アンネ・フランクの記憶

by Yōko Ogawa, 小川 洋子

少女期『アンネの日記』を読み、作家を志した小川洋子。アンネの悲劇的境遇だけではなく、言葉が心を表現することに衝撃を受けたからだ。以来、アンネを心の友にしてきた著者は万感の思いでアンネの足跡を訪ねる。フランクフルトの生家、アムステルダムの隠れ家、アウシュヴィッツへと歩き、フランク家の恩人ミープさん、親友ヨーピーさんと語り合う。少女の言葉に導かれた作家の魂の旅路である。

193 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 1, 1998

About the author

Yōko Ogawa (小川 洋子) was born in Okayama, Okayama Prefecture, graduated from Waseda University, and lives in Ashiya. Since 1988, she has published more than twenty works of fiction and nonfiction. Her novel The Professor and his Beloved Equation has been made into a movie. In 2006 she co-authored „An Introduction to the World's Most Elegant Mathematics“ with Masahiko Fujiwara, a mathematician, as a dialogue on the extraordinary beauty of numbers.

A film in French, "L'Annulaire“ (The Ringfinger), directed by Diane Bertrand, starring Olga Kurylenko and Marc Barbé, was released in France in June 2005 and subsequently made the rounds of the international film festivals; the film, some of which is filmed in the Hamburg docks, is based in part on Ogawa's "Kusuriyubi no hyōhon“ (薬指の標本), translated into French as "L'Annulaire“ (by Rose-Marie Makino-Fayolle who has translated numerous works by Ogawa, as well as works by Akira Yoshimura and by Ranpo Edogawa, into French).

Kenzaburō Ōe has said, 'Yōko Ogawa is able to give expression to the most subtle workings of human psychology in prose that is gentle yet penetrating.' The subtlety in part lies in the fact that Ogawa's characters often seem not to know why they are doing what they are doing. She works by accumulation of detail, a technique that is perhaps more successful in her shorter works; the slow pace of development in the longer works requires something of a deus ex machina to end them. The reader is presented with an acute description of what the protagonists, mostly but not always female, observe and feel and their somewhat alienated self-observations, some of which is a reflection of Japanese society and especially women's roles within in it. The tone of her works varies, across the works and sometimes within the longer works, from the surreal, through the grotesque and the--sometimes grotesquely--humorous, to the psychologically ambiguous and even disturbing.

Reviews

[Rima Devi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sebelum pulang ke Jepang, Ogawa sempat mewawancarai dua orang Yahudi yang selamat dari penangkapan Gestapo Jerman hingga dapat menjalani hidup sampai tua (tahun 1990an).
Catatan perjalanan Ogawa ke Amsterdam, Frankfurt dan Polandia untuk melihat langsung tempat yang dilalui semasa hidup Anne Frank, diceritakan dengan gaya yang sama dengan gaya Ogawa menuliskan novel-novelnya. Kesan, perasaan dan pikiran yang ada dibenaknya semua diutarakan dengan cara yang menarik sehingga pembaca merasa membaca satu cerita, bukan kisah perjalanan semata. Di dalamnya juga terdapat banyak kutipan dari buku Harian Anne Frank edisi terjemahan bahasa Jepang.
Entah seberapa populernya kisah Anne Frank ini di Jepang, yang jelas Ogawa Yoko ketika SMP membaca buku ini dan terinspirasi olehnya sehingga juga mulai menulis buku harian.
Buku ini kemudian dibuat versi sederhana untuk bacaan anak SD dan SMP di Jepang dengan judul Anne Frank wo Tazunete.