Profile

Takuya Inoue

Takuya Inoue, Television Copywriter with one of Japan’s largest media organisations, is the second son of acclaimed Japanese poet and writer Yasushi Inoue (1907–1991). An accomplished writer himself, he has recently published My Godfather, a requiem to his famous parent. Mr Inoue travelled to Sydney to speak at the second annual Inoue Yasushi Award Ceremony in June. The following is an abridged version of his address.

I offer my warmest congratulations to the winner of the Inoue Yasushi Award.

I am deeply honoured that you have brought about this wonderful prize, bearing my father’s name. I am Inoue Yasushi’s son; I work as a communications producer in the Japanese mass media. I would like to introduce my father to you all from my viewpoint as his son.

Nowadays, there is perhaps not one person in Japan who has not heard of my father as a famous author; although his debut as a novelist actually came quite late. By the time his name came to be known to society, he was already 40 years old. He began writing poetry in his teens, but at that stage, this was purely a hobby for him. After he had graduated from Kyoto University, in his 20s and 30s, he worked as a journalist with one of the newspapers. Japan at that time was at war, and ruled by a military regime; and my father also joined the army for a short time.

Before that, and before his job with the newspaper, he was married and had four children. With the violent war being fought, his work as a journalist, and four infant children to contend with, writing novels was probably the last thing on his mind.

When the war ended, my father was already 37 years old; and it was at this time that he began to unleash the creative desire that he had been suppressing. He often told me that he used his desk at the newspaper publisher as his creative writing desk – in other words, he was skipping his work.

The novel that he started writing at that time was a hard, literary love story. The war had ended, and my father had the time to write, and people had the time to read. And, as luck would have it, he attracted the attention of some of the greatest writers in Japan at that time; winning the Akutagawa Prize – which at the time was the biggest prize for literatutre – for his novel The Bullfight. He also received a lot of praise for his novel The Hunting Gun, which was translated into many languages and sold around the world. If I may add, I once read a newspaper article saying that the former French president, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing had read and been impressed by the French translation of The Hunting Gun.

Japan at the end of the war was in a state of confusion and disorder. My father left his job at the newspaper publisher, and resolved to set himself up properly as a novelist. Neither the mass media nor the general public, having been starved of entertainment during troubled times, let this opportunity pass. My father received a lot of requests from newspapers and magazines, not for artistic literature, but for writing aimed at entertainment. With four children to support, he took up every offer that came his way; giving free rein to his talent, he wrote many different styles of novel – not just love stories, but also what are known in Japan as period novels; that is, popular novels on historical themes. My father continued doing this for 15 years, and became the most popular post-war writer in Japan.

The film Samurai Banners [which was shown at the award ceremony] is based on one of my father’s period novels. This particular work is a perfect demonstration of my father’s talent. Although both the novel and the film are quite old now, they were featured throughout last year in a long drama series shown on Japan’s largest media organisation, NHK Television, on Sunday evenings. One hundred million people tuned in to watch it every week.

However, once life had settled down, my father – by now in his late fifties – concentrated on his original calling, poetry. His compositions and historical novels took as their theme the historic negotiations between Japan and surrounding countries, including Russia, America, China and the Koreas; this became his standard, and he continued writing this way until he was 83.

My father was also famous for his travels. Although he visited many foreign places, he unfortunately did not have any close personal connection with Australia. In light of this, I am especially happy and grateful that my father and his work are held in such esteem here, as is evident at this ceremony this evening.

And so, I hope that, through studies of Japanese literature, understanding between our two countries will continue to flourish even further; not just here in Sydney, but throughout this vast country.