TOKYO - CHINESE author Yang Yi became the first foreigner to win Japan's most prestigious literary prize with a novel on the Tiananmen Square protests, but she says she is not dwelling on the past.

A single mother of two with a full-time job and writing novels on the side, the 44-year-old said her novel is aimed at taking an objective look - on how ordinary Chinese have gone on with their lives after the tragedy.

Yang last month became the first non-native Japanese speaker to win the prize for her second novel 'Toki ga Nijimu Asa,' which can be translated into English as 'A Morning When Time Blurs.'

'Instead of focusing on what happened during Tiananmen, my work is on the post-Tiananmen years, and how the experience affected the lives of ordinary Chinese,' she said in an interview with AFP.

'I would like to show readers how Chinese look at themselves after the incident,' said Yang, who is so animated that she repeatedly leans over a table to make her point.

'Every person has a different memory of their experience with Tiananmen. I think it is good to leave them that freedom,' she said. 'It's wrong to make conclusions about history. What happened, happened. Period.'

Unlike some other exiled Chinese authors whose works are veiled criticisms of the communist government, Yang observes how people's lofty ideals are blurred as they struggle to improve their daily lives.

She said the refusal of China to embrace full-fledged political reforms was no surprise in an ancient nation of 1.3 billion people.

'The staggering number of people in China, along with its millennia-old history, makes us incapable of having a Western-style democracy. If there were one, the country would probably fall into a civil war. We need time,' she said.

'It is always easy to criticise. But we need to ask ourselves, what will happen to China if we stopped supporting the government and it crumbled?'

Written in Japanese but full of Chinese imagery, her book is about two students swept away by the excitement of the democracy movement rather than a real understanding of what they were fighting for.

After being detained as political prisoners, one of the characters leaves for Japan, from where he continues pro-democracy activities. But he gradually realises that supporting himself and his family is the utmost priority.

'When we are young, we hang on stubbornly to our ideals. But while we chase them we begin to see many more things, which change our ways of thinking. I think that is the greatness of history,' Yang said.

Exiled activists 'kept up their activities for four, five years after 1989, but very few kept them up for more than 10 years. That's because they fell into the same rut as the rest of us of focusing on their daily lives,' she said.

Yang did not take part in the student-led demonstrations in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, which grew for weeks until the authorities mounted a bloody crackdown that left hundreds and possibly thousands dead.

A native of the northern city of Harbin, Yang left for Japan two years before the Tiananmen crackdown at age 22 to study geography and the Japanese language.

But she visited Beijing right before the protests transformed into a bloodbath. She also returned soon after the clampdown and said she was shocked at the silence and hollowness of the giant square.

'I think there are many, including myself, who didn't really grasp the whole meaning of the democracy movement,' the author said, adding that not being directly involved allowed her to be objective.

Students and activists 'thought they needed to act in order to be patriotic without understanding the actual state' of China in the era that Deng Xiaoping opened up the nation's economy.

'But the Chinese population is huge so there is no one pattern. I think there are different sorts of patriotism' that don't necessarily lead to demands for democracy, she said.

A recent poll by the Washington-based Pew Research Center found that Chinese were the most positive about the nation's direction among 24 countries polled, with 86 per cent of Chinese saying they were satisfied.

But even if the Chinese said they were satisfied with the system, many were more critical over their incomes, jobs and family life.

'China's set of values is rooted in its long history of the individual living first for the emperor, then the state. It was very difficult to live for yourself first,' Yang said.

'Even today, I don't think that's changed.' -- AFP