Japanese literature researchers honoured

The three award-winners at the ceremony held in Hanoi (Photo courtesy of Japan Foundation)

Lecturer Phan Thu Van from the Ho Chi Minh City Pedagogical University has won the first prize in the third Inoue Yasushi Awards for her thesis about two novels by Japanese writers.

Van was among three winners to be honoured at the ceremony on July 18, which was co-hosted by the Japan Foundation and the Inoue Yasushi Memorial Foundation in Hanoi.

"I’m really happy and surprised because the contest attracts the best in the profession," Van said. "I have researched Yasushi’s work for three years and the award will encourage me to continue my research on modern Japanese writers."

Van’s thesis titled The Journey of Life and The Heritage of Memory in Inoue Yasushi’s Tonko and Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant, addresses the messages in Yasushi and Ishiguro’s works, despite the fact they don’t relate with each other.

Yasushi is one of Japan’s most prolific writers today, and started relatively late as a novelist, while Ishiguro is a Nobel Prize winner living in the UK.

Van is one of the first Vietnamese researchers to study Yasushi, and claimed fourth prize in 2016 and second place last year at the awards.

The second and the third prizes went to Nguyen Thanh Trung and Tran Thi Thuc.

Trung’s thesis was titled The Variable Status of Magical Realism in Murakami Haruki’s Novels and Thuc’s is Human Condition in Kobo Abe and Kenzaburo Oe’s Works from a Comparative Viewpoint.

VNA/VNS