Ten Questions for Avery Fischer Udagawa

By Misa Dikengil Lindberg, Vergennes, Vermont

Last summer I had the pleasure of reading Shogo Oketani’s J-Boys: Kazuo’s World, Tokyo, 1965 (Stone Bridge Press, 2011), translated by SCBWI Tokyo Translation Group member Avery Fischer Udagawa. Told through the eyes of nine-year-old Kazuo Nakamoto, it is an engaging story that recreates the Shinagawa ward in 1960s Tokyo. Here the youngsters of the city, highly influenced by American culture, rush along with the current of westernization. The parents and adults of Kazuo’s world still hold vivid, painful memories of firebombings and food shortages during the war, but to Kazuo and his friends, American TV shows like Leave it to Beaver and Lassie and the track stars of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics are much more real than the war. Avery Fischer Udagawa, a J-E translator and writer based in Thailand, answered questions via email.

Congratulations on the publication of J-Boys: Kazuo’s World, Tokyo, 1965! This is your first book-length translation, right?

Yes! It is exciting to see it make its way into the world.

J-Boys is a unique work in that it was published in English translation before being published in Japanese (as of this writing, there is not yet a Japanese-language edition). The author, Shogo Oketani, is himself a translator of English to Japanese. How did you get involved in this project and what originally attracted you to it?

I first met Shogo Oketani and his wife Leza Lowitz when I interviewed them for an article that appeared in Kyoto Journal No. 56 (March 2004). Shogo and Leza are both authors and both translators. Leza got me involved with translating for the anthology Inside and Other Short Fiction: Japanese Women by Japanese Women (Kodansha International, 2006). In spring 2008, Leza wrote again to ask if I could translate J-Boys in time for Shogo’s birthday in December of that year. I read the manuscript, a collection of fifteen linked short stories, plus English translations of two stories that had been translated by others. I enjoyed and felt a connection to what I read and knew Leza and Shogo would work hard to find a publisher for it. I signed on to translate the book in its entirety, including the material previously translated by others.

How closely did you work with the author and what was it like working with a fellow translator?

I actually worked more directly with Leza than with Shogo. I would email Leza a translation of a story, or translations of multiple stories in a batch, and she would insert comments and edits to which I could then respond, and we could go back and forth as necessary. If either of us had content-related questions for Shogo, Leza would check with him and relay his answer to me. I was fortunate not only to have a close connection with the author, but also to receive Leza’s feedback on my English. She is a gifted writer.

In the author’s note, Oketani says that he wrote the book to introduce young readers to the world of 1965 Japan—specifically the world of young boys in a rapidly changing postwar Japan that is becoming increasingly influenced by American culture. How much research did you do while working on the translation? Where or to whom did you turn for help with any historical questions?

Shogo’s book itself explains lots of the era-specific themes, ranging from the rise of TV to the 1964 Olympics to the mid-1960s construction rush that transformed Tokyo. To get a visual sense of life in this period, I watched two Japanese movies in the Always san-chome no yuhi series, which is based on manga about childhood in working-class Tokyo during this time. (A third film in this series has just been released.) I also consulted the Internet for help with specific questions—about Japanese TV characters, the status of resident (or zainichi) Koreans in Japan, World War II history and memory, kamishibai storytellers, and even Popeye the Sailor and The Beatles!

The book contains a running glossary in the sidebars defining bolded words throughout the text. More than just definitions of Japanese words, the glossary is also a cultural dictionary, providing cultural and historical information about Japan. For example, April is defined as “The month when school begins in Japan. Japanese students go to school almost all year round, with a shorter summer vacation and time off at New Year’s. Students also wear uniforms, wool in the winter and cotton in the hotter months.” Was the glossary written by Oketani in Japanese? Did you translate the glossary as well?

The glossary and sidebars were prepared in English well after the translation phase. I played a limited role by reading the draft entries and suggesting some information to add and leave out. As the translator of J-Boys, I initially thought my involvement would end after I translated the book into English, but in my capacity as a close reader of the manuscript, I found I had ideas to contribute in the pre-publication phase as well, such as (in this case) what information young readers might use to understand the text.

You were working on this project for quite a while. How long did the whole thing take? Can you describe the different stages of the process?

The initial translation phase stretched from spring through winter of 2008. I then continued to work with some parts of the book for a project for my Master’s degree. Later, once Stone Bridge Press accepted J-Boys for publication, I worked with Shogo, Leza, and publisher Peter Goodman to support the editing and launch of the book. This pre-publication phase stretched from summer 2010 through summer 2011, and involved everything from emails about the subtitle—Kazuo’s World, Tokyo, 1965—which was added in 2010, to thorough editing passes. Children’s book editor and author Susan Korman came on board early on to shape the book into a novel for a U.S. middle-grade (MG) audience, and seeing and working with her changes proved very educational. Also eye-opening was the experience of reading other historical MG novels with Asian main characters, so as to identify the niche J-Boys fills. This was a valuable exercise both for PR purposes and for me as someone interested in translating more children’s literature. It is important—and exciting!—to read the material already available in the target market.

The book has an impressive website with pages about the author, further information about the characters, and useful links/teaching tools to help teachers use J-Boys in the classroom. How involved were you with the website? Do you think the website makes the book more accessible to American readers?

Thanks for checking out the website! It was created by the author and his wife, who then also solicited my input. I wrote the copy for the Book and For Teachers sections and sent some ideas about organization as well. We definitely hope it makes the book more accessible.

What did you learn about the craft of J-E translation while working on J-Boys? Did you face any eye-opening challenges?

I learned that a translator can play a role in birthing a book that extends far beyond translating to, in my case, drafting photo captions, working with sidebars, developing website copy, and even writing to authors to request endorsements. I conversed with elementary-school educators about the book and recently spoke about it in a visit to a fourth-grade classroom. I have also talked about it via Skype to a joint event of SCBWI Tokyo and SWET, the Tokyo-based Society of Writers, Editors and Translators. This work in the areas of editing and PR has taken time, but it has enhanced my knowledge of the publication process and given me ideas for future projects.

As for challenges, the biggest hurdle was probably translating the manuscript during the infancy of my first child! She was born just a few months before Shogo and Leza contacted me about the project. I remember a haze of weekends and late nights hunched over the computer. Now that my daughter is four, however, it is gratifying to see her read her name in the acknowledgments—where it appears with my husband’s—and to have her understand what kind of work I do. I look forward to reading J-Boys: Kazuo’s World, Tokyo, 1965 with her in a few years.

What value do you think J-Boys contributes to the world of MG lit in translation?

There is a lot of great MG lit out there that explores particular moments in Asia’s history through children’s eyes. World War II receives a lot of coverage, for example. But there is not a lot of MG writing about 1960s Japan, or about the real daily life of Japanese kids as opposed to fantasy. In addition, books about Japan are often written in English by non-Japanese authors, so it is good to add a translation to the mix written by someone who grew up in the world he is describing. Shogo Oketani grew up in Shinagawa ward, just like Kazuo, and still lives on the same plot of land where he lived in the 1960s.

J-Boys is also potentially useful in classrooms because it covers historical social issues but is not U.S.-centered; it features a boy; and it conveys weighty content in simple language, making it useful for English language learners. I look forward to learning more about how readers and educators approach this book.

I know you are very busy with a preschooler and a baby right now, but do you have any upcoming translation projects in sight?

You are right that I stay busy as an at-home mom of two—our seven-month-old daughter came into the world just as J-Boys was being published. I do have a short-story translation in the anthology Tomo, a collection of YA Japan stories that will benefit teen survivors of the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami. I also help lead the SCBWI Tokyo Translation Group, which brings together aspiring and published translators of Japanese children’s lit into English, wherever they are in the world. We offer an email listserv and this blog and periodically offer events in Japan such as SCBWI Tokyo Translation Day. If any translators would like to join us, they are welcome to email me via my website or contact info (at) scbwi (dot) jp.

The Sad Song of Okinawa~Life Itself is our Most Precious Treasure

by Deborah Davidson, Sapporo

The Sad Song of Okinawa~Life Itself is our Most Precious Treasure is the heart-wrenching story of the Battle of Okinawa, “World War II’s longest and fiercest battle,” as told from the perspective of two young Okinawan children. It is in the form of a picture book for young readers, but certain to stimulate discussion among all age groups about the nature of war and peace. The original Japanese version was meticulously researched, written, and brilliantly illustrated by Maruki Toshi and Maruki Iri, a husband-wife team of artists whose work is known and respected worldwide.

The story begins with a delightful description of the beauty and joys of life in Okinawa, with the impact of the text multiplied by the vivid colors and whimsical illustrations. Young Tsuru and her even younger brother Saburo live in this joyful land along with their parents and extended family.

After impressing this charming setting firmly in the reader’s mind, the text continues: “The war came to Little Tsuru’s house when she was seven years old.” In both great and small ways, the life to which the children had been accustomed begins to crack and crumble. The illustrations become darker and more chaotic. Though the text continues in a matter-of-fact tone, the scenes that the words describe make your hair stand on end. The desperate reality of the situation is enhanced by many innocent-seeming details, such as what the evacuees choose to take from their homes as they flee, and the color of the mud puddle that the children must drink from to quench their raging thirst.

The Okinawan language, particularly in the form of a song Grandfather sings to the accompaniment of the sanshin (Okinawan banjo), weaves through the text, adding further continuity to the story. “Ikusayun shimachi, mirukuyun yagati, (the war will pass and there’ll be days of peace and pleasure) Nagikunayo shinka, nuchidu takara ( Don’t cry my friends, life itself is our most precious treasure).” The story ends with a repetition of this last phrase (“life itself is our most precious treasure”), which also serves as the book’s subtitle.

The publication of the English version of the book was made possible by the efforts of The Sad Song of Okinawa English Translation Project. It took three years for the project team to raise the funds necessary to get it published. Project members Kinjo Haruna, Andrea Good, and Rob Witmer undertook the translation of the original Japanese (and Okinawan) into English.

I’m pleased to say that the book is finally in published form as part of the RIC Story Chest series. As all books in that series, The Sad Song of Okinawa comes with a CD recording of the story text to assist young readers and speakers of English as a foreign language. Two Okinawan folk songs performed by Nahgushiku Yoshimitsu are also included in the CD. The book can be purchased from RIC Publications.

Debbie is a gifted artist as well as a notable translator and educator. Be sure to check out her etegami blog and her work on Ainu folklore translations; one story is included in the upcoming Tomo anthology from Stone Bridge Press!

YA Anthology Tomo to Include Translations

By Avery Fischer Udagawa, Bangkok

Tomo is an anthology of Japan-related YA fiction slated for release on March 10, 2012.

Titled in full Tomo: Friendships through Fiction–An Anthology of Japan Teen Stories, the collection will benefit teen survivors of the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011. Its 36 short stories will include 10 from Japan and Tohoku translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter, Deborah Davidson, Misa Lindberg Dikengil, Sako Ikegami, Toshiya Kamei, Hart Larrabee, Lynne E. Riggs, Alexander O. Smith, and Avery Fischer Udagawa.

Holly Thompson, editor of Tomo and Regional Advisor of SCBWI Tokyo, says the anthology “aims to bring Japan stories to young adult readers worldwide, and in so doing, to help support teens in Tohoku.”

To view the full list of contributors and read updates about this project, visit the Tomo blog.

Naoko Awa in Translation

By Avery Fischer Udagawa, Bangkok

SCBWI Tokyo Translation Group member Misa Dikengil Lindberg reviews The Fox’s Window and Other Stories by Naoko Awa, translated by Toshiya Kamei (UNO Press, 2009), in SWET Newsletter No. 128. As Lindberg writes, it is exciting to see this collection of Awa’s children’s stories appear in English. Awa has been compared to Beatrix Potter and Hans Christian Andersen.

Click here for full text of the article and to learn more about SWET, the Tokyo-based Society of Writers, Editors, and Translators.

Three Readers, One Hundred Words

By Avery Fischer Udagawa, Bangkok

I recently attended the Asian Festival of Children’s Content (AFCC) in Singapore, which provided a fascinating overview of children’s publishing in English. Three days among authors, illustrators, and publishing insiders helped me see how translations for children fit into a larger industry.

I also gained some insights on craft. A session called First Pages for Authors provided a chance to have the opening of a work critiqued, anonymously, by a panel of three experts: Kelly Sonnack, agent with the Andrea Brown Literary Agency; Stephen Mooser, author and president of SCBWI; and Sayoni Basu, publishing director at Scholastic India.

Panelists Kelly Sonnack, Stephen Mooser, and Sayoni Basu at First Pages for Authors session, AFCC 2011

Each submission for this session was emailed in advance and read aloud on the day by a moderator. The three panelists then critiqued the piece, referring to hard copies, speaking from their perspectives as agent, author, and editor.

I wrote in advance to ask if I could submit a translation for this session, and learned that I could. Like the authors, I prepared a single A4 page with roughly the first 100 words of a work I wished to publish. I also indicated its target age level and total length. I did not identify it as a translation.

When the panel critiqued my piece, they offered a number of useful comments. The author affirmed my hunch that the passage offered enough interest to get a reader to turn the page. The agent agreed, but mentioned that a series of short sentences at the beginning might not be effective. She encouraged expanding the work from a short story to a more saleable novel. The editor mentioned that the identity of a particular activity described was not clear.

Some of these comments addressed elements that I, as translator, cannot change. (I cannot increase the length of the work, for example.) But some comments addressed aspects of my English that I can improve, and it was exhilarating to learn that experts not based in Japan were interested in reading more.

I enjoyed listening to critiques of other submissions. These ranged from the opening text of picture books to the beginnings of middle grade and young adult novels. The panelists addressed elements including pacing, vocabulary, point of view, sentence length, level of detail, the use of backstory, the balance of narration and dialogue, target audience, and strategies for revision. Many comments provided hints to me, as someone always eyeing new projects, about how to identify Japanese texts that might be appropriate for English-language markets.

Conferences held by SCBWI and similar groups frequently include writers’ critiques that, like this one, could help translators. I highly recommend attending such conferences (see my overview of AFCC in the forthcoming Spring/Summer 2011 issue of Carp Tales, the SCBWI Tokyo newsletter). Translators who hope to obtain a critique should query in advance to see if translations are accepted. Submissions will be considered as if they were original writing for the target market(s).

Learning From the Disaster: tsunami tendenko

By Deborah Iwabuchi, Maebashi

Living on the edge of the quake zone has proved to be stressful and full of despair. One brilliant ray of hope has been the fact that most children who were in school when the tsunami hit were saved. Or rather, they saved themselves.

A little research reveals that this was no accident. In an earthquake followed by a tsunami in 1896, the population was decimated when family members rushed to each other’s sides instead of trying to save themselves.

To avoid that happening again, children have been taught tsunami tendenko as a kind of motto to live by. I read about this in an English newspaper and the translator in me immediately had to know WHAT EXACTLY those words meant. “Tsunami” was self-explanatory, but I needed to know what that tendenko was all about. The paper gave the definition as “go uphill independently at the time of tsunami caring only for your own safety, not thinking of anyone else, even your family.”

All that? My online dictionary gave “each for oneself, separately” as the definition of tenden-ni, an adverb. It began to make sense. ko as a suffix often makes a noun out of an adverb to describe a kind of child. Thus tendenko would be “child who does each-for-oneself.”

I was almost satisfied. Internet search engine in hand, I found a blog that defined the term (in Japanese) as “save yourself, every which way, just run for high ground.” Now that actually sounds like something you’d say to a child.

And we now have proof that it works!

Catching Up with Cathy Hirano

By Alexander O. Smith, Greensboro, Vermont

Cathy Hirano is the translator most recently of Mirror Sword and Shadow Prince, the second volume in Noriko Ogiwara’s Tales of the Magatama series, published by VIZ Media’s Haikasoru imprint.

Her translation of The Friends by Kazumi Yumoto won both the Mildred L. Batchelder Award for children’s literature in translation and the Boston Globe-Horn Book award for fiction. Her translation of Guardian of the Spirit by Nahoko Uehashi also won the Batchelder Award, and Guardian of the Darkness, the second in the Moribito series, was a Batchelder Honor recipient. A native of Canada, Cathy moved to Japan in 1978 where she received her B.A. from International Christian University (ICU) in Tokyo. She responded to questions from her home on the island of Shikoku.

Congratulations on the release of Mirror Sword and Shadow Prince!

Thank you!!

I know the first volume in the series came out originally in 1993 and was then retranslated for VIZ in 2007. Can you tell me how you came to work on this series?

After graduating from ICU, I reviewed English YA books for possible Japanese publication and occasionally did J-E picture book translations as PR materials. This was a side job for Kayoko Yoneda, a friend from ICU and an editor at Fukutake Shoten. When the first Magatama book Sorairo magatama (English title: Dragon Sword and Wind Child) came out in 1988, Kayoko asked me to review it and write a summary. Farrar, Straus & Giroux read this and asked for a sample translation and then for the whole thing. It was my very first literature translation and it was very hard! There being no Internet at the time, I never heard how it fared; only that it went out of print. Years later, I was contacted by Masumi Washington at VIZ Media. She told me VIZ wanted to publish a retranslation as well as the second book in the series and asked if I would be willing to take on the task. Apparently, Dragon Sword and Wind Child, though long out of print, had acquired a solid fan following, demonstrated by the fact that the majority of library copies had been stolen and used books were listed at several hundred dollars on Amazon. It even had its own fan site developed by a teenager who loved the book and was sad it went out of print. She had the whole book typed and put online so that people could read it! You know, most publishers would shy away from a book that had already been published once and failed to survive. So I am extremely grateful to VIZ for recognizing the book’s value and for giving it a second chance and to the DSWC fans for keeping the flame alive. The knowledge that people were waiting to read Mirror Sword is what kept me going during some pretty rough patches. Readers have power!!!

What was it like revisiting the first volume fourteen years after your first translation?

It was fun, embarrassing, unnerving, confirming. I started by reading it aloud to my kids and their cousins, who by then were in their mid and late teens. They loved it, thank goodness! But they also had some good laughs about some of my word choices while I found myself cringing in places where the language I’d used was stuffy and stilted. I then went through the translation line by line against the Japanese and caught things I had missed or misunderstood—not as many as I had feared, but still. After rewriting all the trouble spots, I did a final pass through the whole book. Although it was embarrassing to see the mistakes I had made, it was also confirming to see that I have evolved somewhat as a translator in those 14 years and that I still love to escape into Ogiwara’s world!

The Magatama and the Moribito series which you also worked on are interesting to me in that they both fit snugly within a very Western Fantasy genre and yet their stories and worlds are influenced by Asian history and myth. How did you navigate the process of bringing these worlds into English without losing the flavor of the original? Were you inspired, stylistically or otherwise, by any other books in English?

A hard question! For me, it’s a very intuitive process and I’m never sure if I really have succeeded in keeping the flavor of the original. One thing I try to do is read the translation out loud once I get it to a more polished state. That helps me see whether it “feels” the same. What I’m looking for at a gut level is whether the English grabs me in the same way as the Japanese. To me, Uehashi’s voice is fast-paced, powerful, compassionate, clear and deceptively simple. Ogiwara’s voice, though just as powerful, is completely different. Her rich, lyrical images and sweeping descriptions vividly convey the emotional atmosphere. She has a knack for capturing a focal point or detail that draws in the reader and for mirroring the inner worlds of her characters’ minds and hearts in the outer world. However, this style, which is very Japanese, is less compatible with the English language than Uehashi’s. To give one example, Uehashi’s battle scenes are graphically detailed. You know exactly when and how each bone is broken, whose bone it is and what it feels like (ouch!!). This brings home the reality of life for the bodyguard Balsa.

Ogiwara’s battle scenes, in contrast, convey the emotional intensity of the moment but the smaller details are rather blurred, as if viewed through the subjective lens of a particular character’s mind. At one crucial point, for example, I knew that the heroine, Toko, had stabbed someone but it wasn’t until I tried to translate that part that I realized this fact is not actually stated. Her intent to stab him and subsequently the fact that a knife is protruding from the person’s side are there but not the act itself. In Japanese, readers easily connect these dots but in English, they don’t. So as the translator I had to decide when this act actually takes place and how to convey it without losing the tone.

The Moribito world was, in one way, much easier to render in English than the Magatama world simply because Uehashi invented it from scratch. This means that the Japanese readership is just as unfamiliar with it as the English readership so the descriptions Uehashi provides are thorough enough for everyone to follow regardless of their cultural background. While the positioning of these details sometimes bogged down the flow in English, occassionally requiring relocation in consultation with the author and the English-language editor, translating the cultural context into English was not a problem. In contrast, the Magatama books draw on ancient Japanese myths: Dragon Sword and Wind Child (2007) on the ancient Japanese creation myths and Mirror Sword and Shadow Prince (2011) on the tale of Yamato Takeru, a legendary Japanese hero of the 4^th century. To the Japanese reader, these tales and their setting are familiar territory but for English readers they are not. A single word in Japanese can conjure up a hairstyle (mage), clothing (mo), building (miya) or social status (osa) for which no English equivalents exist. Because no explanation is provided in the Japanese, the translation required a hefty amount of background research into the tales’ historical and cultural context and plenty of agonizing over how much of that information was needed for an English speaker and how to unobstrusively convey the essentials.

As for what books inspired me during the translation process, I actually strive not to be influenced stylistically by other authors so that I can remain true to the original. At the same time, however, I do read books in the same genre because exposure to good English helps me avoid an excessively literal translation.  While translating the Moribito books I found myself rereading Ursula LeGuin’s Earthsea series. I think what appealed was their common themes such as the search for meaning, the painful journey of self discovery and acceptance, and the fact that their voices both evoke the oral tradition of story-telling. When translating Ogiwara, on the other hand, I was drawn to Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Again, it wasn’t the style but the story’s epic nature and the use of humor to lighten a serious tale that resonated.

I attended a fascinating talk you gave in Tokyo with Nahoko Uehashi, author of the Moribito series, in which you described working closely with the author during your translation of her books. Did you have similar access to Ogiwara when working on the Magatama series? What are the pros and cons to working directly with an author?

I think it probably depends on the author. I feel incredibly blessed to have worked with authors who welcome input and who understand and respect the translation process. I corresponded directly with, and also met, Nahoko Uehashi and Kazumi Yumoto. Although I only met Noriko Ogiwara once and did not correspond with her directly, I had an excellent mediator in Rei Uemura, her editor and friend, who has a complete grasp of her works, gives very informed and helpful answers, evaluates or even suggests possible solutions, and filters any questions so that the author only has to deal with essentials.

So for me, working directly with the author is a huge plus. The only drawback might be the extra time involved, but it is well worth it. There is so much to learn during this process. Authors construct their stories and choose the words that bring them to life with care, passion, and creative genius. What a gift to be able to ask them why they chose a particular word that doesn’t quite work in English and what they think about a possible solution. I have worked on books where I got no response from the author and I feel it shows in the end product and in how I feel about it: frustrated and unsure that I’ve understood what the author intended.

On the business side, you’ve worked now with several different publishers and editors. How has your experience been with the publishing side of translation? Has there been a lot of back-and-forth during the editorial process, or is it fairly hands-off?

I think I’ve run the gamut! The Moribito series was the most hands-on I’ve ever experienced, the Tales of Magatama the most hands-off, and Kazumi Yumoto’s somewhere in the middle. It seems to depend on the U.S. editor. Personally, I prefer input despite the extra work involved. It helps me to develop as a translator and, if the editor is good, it makes for a better book.

You mention in a piece on your lovely translation of Kazumi Yumoto’s The Friends that translating between Japanese and English requires “fairly strenuous cultural and mental gymnastics.” I encourage our readers to follow the link at the end to Cathy’s article, which is a great read with excellent insights into the challenges facing translators of this particular language pairing. To follow on your discussion in that article, how do you position yourself as translator with regards to the work, the author, and your audience?

I think that my approach as a translator differs significantly for bread-and-butter translation and for literature. With the former, I am more objective. I keep a clear picture in my mind of the target reader and I focus on conveying the intent and meaning of the Japanese rather than on the style, sometimes extensively editing and rewriting the original. With literary translation, however, I find the translation process more personal and subjective. The author has written the book for me and I’m translating it so that others can enjoy the same experience. In the initial stages in particular, I don’t worry about the readership and instead focus far more on the author, on his or her style, choice of words, rhythm—on the voice. I’m quite faithful to the original. It is only when I go back and reread it, that I regain some objectivity and become rather ruthless. But I am still trying to convey an experience rather than just content or meaning.

How do you approach the nuts and bolts of your work? How do you prepare for a translation? What’s a typical day at the office like?

My approach is simple: I start by reading the book! As I’m reading it, I note the areas that will require research for background information, think about people who can help me research or people I can query. With Mirror Sword, for example, I started reading about Yamato Takeru, got Japanese friends to help me map out where the different events take place, asked my architect husband for help with architecture, and a history buff for pictures of clothing and background on customs. With the Moribito series, I read up on martial arts!

My next step is to create a rough draft. I usually do that by chapter, typing all questions and problem areas directly into the manuscript with the Japanese page numbers and highlighting the corresponding place in the Japanese text. Then I go back and try to answer my own questions. What I can’t answer, I ask my long-suffering husband or daughter. Often my questions are something like this: “How does this particular word make you feel? What’s the image you get?” I keep a glossary of terms, too, for consistency and so that I don’t have to make a decision more than once. I usually leave the rough draft of one chapter while I go on to the next one and then come back to rewrite it. This gives me some distance from the Japanese.

For Tales of Magatama and the Moribito series, once the translation was rewritten and all queries answered, I sent it to my niece and some young friends to read to make sure it communicated to readers in the target age range. And I asked my daughter to read the English against the Japanese to catch any misinterpretations or omissions. This was also the point where I sent all the questions that no one else could answer to the author (or Japanese editor). After processing the feedback, I did a final run through to catch any places that didn’t feel right. That was it.

I have no typical day at the office. I work at home and am involved in too many other things. With literature translation in particular, more often than not I have to squeeze the work into a small window of time each day. During the rewriting stage, however, I block out longer chunks of time because it’s harder to hold onto the voice when there are frequent interruptions.

Thanks again to Cathy Hirano for participating in this interview. Here is Cathy’s previous article concerning her translation of Kazumi Yumoto’s The Friends.

Cathy’s most recent translation is also available through the Haikasoru imprint’s website.

Japanese Fairy Tales and Yei Theodora Ozaki

By Deborah Iwabuchi, Maebashi

While doing some research, I came across Japanese Fairy Tales, a book published in 1908 and now available on Project Gutenberg.

The book was compiled and translated by one Yei Theodora Ozaki. Sensing a kindred spirit, I quickly became rather more curious about Ms Ozaki than the book. Who was this woman with the mixed-culture name compiling children’s books so many years ago?

Here is a line from her preface:

“These stories are not literal translations, and though the Japanese story and all quaint Japanese expressions have been faithfully preserved, they have been told more with the view to interest young readers of the West than the technical student of folk-lore.”

A hundred years separated, but apparently she and I shared a questionable translation policy. I was thrilled! But there was still more:

“In telling these stories in English I have followed my fancy in adding such touches of local color or description as they seemed to need or as pleased me, and in one or two instances I have gathered in an incident from another version.”

Ms. Ozaki went even further than “interpretation,” actually adding her own bits and pieces to make the stories better—she was a storyteller as well as a translator! Now she was my role model. But what about her life? How did translators live back in the days before typewriters, let alone computers and online dictionaries?

I doggedly continued my online search, and there she was on Wikipedia.  The details did not disappoint. Our heroine, a product of a short-lived union between a Japanese man and European women, lived in both Japan and Europe, refused an arranged marriage, took odd jobs, and lived in odd places. “All this time,” Wikipedia concluded with the romance I craved, “her letters were frequently misdelivered to the unrelated Japanese politician Yukio Ozaki, and his to her. In 1904, they finally met, and soon married.”

I was thoroughly satisfied, not to mention hopeful for some drama and consequence in my own sedentary existence. But now it was time to get back to my research. I dug into Ms. Ozaki’s enticing collection of stories—and I encourage you to do the same!

Japanese Fairy Tales by Yei Theodora Ozaki

Picture Books for Young Disaster Survivors

By Avery Fischer Udagawa, Bangkok

The 3.11 Picture Book Project in Iwate (Ehon Project Iwate) is an initiative to distribute picture books to children in earthquake- and tsunami-devastated areas.

Lynne E. Riggs, Sako Ikegami, and Chikako Imoto of the SCBWI Tokyo Translation Group Listserv translated the text for the English website, which includes news copy and details about the project’s progress.

The message on the home page reads, in part,

We believe,

A book can bring a child’s smile.
A book can give a child happiness
A book can give a child hope

The Tale of Hamaguchi Gohei and the Tsunami

By Sako Ikegami, Kobe

The March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami in Tohoku were the latest of many to pound the region and Japan as a whole. Literature from Japan refers to many such events that came before. Here is an example from the writings of Lafcadio Hearn, also known as Koizumi Yakumo (1850-1904). It is a tale for the young and old alike.

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Excerpt from Lafcardio Hearn’s Gleanings in Buddha-Fields I. A Living God

Now concerning Hamaguchi.

From immemorial time the shores of Japan have been swept, at irregular intervals of centuries, by enormous tidal waves,—tidal waves caused by earthquakes or by submarine volcanic action. These awful sudden risings of the sea are called by the Japanese tsunami. The last one occurred on the evening of June 17, 1896, when a wave nearly two hundred miles long struck the northeastern provinces of Miyagi, Iwaté, and Aomori, wrecking scores of towns and villages, ruining whole districts, and destroying nearly thirty thousand human lives. The story of Hamaguchi Gohei is the story of a like calamity which happened long before the era of Meiji, on another part of the Japanese coast.

He was an old man at the time of the occurrence that made him famous. He was the most influential resident of the village to which he belonged: he had been for many years its muraosa, or headman; and he was not less liked than respected. The people usually called him Ojiisan, which means Grandfather; but, being the richest member of the community, he was sometimes officially referred to as the Chôja. He used to advise the smaller farmers about their interests, to arbitrate their disputes, to advance them money at need, and to dispose of their rice for them on the best terms possible.

Hamaguchi’s big thatched farmhouse stood at the verge of a small plateau overlooking a bay. The plateau, mostly devoted to rice culture, was hemmed in on three sides by thickly wooded summits. From its outer verge the land sloped down in a huge green concavity, as if scooped out, to the edge of the water; and the whole of this slope, some three quarters of a mile long, was so terraced as to look, when viewed from the open sea, like an enormous flight of green steps, divided in the centre by a narrow white zigzag—a streak of mountain road. Ninety thatched dwellings and a Shintô temple, composing the village proper, stood along the curve of the bay; and other houses climbed straggling up the slope for some distance on either side of the narrow road leading to the Chôja’s home.

One autumn evening Hamaguchi Gohei was looking down from the balcony of his house at some preparations for a merry-making in the village below. There had been a very fine rice-crop, and the peasants were going to celebrate their harvest by a dance in the court of the ujigami.^[1] The old man could see the festival banners (nobori) fluttering above the roofs of the solitary street, the strings of paper lanterns festooned between bamboo poles, the decorations of the shrine, and the brightly colored gathering of the young people. He had nobody with him that evening but his little grandson, a lad of ten; the rest of the household having gone early to the village. He would have accompanied them had he not been feeling less strong than usual.

The day had been oppressive; and in spite of a rising breeze there was still in the air that sort of heavy heat which, according to the experience of the Japanese peasant, at certain seasons precedes an earthquake. And presently an earthquake came. It was not strong enough to frighten anybody; but Hamaguchi, who had felt hundreds of shocks in his time, thought it was queer,—a long, slow, spongy motion. Probably it was but the after-tremor of some immense seismic action very far away. The house crackled and rocked gently several times; then all became still again.

As the quaking ceased Hamaguchi’s keen old eyes were anxiously turned toward the village. It often happens that the attention of a person gazing fixedly at a particular spot or object is suddenly diverted by the sense of something not knowingly seen at all,—by a mere vague feeling of the unfamiliar in that dim outer circle of unconscious perception which lies beyond the field of clear vision. Thus it chanced that Hamaguchi became aware of something unusual in the offing. He rose to his feet, and looked at the sea. It had darkened quite suddenly, and it was acting strangely. It seemed to be moving against the wind. It was running away from the land.

Within a very little time the whole village had noticed the phenomenon. Apparently no one had felt the previous motion of the ground, but all were evidently astounded by the movement of the water. They were running to the beach, and even beyond the beach, to watch it.

No such ebb had been witnessed on that coast within the memory of living man. Things never seen before were making apparition; unfamiliar spaces of ribbed sand and reaches of weed-hung rock were left bare even as Hamaguchi gazed. And none of the people below appeared to guess what that monstrous ebb signified.

Hamaguchi Gohei himself had never seen such a thing before; but he remembered things told him in his childhood by his father’s father, and he knew all the traditions of the coast. He understood what the sea was going to do. Perhaps he thought of the time needed to send a message to the village, or to get the priests of the Buddhist temple on the hill to sound their big bell. . . . But it would take very much longer to tell what he might have thought than it took him to think. He simply called to his grandson:—“Tada!—quick,—very quick! . . . Light me a torch.”

Taimatsu, or pine-torches, are kept in many coast dwellings for use on stormy nights, and also for use at certain Shintô festivals. The child kindled a torch at once; and the old man hurried with it to the fields, where hundreds of rice-stacks, representing most of his invested capital, stood awaiting transportation. Approaching those nearest the verge of the slope, he began to apply the torch to them,—hurrying from one to another as quickly as his aged limbs could carry him. The sun-dried stalks caught like tinder; the strengthening sea, breeze blew the blaze landward; and presently, rank behind rank, the stacks burst into flame, sending skyward columns of smoke that met and mingled into one enormous cloudy whirl. Tada, astonished and terrified, ran after his grandfather, crying,—”Ojiisan! why? Ojiisan! why?—why?”

But Hamaguchi did not answer: he had no time to explain; he was thinking only of the four hundred lives in peril. For a while the child stared wildly at the blazing rice; then burst into tears, and ran back to the house, feeling sure that his grandfather had gone mad. Hamaguchi went on firing stack after stack, till he had reached the limit of his field; then he threw down his torch, and waited. The acolyte of the hill-temple, observing the blaze, set the big bell booming; and the people responded to the double appeal. Hamaguchi watched them hurrying in from the sands and over the beach and up from the village, like a swarming of ants, and, to his anxious eyes, scarcely faster; for the moments seemed terribly long to him. The sun was going down; the wrinkled bed of the bay, and a vast sallow speckled expanse beyond it, lay naked to the last orange glow; and still the sea was fleeing toward the horizon.

Really, however, Hamaguchi did not have very long to wait before the first party of succor arrived,—a score of agile young peasants, who wanted to attack the fire at once. But the Chôja, holding out both arms, stopped them.

“Let it burn, lads!” he commanded, “let it be! I want the whole mura here. There is a great danger,—taihen da!“

The whole village was coming; and Hamaguchi counted. All the young men and boys were soon on the spot, and not a few of the more active women and girls; then came most of the older folk, and mothers with babies at their backs, and even children,—for children could help to pass water; and the elders too feeble to keep up with the first rush could be seen well on their way up the steep ascent. The growing multitude, still knowing nothing, looked alternately, in sorrowful wonder, at the flaming fields and at the impassive face of their Chôja. And the sun went down.

“Grandfather is mad,—I am afraid of him!” sobbed Tada, in answer to a number of questions. “He is mad. He set fire to the rice on purpose: I saw him do it!”

“As for the rice,” cried Hamaguchi, “the child tells the truth. I set fire to the rice. . . . Are all the people here?”

The Kumi-chô and the heads of families looked about them, and down the hill, and made reply: “All are here, or very soon will be. . . . We cannot understand this thing.”

“Kita!” shouted the old man at the top of his voice, pointing to the open. “Say now if I be mad!”

Through the twilight eastward all looked, and saw at the edge of the dusky horizon a long, lean, dim line like the shadowing of a coast where no coast ever was,—a line that thickened as they gazed, that broadened as a coast-line broadens to the eyes of one approaching it, yet incomparably more quickly. For that long darkness was the returning sea, towering like a cliff, and coursing more swiftly than the kite flies.

“Tsunami!” shrieked the people; and then all shrieks and all sounds and all power to hear sounds were annihilated by a nameless shock heavier than any thunder, as the colossal swell smote the shore with a weight that sent a shudder through the hills, and with a foam-burst like a blaze of sheet-lightning. Then for an instant nothing was visible but a storm of spray rushing up the slope like a cloud; and the people scattered back in panic from the mere menace of it. When they looked again, they saw a white horror of sea raving over the place of their homes. It drew back roaring, and tearing out the bowels of the land as it went. Twice, thrice, five times the sea struck and ebbed, but each time with lesser surges: then it returned to its ancient bed and stayed,—still raging, as after a typhoon.

On the plateau for a time there was no word spoken. All stared speechlessly at the desolation beneath,—the ghastliness of hurled rock and naked riven cliff, the bewilderment of scooped-up deep-sea wrack and shingle shot over the empty site of dwelling and temple. The village was not; the greater part of the fields were not; even the terraces had ceased to exist; and of all the homes that had been about the bay there remained nothing recognizable except two straw roofs tossing madly in the offing. The after-terror of the death escaped and the stupefaction of the general loss kept all lips dumb, until the voice of Hamaguchi was heard again, observing gently,—”That was why I set fire to the rice.”

He, their Chôja, now stood among them almost as poor as the poorest; for his wealth was gone—but he had saved four hundred lives by the sacrifice. Little Tada ran to him, and caught his hand, and asked forgiveness for having said naughty things. Whereupon the people woke up to the knowledge of why they were alive, and began to wonder at the simple, unselfish foresight that had saved them; and the headmen prostrated themselves in the dust before Hamaguchi Gohei, and the people after them.

Then the old man wept a little, partly because he was happy, and partly because he was aged and weak and had been sorely tried.

“My house remains,” he said, as soon as he could find words, automatically caressing Tada’s brown cheeks; “and there is room for many. Also the temple on the hill stands; and there is shelter there for the others.”

Then he led the way to his house; and the people cried and shouted.

The period of distress was long, because in those days there were no means of quick communication between district and district, and the help needed had to be sent from far away. But when better times came, the people did not forget their debt to Hamaguchi Gohei. They could not make him rich; nor would he have suffered them to do so, even had it been possible. Moreover, gifts could never have sufficed as an expression of their reverential feeling towards him; for they believed that the ghost within him was divine. So they declared him a god, and thereafter called him Hamaguchi DAIMYÔJIN, thinking they could give him no greater honor;—and truly no greater honor in any country could be given to mortal man. And when they rebuilt the village, they built a temple to the spirit of him, and fixed above the front of it a tablet bearing his name in Chinese text of gold; and they worshiped him there, with prayer and with offerings. How he felt about it I cannot say;—I know only that he continued to live in his old thatched home upon the hill, with his children and his children’s children, just as humanly and simply as before, while his soul was being worshiped in the shrine below. A hundred years and more he has been dead; but his temple, they tell me, still stands, and the people still pray to the ghost of the good old farmer to help them in time of fear or trouble.

.    .    .

I asked a Japanese philosopher and friend to explain to me how the peasants could rationally imagine the spirit of Hamaguchi in one place while his living body was in another. Also I inquired whether it was only one of his souls which they had worshiped during his life, and whether they imagined that particular soul to have detached itself from the rest to receive homage.

“The peasants,” my friend answered, think of the mind or spirit of a person as something which, even during life, can be in many places at the same instant. . . . Such an idea is, of course, quite different from Western ideas about the soul.”

“Any more rational?” I mischievously asked.

“Well,” he responded, with a Buddhist smile, “if we accept the doctrine of the unity of all mind, the idea of the Japanese peasant would appear to contain at least some adumbration of truth. I could not say so much for your Western notions about the soul.”

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