a press conference that she had used AI to write 'about five percent of the whole.' The novel is set in an alternative version of Japan, where the 2020 Tokyo Olympics were held on schedule in the New National Stadium designed by Zaha Hadid—a plan scrapped in reality for budgetary reasons. The novel's narrator and main character, Makina Sara, is an architect working on designs for a new prison to be called Sympathy Tower Tokyo, in a society marked by what she regards as excessive tolerance toward criminals. Even as she dedicates herself to the project, Makina struggles with reservations about the name of the tower and the concept itself. The novel centers on the project to build the tower, which Makina describes as the 'return of the Tower of Babel,' and depicts a world littered with inorganic language pumped out by generative AI, degraded by katakana coinages and impersonal terms bereft of tangible meaning. It asks probing questions about contemporary Japanese language and society. The book quickly drew attention in other countries after the award was announced. Translations have already been published in South Korea, Taiwan, France, Italy, and Germany. An English translation by Jesse Kirkwood will appear in Britain in August and in the United States in September, and the book is slated to appear in at least six other markets, including Russia. AI as Collaborator The statement that she had used AI for part of her novel took on a life of its own and caused more of a stir than she had ever imagined. Qudan says she did not initially plan to make strategic use of AI. 'The only thing I knew was that it was going to be a story about architecture and language. I never think too much about the plot in advance. I start writing, and then connect the story to my own life as I go. That's the way I always write. 'I started working on Sympathy Tower Tokyo around two years ago, just as ChatGPT was making the headlines. I tried it out myself, out of curiosity really. At the time, I was feeling uncertain about my future as a writer, and began by asking ChatGPT for advice. That's how it started. (© Hanai Tomoko) 'I asked: What can I do to get back up when I am feeling down? I just threw out this simple question, but the response was much more than I expected. The text that came back was comparable to an advice column by a psychiatrist. I thought it was fascinating. 'But as I interacted more with ChatGPT, I became aware of the ways in which the dialogue differed from a real conversation between two human beings, and I came to understand the limits of what AI could do. I thought if I could find a way to express in a novel the discomfort I was feeling at my interactions with AI, it might lead to an interesting chemical reaction. That's where the idea came from.' In fact, Qudan used her interactions with AI only as material for AI responses to questions posed by the heroine of her novel. The 'five percent' figure was something she came up with on the spot at the press conference. 'In interviews over the year or so after I won the award, people kept asking me about that number. Exactly which parts are the five percent? How did it feel to use AI for five percent of your novel? The questions kept coming. And I never felt confident that I'd answered them well. I didn't think I'd fully explained the sense of distance I felt between myself and the AI.' Then she was approached by an editor at the advertising magazine Kōkoku with a proposal for a 'collaborative project with AI,' in which she would write 5 percent of a story and generative AI would create the remaining 95 percent. It occurred to her that this might provide herself and the public with a clearer answer than her fumbling answers to interview questions, by allowing people to compare the '5 percent' AI of Sympathy Tower with the '95 percent' AI of the new project. 'And so, with that idea in mind, I decided to accept the challenge.' The short story that resulted, 'Shadow Rain,' as well as the lengthy dialogue and prompts that led to its completion, have now been published online. The results show clearly what it means for an AI to 'write a novel' at the current stage of development. Qudan herself has said in a related interview that, 'The AI didn't come up with any ideas far beyond human intelligence.' In the Beginning Was the Word Qudan has published four pieces of fiction since her debut with Bad Music in 2021. Each has been markedly different. 'When I sit down to write, I think about what kind of language the story needs, what style is best suited to the story I want to tell. I can't settle into the work until I have answered those questions to my own satisfaction. So certain words and phrases exist in my mind before I even start to write.' (© Hanai Tomoko) Where does this attitude toward language come from? 'I've been on this planet for 34 years now, and ever since I was a child, I've always felt there's something mysterious about life. That's part of what led to my becoming a writer, I think. I tend to use language as a way of proving I'm alive. I transform my life into language and immerse myself in thought.' Qudan says the ideas for her stories come to her in different ways. The concept for her second work, ' Schoolgirl ,' was to write an updated 2022 version of the story ' Schoolgirl ' by Dazai Osamu published in 1939. Qudan's version depicts a 14-year-old girl who broadcasts her thoughts to the world via an online video site about environmental issues and her relationship with her mother. In her third piece, the novel Horses that Write Poems , horse racing is a major element in the story, which depicts the history of the relationship between humanity and horses. It is studded with the names of famous horses and racing commentary. 'With that story, the words 'horses that write poems' came into my head one day when I woke up from a nap. I just felt intuitively that I wanted to use those words as the title to a story. I did quite a lot of research, and horse racing was one of many subjects I looked into to help me write the story.' In the case of Sympathy Tower , it was the phrase 'the return of the Tower of Babel' that came first—Qudan says she felt she absolutely had to use it somewhere in the story. To improve her understanding of her subject, she says, she read stacks of books by architects, and was also influenced by Mishima Yukio's famous novel The Temple of the Golden Pavilion about the burning of the Kyoto temple Kinkakuji. 'Mishima Was My First Love!' Mishima has long played a special role in Qudan's life. When she was 14, she watched video online of a famously fiery debate at the University of Tokyo in 1969, in which Mishima contended with leftwing students from the All-Campus Joint Struggle League ( Zenkyōtō ). 'I really loved Mishima. He was my first love! His voice and the way he looked in the film just gave me a thrill, and then after I read his novels I fell deeply and seriously into his work. I loved everything about him, including his prose style. But since my introduction to Mishima was through his appearance and voice, every time I reread his books, I hear his voice playing in my head.' In her third year of junior high school, Qudan stopped attending. Her parents had divorced, and she had moved schools at a difficult age. Qudan's own analysis, looking back on it now, is that this may have been one of the factors that drew her to Mishima and his work. 'When I encountered him, I was starting to despair about my future. I was worried that because I'd been absent so often, I wouldn't be able to graduate or go on to high school. 'It was a hard time. I had no friends I could turn to, and the burden was too heavy for me at 14. I didn't talk to any other children my age, and my most meaningful communication was with books. For nearly a decade, I communicated day in and day out mostly with dead people—Mishima foremost among them.' This memory of her childhood self, desperately trying to find a way to mend her parents' broken relationship and the breakdown in communication, alongside her feelings of disappointment and failure, have stayed with her. 'That might be part of what made me so interested in language and communication,' she says. (© Hanai Tomoko) Rhythm More Important than Literal Meaning in Translation Over the past few years, Qudan has become an enthusiastic gym-goer, inspired by the example of Mishima, who began serious bodybuilding when he was 30. She believes there is a close relationship between the body and literary style, and is convinced that her prose has changed as her body has become leaner and more honed. She is also a music lover, listening to everything from classical to hip-hop. Just as with music, she says, 'in writing too, rhythm is vital.' Given that Qudan is so particular about language and style, how does she feel about translation, now that her novel is appearing in so many different languages around the world? 'When I met Jesse Kirkwood [who translated Sympathy Tower Tokyo into English] last year, I told him I wanted him to prioritize the rhythm of the English, even if some of the meaning from the original text might be lost. 'I don't have big hang-ups about accuracy. Readability in English is much more important. Jesse had already translated a short story of mine.' (' Planet Her, or the Oldest Female Rapper in the World.') In that story, it would have been impossible to translate all the Japanese rhymes, so in that sense it's not faithful to the original. But I felt he was sensitive to the rhythm. When I understood that he was thinking seriously about the rhythmical demands of English, I knew I could trust him absolutely as a translator.' Tōkyō to dōjōtō (left) and Sympathy Tower Tokyo , the English translation due to be published in August. (Courtesty Shinchōsha) Writing by Japanese women has been attracting attention overseas in recent years. At first, even Qudan suspected that the widespread interest in translating her novel was thanks to a perfect trifecta of on-trend hot topics: 'AI,' 'Akutagawa Prize,' and 'Japanese woman writer.' But after attending events at book fairs in Taiwan and Italy this year, she says she has been struck by how genuinely enthusiastic her overseas publishers are about her work. 'My Italian publisher, L'Ippocampo, normally specializes in visual and children's books. They rarely publish novels, and this was obviously the first time they'd published one from Japan. I learned that the decision to translate and publish my novel came from the personal enthusiasm of an editor passionate about Japanese culture and literature. That really made me appreciate how vital such passion is to the process of translating and publishing a work in another country.' What kind of rhythms will Sympathy Tower Tokyo beat out in languages worldwide? And what surprising topics will Qudan turn to next to delight her readers? We look forward to her next imaginative journey. Referenced Works Works by Qudan Rie mentioned in the text: Tōkyō to dōjōtō is translated as Sympathy Tower Tokyo by Jesse Kirkwood is translated as by Jesse Kirkwood 'Kage no ame' (Shadow Rain) has no English translation Schoolgirl and Warui ongaku are translated as Schoolgirl and Bad Music by Haydn Trowell and published together as Schoolgirl and are translated as and by Haydn Trowell and published together as Shi o kaku uma (Horses that Write Poems) has no English translation (Horses that Write Poems) has no English translation 'Planet Her: Arui wa saiko no fimēru rappā' is translated as 'Planet Her, or the Oldest Female Rapper in the World' by Jesse Kirkwood Joseito by Dazai Osamu is translated as Schoolgirl by Allison Markin Powell by Dazai Osamu is translated as by Allison Markin Powell Kinkakuji by Mishima Yukio is translated as The Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Ivan Morris. (Originally written in Japanese by Kimie Itakura of and published on July 18, 2025. Banner image: Qudan Rie on the roof of the Shinchōsha building in Shinjuku, Tokyo. © Hanai Tomoko.)
Japan Times
17-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Japan Times
Akutagawa and Naoki award decision marks rare absence of literary prizewinners
The selection committee for the Akutagawa and Naoki literary awards announced Wednesday that no works would receive the awards this time — for the first time in 27 years. Awarded biannually in January and July, the Akutagawa and Naoki prizes are Japan's most prestigious literary honors. The committee's decision marks the sixth time since their inception, in 1935, that both prizes have had no winners. The last instance was in January 1998. 'Out of the four nominated works, Gregory Khezrnejat's 'Trajectory' and Koreko Hibino's 'Taemanai Hikari no Tashizan' (literally translated as 'The Constant Addition of Light') were discussed further after the first round of voting,' selection committee member Hiromi Kawakami said regarding the Akutagawa Prize decision. 'However, as neither received a majority vote in the second round, unfortunately, there is no recipient this time.' She added, 'Some members of the selection committee expressed that the Akutagawa Prize should reward works that try something new or bring about new perspectives. It's not that the nominated works lacked new viewpoints — there were, in fact, many experimental elements — but we felt they needed to go one step further. ... As a member of the committee, I'm disappointed that we couldn't choose a winning work.' Selection committee member Natsuhiko Kyogoku said about the lack of awardees, 'Even though no winners were selected, it's undeniable that the nominated works have moved many readers. I encourage readers to visit bookstores and buy all the nominated books — they're worth reading.' The Akutagawa Prize is given to up-and-coming writers for short- to medium-length works of literary fiction published in a newspaper or magazine, while the Naoki Prize goes to an early or mid-career author for a work of pop or genre fiction. Including this round, the Akutagawa Prize has gone unawarded 33 times, and the Naoki Prize 30 times.
The Mainichi
16-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Mainichi
No wins in 2 prestigious Japanese literary awards, 1st in 27 yrs
TOKYO (Kyodo) -- The organizer of two prestigious Japanese literary awards on Wednesday announced there were no winners among the nominations this year for the first time since 1998. The awards often produce popular works representative of the era. The event is hosted by the Society for the Promotion of Japanese Literature. "There was something about each work that drew us in, but there was still something lacking," said Hiromi Kawakami, author and Akutagawa Prize selection committee member. "We as a committee find it extremely regrettable that we were unable to award the prize." The Akutagawa Prize was established in 1935 in memory of the Japanese novelist Ryunosuke Akutagawa. The Naoki Prize, created the same year, was named after author Sanjugo Naoki. Awarded authors typically receive 1 million yen ($6,700) in prize money.
Straits Times
05-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Straits Times
Book review: Mai Ishizawa's The Place Of Shells is a profound debut about grief and loss
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox Mai Ishizawa's The Place Of Shells is a hauntingly profound journey into the emotions associated with death and disaster. By Mai Ishizawa, translated by Polly Barton Fiction/Sceptre/Paperback/160 pages/$32.93 Worlds collide in Mai Ishizawa's powerful yet heartbreaking debut, The Place Of Shells, which immediately catapulted her into the literary stratosphere as she scooped up both the Gunzo New Writers' Prize and the prestigious Akutagawa Prize.
Sydney Morning Herald
18-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
Ten new fiction and non-fiction books to add to your reading list
From gothic horror in Italy and gay love in the outback to a poetic call to arms about our rivers and a guide to getting through the loss of a beloved animal companion, this week's reviews have something to appeal to every reader. FICTION PICK OF THE WEEK Their Monstrous Hearts Yigit Turhan HQ, $34.99 Butterflies are an intriguing locus of gothic horror. Yigit Turhan's Their Monstrous Hearts makes them seem like an inevitable and immortal choice. Struggling writer Riccardo has been invited to a mysterious villa in Milan, the home of his recently deceased grandmother Perihan. He had no contact with her for many years, and his memories of opulence and glamour jar with the sense of foreboding he gets when he arrives at her house. Pinned butterflies in cases line the walls, his grandmother's clique of friends are inscrutable to him, and when he discovers Perihan's diary, addressed specifically to him, a creeping sense of dread begins to mount. Something is not right in this place, and the more Riccardo learns about the vile secrets hidden on the dilapidated estate, the less chance he has of making it out alive. Turhan has given a familiar kind of creature horror a weird and novel skin. A blend of haunted house and original monster horror, it's a macabre, sumptuously rendered gothic fiction, perfect for fans of the genre looking for something new. Best known for The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, fantasy writer V.E. Schwab has turned her dark tendrils to queer vampire fiction. Three women from different eras – all queer, all vampires – are united in hunger in Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil. The story starts in 16th-century Spain, with a beautiful girl seeking to escape a fate decided by men. It spins through Georgian London, where a cloistered young woman finds forbidden love. And it shifts to Boston in 2019, where Alice seeks a fresh start, and finds more and much less than she expected … Schwab's foray into 'toxic' lesbian vampire fantasy could have been titillating genre fiction, or conversely a mere frame for a novel of ideas, but it somehow digs into an unhallowed middle ground. Queerness is mainstream in vampire stories. Untameable hunger? Eternal sexual desire? They have always disdained the ordinary, and if Schwab's novel has its share of lavish sapphic fantasy, what makes it stand out is the depth of her engagement with the human stories behind the monstrous ones. Rie Qudan achieved literary fame last year when she won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize for Sympathy Tower Tokyo, a novel about a skyscraper prison in a futuristic Japan. Artificial intelligence is one of its themes, and the author made headlines – and sparked controversy about the role of AI in creative writing – when she admitted that a small percentage of the text was written by Chat GPT. Now, two of Qudan's novellas – School Girl and Bad Music – have been translated into English by Haydn Trowell. The first of them views the influence of technology on human behaviour through the lives of a rich, bored housewife and her teenage daughter. Surreal maternal dreams and anxieties are juxtaposed with adolescent earnestness – the daughter taking to YouTube to vent her frustrations – before the generational clash finds common ground in an Osamu Dazai short story. Art breaks down boundaries in Bad Music, too, which follows a music teacher who lives with a painter contemplating a subversive course of action. They're stylish and strange fictions, marked by dark humour and human mystery. From the author of Invisible Boys, adapted into an original TV series streamed on Stan, comes a gay coming-of-age story set in remote Western Australia. Jack was born Giacomo Brolo in Geraldton. He fled his hometown and his conservative Italian family after he discovered he was attracted to guys. Life halfway out of the closet hasn't been kind – Jack's a heavy-drinking, underemployed construction worker – and when a family wedding prompts the prodigal son to make a return, a reckoning with the past beckons. Jack may have fathered a child with his former girlfriend, for a start, and then there's his schoolfriend Xavier, on whom he had a mad crush. What happened to him? King of Dirt brings gritty earnestness to Jack's quest for love and acceptance in a hostile environment. There are obvious parallels with Christos Tsiolkas' Loaded, and if Sheppard's writing isn't as raw or rebellious, it has a fidelity to life, especially in depicting teenage male homophobia, or how queer folk can attract a found family when the one they're born into rejects them as they are. Our New Gods Thomas Vowles UQP, $34.99 Gay sex in the city is where Thomas Vowles' Our New Gods begins, before immersing readers in the narrator's loneliness and confusion. Ash is a new arrival on Melbourne's queer scene. After a hook-up with the super-hot James, he wants to parlay the situation into something more intimate than the apps usually allow. Hedonism amid a queer share-house milieu awaits, although a tangled web frustrates the pursuit of love. Plus, there's stuff James isn't telling him, from traumatic secrets to a loaded gun. Ash weaves between a desperate yearning for intimacy and intense paranoia, and he can't help wondering if he's waded into dangerous waters. Our New Gods is billed as a literary psychological thriller, though that's a bit misleading. Vowles can write. The dialogue is well-differentiated, and the portrayal of queer community rings true, but the novel's plot plays second fiddle to a coming-of-age tale with a decidedly kinky ending. Is a River Alive? Robert MacFarlane Penguin, $55 British writer Robert MacFarlane has written some superb books about mountains, forests, wild places and subterranean landscapes. But in Is a River Alive? he excels himself. His most intimate work so far, it brims with feeling for the three great rivers he writes about, and for the people who initiate him into these fluvial worlds and who are fighting for them. They're a lively cast of characters whose example spurs him to a deeper understanding of rivers as living beings. The Rights of Nature movement is gaining ground globally and river rights are central to it. If you find it a stretch to think of a river as alive, says MacFarlane, try picturing a dying or dead river. To walk with him to the source of the River of the Cedars in Ecuador through its luminous cloud-forest, or along the banks of the rivers in Chennai, India, which have been killed so that a city might live, or be immersed in the Mutehekau Shipu in Quebec, which would be drowned if hydro dams go ahead, is to taste the essence of these flowing bodies of water. In precise, poetic prose, MacFarlane challenges us not to personify rivers but to broaden and deepen what we think of as 'life'. It's an enthralling journey that powerfully brings home how rivers are part of us and we of them. For years, Ephraim Finch has had a recurring dream. He is on a barge laden with souls going back and forth across a river. The dream is a distillation of his life's work as director of Melbourne's Jewish Burial Society and keeper of memories of the dead. Struck by Finch's boundless capacity to hold these stories and his feeling for those who grieve, Katia Ariel wanted to know more about 'this heart-language' and how she might become 'fluent in its lexicon'. Through her encounters with Finch, his journals and those whose lives he has touched, she not only creates a multi-faceted, nuanced portrait of a remarkable man and the wider community he embraced when he converted to Judaism, but also charts a deepening of her own heart-language. This is a work alive with conversations between the living and the dead, a reminder of the importance of ritual in the act of remembrance. The Introvert's Guide to Leaving the House Jenny Valentish Affirm, $36.99 Being an introvert never bothered Jenny Valentish. But what did bother her was appearing weird, unlikeable or aloof. And she felt it was holding her back in life. She now describes herself as a 'mostly reformed sociophobe' as a result of exercises she refined over years of practice to help her get comfortable and confident with social situations, group activities and daily interactions. If this guide has an underlying philosophy, it is expressed by the US poet and activist Maya Angelou whom Valentish quotes. Once Angelou really came to terms with her mortality, she was able to be fully present. 'Give everything. All the time. It's great fun. And it's liberating.' It's a big ask, particularly for those who find themselves drained and daunted by small talk, parties, crowds and conversations with strangers, but Valentish's practical and sometimes left-field advice makes it feel doable. Broken Heart, Shared Heart, Healing Heart Barbara Allen Broadleaf Books, $49.99 Jennie was the love of Maurice Sendak's life. More than a year after the death of his beloved terrier, he wrote that the pain was still 'unrelenting'. As a former animal hospital chaplain, Barbara Allen understands better than most the anguish that Sendak and other grieving pet-lovers experience. 'When an animal companion dies, the ratio of grief is not dependent upon the species but upon the love, the bond.' This book is a thoughtful meditation on the strength of this bond and a guide to navigating its loss. How to deal with the guilt of having one's companion animal euthanised? How to help children cope with the loss of a beloved pet and what it tells them about mortality? Will the human companion see their pet again in an afterlife? Allen offers no neat answers but instead urges that we give full weight to the love companion animals offer, and the heartbreak experienced when they die. Sophy Burnham begins her series of letters to a younger cousin about what it's like to be old in a positive vein. At 85, she has never felt so happy, so free. She still even rides her horse. But just before you start to feel that this could get saccharine – the narrow perspective of a well-off white woman from Massachusetts – she gets real. She talks about how, as the product of a youth-obsessed culture that equates old age with obsolescence and decrepitude, she doesn't like to be seen or treated as old. The way she deals with her ambivalence is the most interesting lesson of the book. However, aspects of her New Age outlook – for instance, that the universe rewards the good and brings sorrow to those who aren't – are seriously jarring. There's much that's valuable about Burnham's honest grappling with old age, but it's hard not to be repelled by her self-serving take on her good fortune.
