Lee Hyoson

Born in 1935 on the island of Sakhalin , which at that time was part of the Japanese Empire . In 1945, after Japan surrendered in the general post-war confusion, mistakenly mistaken for a Japanese, he was expelled to Japan with other family members. The plans for returning to Korea remained unfulfilled for several reasons, and the family settled in Sapporo . The older sister, behind her family on her way to Japan, remained abandoned on Sakhalin. The psychological trauma resulting from this and other events of those years subsequently became an inescapable motive for the literary work of the writer.

After graduating from high school in Sapporo, Lee entered the Department of Russian Literature at the Faculty of Philology at Waseda University . In university years, he took an active part in the protest movement of foreign students. The first time after graduation, he tried to write in Korean , but soon after that he completely switched to Japanese in his works. He worked as a correspondent in the newspaper of the Association of North Korean Citizens in Japan . In the 1960s , somewhat moving away from the activities of the Association, he made his debut as a writer. The first significant work is the story “Last Night” (そ の 前夜, 1963 ). In 1969 he was awarded the prize of the Gundzo magazine for beginner writers for the novel “Again on the Same Road” (ま た ふ た た び の 道). In 1972, for the story “Laundress” (砧 を う つ 女), dedicated to the memory of a mother who passed away early, she was awarded the Akutagawa Prize , becoming the first Korean laureate in her history. In this work, the writer created a hybrid form emphasized by the one-dimensional Japanese sisesoetsu and Korean ritual crying, which in turn refers to the oral tradition of Korean legends and shamanism . This kind of experiment on form, built on a sharp clash of oral and written, was partly motivated by the desire to sound the idea that the language sets the framework for thinking, interpretation of the world, placed in a purely Korean context in which Japanese continues to be associated with the language of violence and colonization ^{[1 ]} .

Lee’s award of the Akutagawa Prize was important not only to recognize his own artistic work, but also to draw public attention to Korean Zaini literature in general, sparking a debate about the ontological status of Korean writers in Japanese, how they are in this situations can preserve their national identity and to resist the Japanese cultural assimilation (including the most famous of these public debates that have unfolded in November 1970 in the magazine " Bungaku " with Lee and Kenzaburo Oe ).

Shortly before the decision to award him the Lee Prize, among other representatives of the Korean and Japanese intelligentsia, he testified as a defense witness in a very widely publicized trial in Japan against a Zaini Korean who killed two Yakuza . In his speech, Lee, as in a number of works, unequivocally pointed to a consistent policy of discrimination conducted against Koreans and forcing them from hopelessness to self-destruction and violence.

In 1970, incognito for the first time after the war, visited South Korea . The second visit took place in 1972 after receiving the Akutagawa Prize. Subsequently, however, Lee, who retained North Korean citizenship, was repeatedly refused a visa until November 1995 . Only after Kim Dae-jung came to power, proclaiming a course to soften relations with North Korea , was Lee able to obtain South Korean citizenship.

In 1976 - 1980, the novel “An Unfulfilled Dream” ((果 て ぬ 夢, 5 vols.) Was written, an ambitious work, an attempt to comprehend possible alternatives to the Juche doctrine. After the “Unfulfilled Dream”, there came an almost ten-year period of silence (however, Lee, however, worked fruitfully as a publicist), during which Lee, through numerous clashes with other cultures, experienced a significant worldview shift, having come to realize the ambiguity of his own identity, far beyond simply Japanese Korean.

For the last decade, starting in 2000 , the writer has been working on a multi-volume epic novel “Life on Earth” (地上 生活 者), the main work of his life. At its core, the novel is emphasized autobiographical, but at the same time it is more in the nature of a large-scale parable than sisesoetsu .

1. Melissa L. Wender. Lamentation as history: narratives by Koreans in Japan, 1965-2000 . - Stanford University Press, 2005.

• Information about the writer's works that have been nominated for the Akutagawa Prize (jap.) In different years
• Article about "Life on Earth", the main work of the writer of recent years (inaccessible link) (Japanese)
• About the work on the film adaptation of the story "Kayako sake" (Japanese)