Always Fishy: Conversations in Non-Japanese Languages Depicted by Japanese Authors

Yesterday, I received another book by Kaiko, 輝ける闇 (Into a Black Sun).

These days, Vpost is more reliable though using its service costs more. Courier services Amazon uses to send stuff directly to my address is so unreliable and frustrating that I am now fed up with them completely.

The story of the book, set in Việt Nam, is about the experience of a novelist assigned as a temporary newspaper reporter, stationed in the war-torn country. About himself, in short.

In Crucifix of Saigon, he admits that his poor knowledge of foreign languages. But in his works, he still uses French and English words. His translation of interviews of Lieutenant Colonel “Tran Van Duc (チャン・ヴァン・ダック),” who was a political officer of the regular force of the North and defected to the South, is tough to read. It is as if done by a Japanese university kid who knows something about English.

Reading books by Japanese authors about those days during the war, I often encounter scenes where they converse with non-Japanese in a language which is not Japanese. They seem to flow flawlessly. I must wonder how they could have been possible. Even today, this may not be possible, thinking about people I’ve met here for the past almost 20 years.