シドニィ・シェルダンの世界

――全ベストセラー小説の総括――

抄録

Sidney Sheldon (1917-2007), a legendary best-selling American novelist of romantic suspense, was also very popular in Japan. According to the top ten lists including Japanese authors, his name appeared for 7 consecutive years from 1988 to 1994. This unbreakable record is generally assumed by Japanese critics, who are apparently unfamiliar with his work, to be thanks to the unique translational method called "cho-yaku" (literally, super-translation) invented by Tatsuyuki TENMA (pen name of Kunio MASHIKO), a kind of technique enabling an American novel to look like one originally written in Japanese. Mr.Tenma, as the president of the publishing house Academy Shuppan, seems to have built a close relationship with Sidney Sheldon, getting his trust and permission to translate not only most of Sheldon's well-known 18 novels but also rare ones unpublished in the United States such as Man on the Run, The Dictator, and The Revenge. The Chase (1984), in which Masao, the 18-year-old Japanese heir to a Sony-like international company, survives with a samurai spirit his uncle's devilish plot in the US, remains an unforgettable present to Japan from Sidney Sheldon because it was kindly and earnestly written for Japanese learners of English, responding to Mr.Tenma's unusual request. Probably cho-yaku helped Sheldon's books sell as well as in his home country, but it was undoubtedly Sheldon's genius in storytelling that kept his Japanese fans absorbed in turning the page.