午夜剧场

I entered university in 1977, the year after the Cultural Revolution ended in China. Having decided to pursue a Major in Chinese Literature because of my love for classical Chinese, I took an elective Lab Chinese course at Hiyoshi. There, Professor Chen Wenzhi, who taught the NHK TV Chinese course, showed us the latest post-Cultural Revolution short animations: "Bamboo Shoots Growing in the House" and "The Cowboy's Flute." Since I couldn't understand spoken Chinese yet, she likely chose animations with almost no dialogue. The former's cute, paper-cut-like illustrations and the latter's poetic atmosphere, reminiscent of beautiful landscape paintings, left a deep impression on me. These were the first Chinese films I ever saw, long before I made a living translating subtitles for Chinese cinema.

Forty years have passed since then, and it is deeply moving to have had the opportunity to translate "The History of Chinese Animation 1922–2017," published by the Commercial Press in China. Most of what I learned about Chinese animation was new to me; I discovered that the two films I saw in my freshman year are known as "paper-cut animation" and "ink-wash animation," and are highly acclaimed both in China and abroad. The 2019 animation "White Snake," for which I translated the subtitles and Japanese dub script for its theatrical release last year, was also a work that evoked the tradition of ink-wash animation. The Japanese edition of "The History of Chinese Animation" was published by Juritsu-sha on November 25th.

In recent years, production costs for Chinese films have soared, leading to fewer theatrical releases by Japanese distributors. Instead, films are primarily released via online streaming, and dramas via satellite broadcasting. The series "The Golden Eyes," which I am currently translating and which has been airing on BS12 since November, is a contemporary drama likely purchased due to the popularity of its star, Lay Zhang, a Chinese actor and former K-pop idol. While I wasn't initially enthusiastic about an idol drama, the story—revolving around a young man with eyes that can see through the authenticity of antiques and into raw jade—is a work that stands up well to adult appreciation against the backdrop of China's recent antique boom.

Typical of Chinese dramas, which are often quite long, this series consists of 56 episodes of 40 minutes each. Since it airs twice a week, I have to translate eight episodes a month. However, because the content is so interesting, it isn't a burden at all, and I find it very enjoyable to translate the specialized knowledge about antiques. The protagonist, a graduate of the Department of History at Peking University with mysterious clairvoyant powers, is described in the drama as the reincarnation of a figure named Feng Quan, who possessed a mysterious discerning eye in Pu Songling's Qing-dynasty collection of strange tales, "Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio." Every day, I find myself reconnecting with the world of Chinese classics, discovering stories I never knew existed.