In recent years, the novels of Japanese writer Seiichi Morimura have become familiar to Chinese readers.Especially after the movie "The Witness" adapted from his work was released in my country, it became more well-known to the audience in our country. Makoto Morimura was born in 1933.In his youth, he loved French literature, especially the works of Romain Rolland.After graduating from the English and American Literature Department of Qingshan University in 1958, he worked in restaurants for ten years.In the "kaleidoscope" of capitalist society, as a restaurant and hotel worker, Morimura came into contact with all kinds of people from all walks of life, heard and witnessed all kinds of bizarre social phenomena, which allowed him to accumulate a lot of creative materials and inspired him to create. desire.In 1968, I wrote this social novel, but in a commodified society, works with certain social significance were not favored by publishers, and they could not be published after they were written.It was not until 1969 that Morimura's mystery novel "The Dead End of Skyscrapers" won the 15th edition that his novel had the opportunity to be published and attracted people's attention.This year, Morimura resigned from the restaurant and started his career as a writer.

Over the past ten years, Morimura has written more than 50 novels and a large number of short stories.Most of them are mystery novels, and there are also a few social novels.For example, "The Burial of Xiao Chong", which shows the tragic fate of small employees during the economic depression. In 1976, Makoto Morimura published, ,, (the so-called "Proof" trilogy), which were successively made into movies and TV shows, which became famous in Japan. Seiichi Morimura's socialistic reasoning novels do not simply pursue twists and turns and bizarre plots, but reflect and analyze the deformed capitalist society through the detection of a case, and describe people's incurable spiritual trauma caused by society.

In recent years, Morimura Seiichi's creation has gradually moved closer to realistic literature, and he has begun to get rid of the shackles of mystery novels. With the courage of an upright writer, he has written novels with positive significance and progressive tendencies, and has become an eye-catching contemporary writer. . Facing the countercurrent of the revival of Japanese militarism, Morimura once published.Last year, Morimura published another reportage, "The Devil's Feed", which exposed the germ warfare crimes committed by the Japanese Kwantung Army in Northeast my country, as well as various heinous fascist acts of the Japanese invading army.This reportage has been serialized in some Chinese newspapers, and the author's integrity and conscience have won praise from Chinese readers.

This book is a popular social novel that Morimura thinks he is most satisfied with.It exposed that Japanese arms dealers, in order to gain huge profits, did not hesitate to risk the disapproval of the world and produced poison gas that caused insanity for the US military.Contradictions and conflicts have arisen around the production of poisonous gas, and it also reflects another aspect of Japan's "economic take-off" from the 1950s to the mid-1960s—some large companies have fattened their own business by relying on the two wars in Korea and Vietnam. fact.Therefore, this novel has strong practical significance.

In terms of writing skills, Morimura not only inherits the traditional characteristics of Japanese "private novels", is good at depicting the psychological activities of characters delicately, but also absorbs some expressive techniques of modern Western literature, and is good at shaping the character of characters in the unfolding of the plot.His works not only have twists and turns and moving plots, but also portray the characters vividly, truly depicting the spiritual outlook of people from all walks of life in contemporary Japan. The characters in the book have distinct personalities and are different.Akita and Onishi used to be a pair of good friends who shared life and death. Because of their different life experiences, their attitudes towards war were completely different: Onishi devoted himself to research, and actually developed high-efficiency incendiary bombs and hallucinogenic gas bombs for arms companies, becoming capitalists and making a fortune. A powerful tool to get rich; and because of the atomic bomb, Akita strongly opposed the development of this inhumane weapon.As a result, there was a fierce conflict between friendship and faith, which became the central contradiction throughout the book.

Shoko and Kasumi are two Japanese women of different classes. Since Shoko was born in a wealthy businessman's family and was pampered since childhood, he appears willful and arrogant when it comes to love affairs, and cannot obtain a happy and harmonious family life after marriage.Xiangsumi grew up in a poor family and was not deeply involved in the world. In the bottom of this muddy society, she was forced to become a bar girl by her life.Her frank feelings have been insulted and played with repeatedly, and she is almost desperate. Although she meets Akita, an honest and kind doctor, she still cannot escape the bad luck of being swallowed by darkness.

Ogata and Ohara, the antagonists of the flogging in the novel, do not have much ink, but they are portrayed vividly and with a certain depth.The manager Ogata took over the company from his father's generation and became the dictator of the company. In order to adapt to the rapid economic development of Japan after the war, he used methods such as promotion and promotion to ask Onishi to secretly develop poison gas for him.Compared with money and profit, law and morality are nothing more than a piece of paper in his eyes, and he will resort to any means to make huge profits.Once Daxi goes against his original intention and loses the value that can be used, he will be expelled, and he will kill everyone to make an example, which is evident in his treachery and viciousness.

Da was originally a clerk, a shell eaten away by money.In order to climb up the ladder, he married a rich lady who didn't agree with him, and catered to his boss, who did not hesitate to engage in human traffickers who bought living people for experiments, vividly portraying a clown face that devoid of conscience. Due to the private ownership of the means of production in a capitalist society, if a weak individual competes with the plutocrats representing the interests of the entire ruler, of course it can only lead to failure in the end. This is the theme of this novel.In the last part of the book, it is written that Akita "voluntarily" conducted human experiments on gas bombs, fighting with death, and at the same time left a living allowance for his wife who was about to give birth.Although this approach is not advisable, it finally made Onishi's conscience deeply condemned and he woke up. He personally destroyed the gas bomb he made and was poisoned to madness. He was fired from the company and fell to his death from a rock.The final tragic ending of the novel is also an inescapable inevitable result in this kind of society.As the author wrote in a pungent tone at the beginning and end of the novel: "This kind of thing is really common and commonplace in a huge city."

The plot of this book is vivid and tortuous, exciting, and the characters are distinctive and touching. After reading it, it is thought-provoking and makes people restless for a long time.The novel has the artistic charm of literature and profound social significance, and it is a masterpiece among the many works of Seiichi Morimura. In translation, the translator tries to keep the original appearance of the work as much as possible for readers.However, limited to the level, it is inevitable that there will be careless omissions, which need to be corrected by readers. It is reported that Morimura Seiichi visited Northeast my country last year for field investigation, and will use his reportage "The Devil's Satiation" as the material to create a novel with a pseudo-title.We look forward to his writing more and more popular works in the future creative career.

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