Articles

September 29, 2009

Keene, Seidensticker et al.: Products of War, Commodities of Peace

Reviewed by William Wetherall

Focusing on recently published biographical works by the late Edward G. Seidensticker and Columbia University professor Donald Keene, William Wetherall evokes the personalities and the times of two great promoters of Japanese literature in the postwar era.

Wetherall’s articles on a variety of subjects are posted on the gateway to his websites.

Intrigued... more

August 19, 2009

Swimming with the Flow

by Jiho Sargent

Jiho Sargent was a technical writer and editor, proofreader, programming expert, and a SWET stalwart for more than two decades. She was also a Buddhist priest who served for a time at Taisoji near Sugamo station. Her health took a turn for the worse in 2006, however, and she decided to return to the United States to live... more

July 21, 2009

Self-Publishing a Self-Initiated Translation

A professional non-fiction translator for over 40 years, Fred Uleman, in September 2009, self-published Rethinking the Constitution: An Anthology of Japanese Opinion, a translation of Kodansha’s 2004 Nihon no kenpo: Kokumin shuken no ronten. SWET asked Uleman how he came to translate and publish a book he was not paid to do, and what it involved.

July 15, 2009

Academic Editing in the Humanities

by Kate Wildman Nakai

In the fields of history, thought, art history, religion, and literature, which are the main subjects of articles published in Monumenta Nipponica, the rules of academic writing are less formally structured than in the sciences, creating greater freedom but also greater possibility for uncertainty, a lack of clarity, and poor organization. Researchers have traditionally been guided as... more

July 8, 2009

Kurodahan: Selling to a Niche

by Ginny Tapley

Based in Fukuoka, Kyushu, far from the usual centers of publishing, Edward Lipsett, Stephen Carter and Chris Ryal have established Kurodahan Press, a new type of publisher now entering its fifth year. Having started with Mayumura Taku’s Administrator in 2003, Kurodahan specializes in translated Japanese literature, particularly genre fiction such as science fiction, horror, fantasy, and mystery. Ultimately, however, they aim... more

July 1, 2009

Young Adult Fantasy in Translation: An Interview with Cathy Hirano

by Misa Dikengil

SWET member Cathy Hirano is a Japanese-English translator living in Shikoku. Her translation of the young adult (YA) novel The Friends by Kazumi Yumoto (Natsu no niwa; Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1996) won the Mildred L. Batchelder Award for children's literature in translation and the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award for children's fiction (both in 1997). Misa Dikengil interviewed Hirano via... more