[strong]Special SWET Lecture: Ikezawa Natsuki’s World[/strong]

by Sakakibara Tomoki

On June 19, 2004, Akutagawa Prize-winning writer Ikezawa Natsuki gave a special lecture, entitled “Where Are My Readers? A Writer’s Voice from a Closed Country,” cosponsored by SWET and the Japanese Literature Publishing Project, at the International House of Japan. After an introduction by translator Alfred Birnbaum, he first talked about how he became a writer and about his work as a novelist and translator; he then spoke about Japan, from the standpoint of one of the most politically vocal writers in this country today. He answered a wide range of questions on topics from literature to politics—where he gets inspiration for his writing, whether he has foreign readers in mind when he writes, how he builds social issues into fiction, whether and when diaspora literature will take hold in Japan, and much more. The talk was in Japanese.

[strong]How We Got Here[/strong]

[em]Notes from a Garret,[/em] by Michael Hoffman

You don’t have to pay half your salary in rent or brave commuter crowds every day to pursue a successful writing or translating career in Japan. From his “garret” looking out on the waters of Ishikari Bay in Hokkaido, Michael Hoffman contributes articles regularly to Japan’s three English-language dailies, translates, and most recently, writes fiction. How did he get there?

[strong]SWET on Saturdays Reports[/strong]

[strong]May 2004[/strong]
Writing Tokyo Mysteries (Barry Eisler)
Barry Eisler’s John Rain thrillers featuring a Japanese-American career assassin—[em]Rain Fall, Hard Rain,[/em] and [em]Rain Storm[/em]—are translated into over a dozen languages. He spoke to SWET on May 24 in Tokyo about what he believes are the keys to good writing and to his own success as a fiction writer. (by Allan Murphy)

[strong]June 2004[/strong]
Recent Japanese Writing (Yonaha Keiko)
On June 26, Yonaha Keiko, professor of international sociology at Tōyō Eiwa University and a specialist in contemporary literature, gave a bird’s-eye view of the leading authors and themes in Japanese fiction today. (by Chikako Kobayashi)

The Gendai Josei Bungaku no Jōkyō Mappu (Map of Contemporary Women’s Literature) Yonaha prepared and distributed at the talk in Japanese will be posted in English and Japanese on the Newsletter section of the SWET Web site.

[strong]July 2004[/strong]
Nature in Tokyo (Kevin Short) at SWET Summer Party
The fourth Saturday in July became the occasion for SWET’s Summer Party, held this year in the banquet room off the historic landscape garden at the International House of Japan. At the party, naturalist and cultural anthropologist Kevin Short showed slides and shared his impressive knowledge about common flora and fauna of Japan along with useful insights for translators and editors in dealing with these matters in English texts. Short is author of [em]Nature in Tokyo[/em] (Kodansha International, 2000).

[strong]Over Their Shoulders[/strong]

Workshop I Feedback

What does it take to produce a publishable work of translation? Not only does one have to pass muster in one’s understanding of the Japanese text, one must also be able to write well in English, and then there is the editor at the publisher, who has a demanding list of priorities as well. Five aspiring translators of literature took the challenge with the opening paragraphs of a short essay by Tanabe Seiko. Juliet Winters Carpenter, from the viewpoint of a translator with years of experience and many successful translations behind her, and Ginny Tapley, from the perspective of an editor experienced in what it takes to make a translation publishable, comment on each story in detail.

[strong]Threads on SWET-L

[em]Tense, Buzzwords, Editing,[/em] by Torkil Christensen
A digest of postings on the SWET-L from the mailing list’s eighth anniversary in early May through the end of July 2004. Dilemmas that stymie wordsmiths are resolved through collegial cooperation. For this review of the happenings on the list Torkil Christensen of Sapporo takes over from Holly Ueda in Tokyo, who ably reported on the list discussions for as long as we can remember.

Book Review[/strong]

by Charles De Wolf

[em]Nihon bungaku: Hon’yaku no kanosei [/em]/[em]Japanese Literature: The Possibilities of Translation.[/em] Ii Haruki, ed. International Literature Report 2. Tokyo: Kazama Shobō, 2004, Hardback ¥3,800.