High-profile authors join hands to boost regional literature

Japanese author Shimada Masahiko says authors from China, South Korea and Japan have many things in common. [Photo/China Daily]

High-profile authors from China, Japan and South Korea decide to take regional literature forward, Mei Jia reports.

Writers from China, Japan and South Korea recently met in Beijing and Qingdao, East China's Shandong province, to brainstorm on literature in the region and the world.

China's Nobel Prize winner in literature, Mo Yan, and more than 30 other writers from the three countries gathered in the Chinese capital for the five-day China-South Korea-Japan Forum of East Asian Literature that ended with a "writers night" on Tuesday in Qingdao.

It was the third edition of the conference, previously held in Japan's Kitakyushu city in 2010 and in Seoul in 2008.

"This year, the topics are centered on social reality and literary inspiration," Tie Ning, celebrated Chinese writer and chairwoman of the China Writers Association, a Beijing-based body that organized the event, told audiences at the event last week.

"Literature is endangered as writers are prone to taking information they get as serious literary elements," she says of the availability of unverified information on the Internet.

"So, the topic we discuss here with our neighboring writers is valuable."

Although the topic had been decided about three years ago, the forum delayed the meeting owing to some political differences among the nations.

Choi Won-sik, an established South Korean literary critic, believes the focus shouldn't be on the delay but rather on how cultural exchanges among the three nations can move regional literature forward.

Mo Yan says he has made good friends at the last two sessions.