The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators presents
Translator Ginny Tapley Takemori: On Whales, Blue Glass, War and Young People
Time: Saturday, June 20, 2015, 6:00–7:30 p.m.
Place: Tokyo Women’s Plaza, Conference Room 2, 5-53-67 Jingumae, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo (near the United Nations University; map)
Fee: SCBWI members 800 yen; nonmembers 1,200 yen
RSVP: To reserve a place, email japan (at) scbwi.org by Friday, June 19
This event will be in English.
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Translator Ginny Tapley Takemori will discuss two children’s books she translated from Japanese into English, both of which are due out from Pushkin Children’s Books this year: The Whale That Fell In Love With a Submarine by Akiyuki Nosaka and The Secret of the Blue Glass by Tomiko Inui. Both titles explore sobering themes of war, suffering and loss through intriguing characters: a whale who courts a military submarine, a mother who becomes a kite, a family of Little People who sleep in cigarette boxes and craft their shoes out of book jackets. Takemori will describe how she came to translate the two books and discuss some specific translation issues that she grappled with in the process.
Akiyuki Nosaka (b. 1930) lost his mother at birth and his adoptive parents at age 14 in the U.S. bombing of Kobe. A former Diet member, he has authored nearly 100 books including Grave of the Fireflies, animated by Studio Ghibli.
Tomiko Inui (1924–2002) worked as a preschool teacher before becoming an editor and acclaimed author of children’s books. For over two decades she ran the Musika Library, a project to provide books directly to children.
Ginny Tapley Takemori is a British translator based in rural Ibaraki, who has translated fiction by more than a dozen early modern and contemporary Japanese writers. Her book translations for adults include The Isle of South Kamui and Other Stories by Kyotaro Nishimura and Puppet Master by Miyuki Miyabe, as well as From the Fatherland with Love by Ryu Murakami, co-translated with Ralph McCarthy and Charles De Wolf. Her fiction translations have appeared in Granta, Words Without Borders, and a number of anthologies. She has also translated nonfiction books about Japanese art, theater, and history, and worked as an editor of translated fiction, nonfiction, and illustrated books at Kodansha International. Earlier on, she worked in Spain as a foreign rights literary agent and freelance translator from Spanish and Catalan.
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SCBWI Japan Translation Group 