You know Van Gogh and Andersen, but you don't know him: The Brave Storm and its author Kenji Miyazawa.

China's version of Kenji Miyazawa's "Braving the Wind and Breaking the Rain" is slowly unfolding, and I can't express my excitement in the face of the drawing of Oscar short film animation nominee Koji Yamamura.

I am a fan of Kenji Miyazawa. I saw the Japanese version of Rain or shine for the first time ten years ago, and I liked it at first sight. I can't wait to carve it in the corner of my desk. However, there are really too few Chinese versions of Kenji's books. In recent years, in addition to this book "Riding the Wind and Breaking the Rain", there is only 20 13 fairy tale collection "Night on the Galaxy Railway". In addition, all fairy tales were published in the 1990s or before, or Chinese-Japanese bilingual fairy tales were mostly used as children's books or materials for learning Japanese.

Domestic readers are not familiar with Kenji Miyazawa, and even few people have heard of his name. Kenji Miyazawa is a well-deserved household name in Japan. Not only Rain or shine is included in textbooks, but its fairy tales are widely loved in cities and rural areas.

It is no exaggeration to say that many modern Japanese artists grew up watching Kenji Miyazawa's fairy tales. For example, Miyazaki Hayao worships Kenji very much. Studio Ghibli once produced a cellist's Gao Xiu to commemorate Kenji. In Spirited Away, Miyazaki Hayao mentioned the scene described by Kenji in Night on the Galaxy Railway. Modern fairy tale writer Naoko Anfang also spoke highly of Kenji's fairy tales and was influenced by them.

How much do the Japanese like Kenji? 20 16 is the 20th anniversary of Kenji Miyazawa's birthday/kloc-0. The Executive Committee of Kenji Miyazawa's Birthday120th Anniversary has been established in Japan, headed by Han Juan, Kenji Miyazawa's hometown, and a large number of cultural activities have been held nationwide to commemorate the rule of virtue. These include the 4th International Research Conference, Xianzhi Festival and Kenji Miyazawa Fairy Tale Village Lighting Exhibition. During the Kenji Miyazawa120th anniversary, the Kenji Miyazawa Memorial Hall in Han Juan, Iwate Prefecture, Gong Ze's hometown, also had three special exhibitions, one of which was the physical exhibition Diary of Braving the Wind and Breaking the Rain. On the official website of Kenji Miyazawa120th anniversary, it is also seen that the national reading conference "Braving the Storm" will be held in Huajuan City on February 4th, 20th17th.

Kenji Miyazawa lived only 37 years old, leaving few works. His masterpiece Brave the Storm has only 3 1 line. Why are his people and his works so sought after by Japanese nationals and studied by many scholars?

When we learn about the pursuit and spirit of Kenji's life with this song "Braving the Storm", we will not be surprised by the "Kenji fever" in Japan.

Kenji Miyazawa was born in 1896, the eldest son. My father is the convener of the local Pure Land Sect, and his family runs a second-hand clothing store business. Kenji got excellent grades in primary school, all subjects were A-level, and he was keen on mineral collection and specimen making. When he entered middle school, his grandfather did not advocate that the merchant's son should inherit the family business, but was persuaded by his father to go to school. However, his aversion to the family business and pessimism about the future made his achievements plummet.

The phrase "have a strong body" in "Through the Wind and Rain" expresses Kenji's pursuit of good health. Unfortunately, in fact, Kenji was in poor health all his life. At the age of 6, he was hospitalized twice for dysentery, and his father also contracted enteritis to take care of him. Since then, his stomach has been bad all his life. 18 years old, hospitalized for rhinitis surgery. High fever after operation, suspected typhoid fever. He was hospitalized again in May. Taking care of my father this time, I was infected and hospitalized again. Kenji felt very guilty about the fact that his father took care of himself twice and fell ill. 19 18 pleurisy was detected in June. 19 19 pneumonia was detected. 1928 was bedridden due to overwork, and 1933 died of acute pneumonia. Yasunari Kawabata is known as a "celebrity attending funerals" because he has attended many funerals in his life. I think Kenji can be called a "celebrity in a hospital bed".

For a person, illness and poverty are often twin brothers. Behind art and ideals, economic support is needed. The pursuit of virtue reminds me of utopian socialism in France, and several representatives of utopian socialism come from petty-bourgeois families. Compared with the small official family Natsume Zongqi, the declining aristocrat Yukio Mishima, the landlord and local tyrant family Osamu Dazai, and the small merchant family in Kenji, Iwate Prefecture, it is quite shabby. Besides, since the age of 25, he has run away from home twice, longing for economic independence. The first time I returned to China was less than a year after my sister's illness. At the age of 26, I began to work as a teacher in an agricultural school. The salary of this job is 80 yen, which is used to buy records, books and food. Four years later, at the age of 30, he resigned from home again and moved to Xia Genying to live alone and cook for himself. Since then, he has spent most of his time improving agriculture and instructing local farmers in agricultural technology. During the period when the persistent lung disease was slightly better, he also worked as a technician in the gravel field and worked hard all the time.

Kenji's life experience has many similarities with Van Gogh, who also lived for 37 years. He was greatly influenced by religion, cared about the working people and was not recognized when he was alive. Kenji once contributed fairy tales to magazines in Tokyo, even second-rate magazines, but only a few of them were published, and most of the others were published by no one or out of their own pockets. When his only publicly released collection of fairy tales, The Harsh Restaurant, was published, Mori Shinichi and Kawasaki Shiro, students of Morioka Higher Agriculture and Forestry School, ran before and after, without complaining about their self-raised publishing expenses. The printed 1000 works cannot be sold at all. Kenji Miyazawa borrowed 300 yen from his father and bought 200 copies. The following year, Suzuki Mitsuki (a disciple of Natsume Soseki) published a full-page advertisement for this collection of fairy tales for free in Hong Niao magazine, where he was the editor-in-chief. When Kenji submitted the manuscript to Hong Niao, Suzuki Miho turned him down, but then unexpectedly came up with a version to advertise it. It's hard to say whether Suzuki's actions are out of recognition for the young writer or contain sympathy.

It is in such a short life of poverty and illness that Kenji practiced his ideal-"Only when the whole world is happy can there be personal happiness" and "seeking the real happiness of the world is my way to seek the Tao".

One third of Kenji's life is related to agriculture, especially from the age of 30 to the end of his life. He has been devoted to improving agriculture and helping farmers, even on his deathbed. In Brave Storm, "A child in the East is ill, and he will take care of it. If a mother is tired in the west, go and help her carry rice bundles. Someone in the south is dying. Go and tell him not to be afraid. If there is a quarrel or conflict in the north, say it's boring, please stop. " This is not a rumor, but a portrayal of his real life.

Iwate Prefecture, where Hanako, the hometown of Kenji, belongs, is the hardest hit area, and it is also the hardest hit area of the 201kloc-0 Great East Japan Earthquake. Before and after the birth of Kenji, two major natural disasters occurred in Iwate Prefecture, namely the tsunami and tsunami of the Sanlu earthquake and the Luyu earthquake. His younger brother Liu Qing once said, "This just implies that his brother Kenji's life is full of hardships: worrying about the stormy weather, praying for the happiness of all beings, and constantly burning a kind life."

Many Japanese believe that Kenji died young because of his dedication and hard work, and he was a "saint" and a "bodhisattva", and his image was deified after his death. I saw a netizen leave a message on a forum in Japan saying that "Kenji was a bodhisattva before his death and a bodhisattva after his death".

Especially in the youth when there is little information about it, there are many apotheosis anecdotes circulating. Here are some excerpts:

In elementary school, a classmate in a red shirt was teased. Kenji Miyazawa broke into the crowd and said, I wear red, too. Come and bully me. When playing Weng Zaibiao (card game), a companion was knocked down by a carriage and bled because of chasing Weng Zaibiao. Kenji sucked his bleeding hand with his mouth. A student was punished for standing in the corridor with a tea bowl for playing a prank. Kenji, who passed by the corridor, said, "Too much, very tired." He drank the bowl of water for him.

Another is that in the second grade of Kenji Primary School, four pupils were swept away by the current in Fengzechuan, and two of them drowned. At that time, the river was brightly lit, and the people watching on the bridge were packed. Kenji heard that the students in the same grade were washed away and rushed to the scene. Anyone who has seen Night on the Galaxy Railway must be familiar with this scene.

Of course, the reincarnation of the Bodhisattva is not credible, but Kenji is really deeply influenced by Hokkekyo, and his world outlook has a strong Buddhist tendency. He is not only full of kindness to human beings, but also Kenji believes that all creatures in nature are equal. Rousseau walked into Walden Lake at the age of thirty, and it was at the age of thirty that Kenji Miyazawa quit his job as a teacher and went to live in the country alone.

Healthy conditions and long-term vegetarian diet are harmful to his body, but they give him spiritual shelter and nourishment. The protagonists in many of his works are not human beings, but natural animals and plants such as cats and nighthawks, and even the anthropomorphic natural weather such as "Snow Boy". In the preface of the collection of fairy tales "The Demanding Restaurant", Kenji wrote: "Even if we don't have enough rock sugar, we can still drink pure and transparent breeze and beautiful peach sunshine in the morning. In the fields and forests, I often see worn-out clothes turned into the most beautiful silk and clothes inlaid with gems. " Kenji's enjoyment in the hard field life can be seen.

As for why Kenji doesn't write novels but only fairy tales, Mei Yuanmeng's evaluation is: "Kenji doesn't write poems and fairy tales because he can't write novels. It is inevitable that he writes poems and fairy tales from his own worldview. It is obvious to him that animals, plants, mountains and rivers have eternal life like human beings. To reveal the truth of these lives, there is no need to take the form of novels that only describe the human world ..... In fairy tales, animals and humans have the same meaning. What is described here is the common life fate of animals and humans. Kenji does not want to satirize and improve the human world with fairy tales, but uses fairy tales to reveal how human beings should stand in close relationship with animals and other natural life in the world. "

In fact, I prefer Kenji Miyazawa who is alive as a human being to Kenji Miyazawa who is deified. Divinity and humanity exist in a person, who is not only respectable, but also amiable.

Kenji Miyazawa pursues celibacy. He advised his friend Fujiwara Katoji that "indulgence is a kind of suicide, and such people will not work well." One morning, someone ran into him. In order to overcome his desire, he walked all night in Waishan Ranch in Iwate Prefecture. When he was an agricultural school teacher, Kenji was also arranged for a blind date. His parents urged him to get married, but Kenji refused.

Some people say that Kenji Miyazawa has been a virgin all his life, but there are also rumors that he once visited Huajie Liuxiang. The truth is unknown. But when asked about abstinence by his good friend Morikuchi (who later wrote many articles about Kenji and his works), Kenji's answer was "all in vain" and "I want to write pornography like nature". This shows that this writer is not unreasonable.

/kloc-When he was 0/8 years old, Kenji fell in love with a nurse. After leaving the hospital, he proposed marriage to his parents, who refused on the grounds of "too young". This "lover" is only an anecdote of youth, while another "lover" has a greater influence on his works. When I was in Morioka Higher Agriculture and Forestry School, Kenji and his younger brother Yasaka Kanuchi were very close, and they were "lovers". The letters they write to each other are as passionate as lovers. Yasuka Kenji has great influence. During the study period, Kenji and Yasaka Kanuchi went hiking together. At that time, Kenji wrote short poems such as "Telephone Pole in the Moonlight". Some researchers believe that part of the material of Night on the Galaxy Railway comes from the experience of Kenji and Yasaka climbing mountains all night. If Joe Banny in The Night of the Galaxy Railway is Kenji himself, then Kobinella is Yasaka Kanuchi.

In addition, to understand the realistic prototype of Kenji's works, there is another person who has to mention it, and that is Kenji's sister Minzi. At the age of 25, Kenji, who ran away from home, returned to his hometown because of the news that Minzi was ill and found a job as a teacher. The following year, Toshiko passed away. At the funeral, Kenji combed the messy hair on the skeleton with a fire stick and cried painfully, "Minzi, Minzi". Since then, he has written many poems in memory of Akiko.

Among Japanese writers, Kenji Miyazawa is very different, or he is very unlike a writer. After the end of World War I, most other writers who belonged to Taisho era were well-educated and orthodox in Tokyo, and most of them graduated from foreign languages. For example, Ryunosuke Akutagawa was born in 1892, graduated from the English Department of Imperial University of Tokyo, and was born in 1909 in Osamu Dazai, graduated from the French Department of Imperial University of Tokyo.

It is inappropriate and unfair to compare Kenji Miyazawa with these orthodox literatures. Even other fairy tales, which are a little later than the Kenji era, have a good educational background. Ogawa Mimei graduated from Tokyo Special School (predecessor of Hayata University) majoring in English, and worked in Hayata Literature Society after graduation. Mei Xin Nanji graduated from the English Department of Tokyo Foreign Languages School. It is worth mentioning that people often compare Kenji Miyazawa with Nanji of New America University, because both of them are local teachers, who died young, a fairy tale, and have the saying of "learning from the north and learning from the south".

Due to the different growing backgrounds, most of the works of other writers can be seen to be influenced by western writers. The influential figures are Andersen and Carol who wrote Alice in Wonderland. It can be said that under the influence and nourishment of nature, local culture and Buddhism, Kenji's literary creation is spontaneous and natural. It can be seen that it is no accident that Kenji was not recognized before his death. Perhaps from the perspective of mainstream literature at that time, Kenji was just a rural villager, a fool who engaged in agriculture but wrote fairy tales.

It is this young man, only 37 years old, who lives far away from Tokyo and has not received formal literature and foreign language education, but has written fairy tales and poems that have been circulated for a hundred years. The short life of idealism and self-sacrifice, the fantasy and pure imagination of children's dreams, people have to appreciate and marvel. Therefore, if you know Van Gogh and Andersen, you can't help knowing him-the fearless Kenji Miyazawa.

(Most of this article is translated from Japanese wiki. Please point out any mistakes. )