Three Wordsmiths of Northern Kanto:
Janine Beichman, Victoria Oyama, and Alison Watts

 

Our May SWET Talk Shop Online will be held on a Sunday morning to accommodate participants in the U.S. We are pleased to welcome three SWET stalwarts who reside in Tochigi and Ibaraki prefectures in the northeastern part of the Kanto region. After 15–20-minute interviews with our guest speakers, we will open up the meeting for Q&A and discussion.

Janine Beichman is professor emerita of Daito Bunka University and specialist in the poetry of Masaoka Shiki, Yosano Akiko, and Ooka Makoto. Beichman lives in Tsukuba, Ibaraki prefecture. She received the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature in 2020 for her translations of Ooka Makoto's poetry, Beneath the Sleepless Tossing of the Planets.

Victoria Oyama is a professional translator who lives in Mashiko, Tochigi prefecture. She has lived in Japan for 40 years and has expert knowledge of ceramics, Japanese folk craft, and Japanese art in general.

Alison Watts is a freelance translator who lives in Tokaimura, Ibaraki prefecture. After a long career as a commercial translator, she now exclusively translates literature, including Sweet Bean Paste by Durian Sukegawa (Oneworld, 2017) and the recent long article by Sukegawa about retracing Basho’s path in post-2011 Tohoku.