Mulling The House of the Lost on the Cape with Avery Fischer Udagawa

By Deborah Iwabuchi, Maebashi, Japan

Avery Fischer Udagawa, translator of the 2022 Mildred L. Batchelder Award-winning Temple Alley Summer by Sachiko Kashiwaba, has translated a second book by the same author. The House of the Lost on the Cape (岬のマヨイガ) is set in the Tōhoku region during and right after the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami disaster. It was published by Restless Books in English in September 2023, but the original was serialized in the children’s section of a Tōhoku newspaper (Iwate Nippō) in 2014–15, before being published as a book by Kodansha in 2015.

Accolade and names on the cover

 

The story begins with an older woman about to check herself into a home for the elderly, a woman fleeing an abusive husband, and a little girl, recently orphaned and on her way to go live with an uncle she has never met. The earthquake and tsunami come as each member of the trio arrives in the town of Kitsunezaki, and they all end up at an evacuation shelter.

Deborah Iwabuchi: Avery, there are so many aspects of this book that I’d love to discuss with you. Since it was first published in the junior section of a Tōhoku newspaper in the 2010s, Kashiwaba obviously had young disaster survivors in mind. Although the story is full of magic and mythical creatures, it must also have resonated in the hearts of young readers due to the reality they had experienced. The three main characters are all female, but more importantly, they represent some of the most vulnerable segments of society. It turns out, though, that their heartbreaking experiences make them strong and resilient.

Avery Fischer Udagawa: You’re right, Deborah. I think this may be part of why the story moves people in many different contexts, though it was first written for youth in Iwate. Sachiko Kashiwaba grew up in Iwate, in the towns of Miyako-shi, Tōno, and Hanamaki—home to author Kenji Miyazawa—and has lived throughout her adult life in the prefectural capital of Morioka.

(Tōhoku has six prefectures: Akita, Aomori, Fukushima, Iwate, Miyagi, and Yamagata. Fukushima, Iwate, and Miyagi were hardest hit in March 2011, being located on the Pacific coast.)

Sachiko Kashiwaba and Avery Fischer Udagawa with the Jizō on Honchō Dōri avenue in Morioka, Iwate

Deborah: What I also found fascinating was that while in reality, so many people had to evacuate from locations in Iwate, the three main characters in the story ended up escaping to it—specifically to the fictional town of Kitsunezaki.

Avery: Indeed, their story shows how people can reach a place of feeling safe, even blessed, in a situation of hardship and grief. I think this is a helpful message for readers, both as validation if they have had a similar experience, and also as a source of hope if they are suffering.

Deborah: Three years after 2011, this story brought up the disaster in a way that validated young readers in what they probably remembered about what happened. Toward the end, a legendary snake conjures the forms of friends and family who moved away from Iwate right after the disaster. I thought that the characters’ attachment to these apparitions demonstrated how very natural it was to miss people. The main characters’ perseverance must also have allowed the initial readers of the story—people who had stayed put in Iwate—to be happy that they had stayed despite the crisis. This novel is an adventure for sure, but the author manages to comfort and empathize with her characters and her readers, as well as encourage them to believe in their own resourcefulness.

And it is a story for our times. There are so many natural and unnatural disasters these days. This book seems to offer a useful way to process things with children who are thrown off balance.

Avery: Indeed, in her review of the book, Hong Kong author Maureen Tai quoted these lines by US author Kate DiCamillo:

“So that’s the question, I guess, for you and for me and for all of us trying to do this sacred task of telling stories for the young: How do we tell the truth and make that truth bearable?”

Maureen wrote, and I agree, that Sachiko Kashiwaba tells the truth and makes it bearable in The House of the Lost on the Cape. This novel joins others from around the world that impart hope while also telling children the truth about tragedy, such as (to name just a few):

• The Raven’s Children by Yulia Yakovleva, translated from Russian by Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp, set in Stalinist Russia
• Dragonfly Eyes by Cao Wenxuan, translated from Chinese by Helen Wang, set during China’s Cultural Revolution
• Wild Poppies by Haya Saleh, translated from Arabic by Marcia Lynx Qualey, set during the Syrian War

I believe young people can all benefit from these portraits of hanging on when hope is in extremely short supply. And these stories serve the practical purpose of informing their readers. Even in Japan, elementary and middle schools are now full of children born since March 2011, who need to know what happened in Tōhoku.

Deborah: Getting down to the nuts and bolts, many people who have read your translation are impressed by the way you worked Japanese words into the English text. There were lots of names and nouns, and you dealt with onomatopoeia that’s so great in the Japanese language for its simplicity, but can be a real headache for J to E translators for whom that simplicity is elusive. How did you decide which words to leave in Japanese? Did you have a specific reader in mind?

Avery: I knew from the beginning that I was translating for children in the US, home of Yonder: Restless Books for Young Readers, which had commissioned the translation. Anime, manga, and translated literature have made American readers far more aware of Japanese culture than when (say) I was a child in Kansas, so I wanted to leave plenty of Japan-isms in the pages—mochi, futon, miso, kimono. At the same time, I wanted to keep readers oriented, so I inserted brief glosses where terms that were less widely known first appeared: river spirits after kappa, mats after tatami, porch after engawa. I received valuable input from the Restless editorial team when it came to deciding all of this. I appreciated their openness to transliterating Kashiwaba-san’s onomatopoeia for the sound of the tsunami slamming the base of a train platform in the opening chapter, as honestly, I had no words.

Deborah: Although it looks effortless on the page, I imagine there was more involved in actually developing the translation. Can you tell us about that? I know you are personally acquainted with Sachiko Kashiwaba. Did you work with her at all?

Avery: I definitely exchanged email with her while working on the translation. I also got to see her in Washington, D.C. to accept the Batchelder Award for Temple Alley Summer after I had completed the first draft of The House of the Lost on the Cape. And she and I presented in Hong Kong at the Hong Kong Young Readers Festival and International Literary Festival in March 2023, when Cape was in the final stages of the editorial process.

School visits with Sachiko Kashiwaba in Hong Kong! The @litfest_hk Young Readers Festival connected us with more than two hundred students. We talked about TEMPLE ALLEY SUMMER and introduced THE HOUSE OF THE LOST ON THE CAPE, due out in September 2023. #middlegrade #worldkidlit pic.twitter.com/UrSEUo1bgI

— Avery Udagawa (@AveryUdagawa) March 24, 2023

The experience of co-presenting helped me get to know Sachiko Kashiwaba better as a person, which surely fed development of the translation. For example, seeing the way she spoke to students in Hong Kong about the March 11 anniversary (which fell right when we were there), I realized that she clearly wished to inform people about it as well as to support survivors. That emboldened me to make the translation slightly more explanatory. For example, the opening words are あの日, literally “that day” as in “that day that’s seared in all our minds,” but after Hong Kong, I felt better making this “On March 11, 2011.”

Due to Japan’s long Covid-era border closures, I was not able to enter Japan while I translated The House of the Lost on the Cape—a situation that made me nervous at times. Many, many elements of it were specific to Iwate, especially to Morioka and Tōno. My family and I traveled there this past summer after the manuscript had been submitted, and I fretted that I might discover some key detail I had missed while translating about Iwate from afar. In Morioka, I caught myself mis-pronouncing the name of a street where an important Jizō statue is located, and back at our hotel, I whipped out my laptop to make sure I had named the street correctly in the manuscript. Fortunately, I had!

One step I am glad I took during the translation process was hiring Chikako Imoto, an eagle-eyed wordsmith with formidable cultural and research savvy, to do an accuracy pass. Her go-over focused not on the effectiveness of the English, but purely on whether I had caught every bit of the source text. Sometimes, I get so wrapped up in crafting the translation that I drop a line or miss a meaning that should be blindingly obvious, and Chikako saved me from myself. I also enlisted my husband and daughters and various other unsuspecting souls in my effort to make Cape as faithful and readable as possible—and the staff at Restless Books found many ways to polish and improve.

Deborah: Like Temple Alley Summer, The House of the Lost on the Cape has a story (or stories) within a story. The role of the folklore in this book is different as is the way it is communicated.

Avery: Right. While Temple Alley Summer has an embedded fantasy story whose authorship the characters investigate, and which appears in two long sections, The House of the Lost on the Cape features short interludes where the elder character Kiwa tells a folktale. Some of the folklore she shares is found in a real collection called the Tōno monogatari (Legends of Tōno); other material was created by Sachiko Kashiwaba in keeping with the spirit of the Tōno legends, which she has adapted in a volume for children. Another difference in The House of the Lost on the Cape is that creatures from folklore make appearances in the main story!

Visiting an L-shaped, thatched-roof house in Tōno

 

Deborah: I love the illustrations by Yukiko Saito (see View the Illustrations here). Did you get to see them as you did the translation? Even when reading the translation and even though I’ve lived in Japan most of my life, I found the illustrations helpful for confirming certain details. Not to mention the wonderful map of Kitsunezaki in the endpapers. I see the Japanese version had the same illustrator, were any illustrations added for the English version?

Avery: I worked from the 2015 Kodansha edition of the book, which had all of the same illustrations by Yukiko Saito. None were added for the Restless edition, all were kept, and some of my decisions about what to explain (or not) were based on information the illustrations provide. They especially help convey the atmosphere of traditional shrine dances, as well as the characteristics of various spirits and deities who defend the Kitsunezaki community. But I won’t spoil here their daring and dazzling deeds!

Deborah: Avery, thanks so much for this interview! As usual, talking with the translator reveals so much about a book and its author, along with the actual process of translation. I’d also like to note to readers here that Avery’s name is on the cover of The House of the Lost on the Cape. Naming the translator of a children’s book prominently is now a requirement for the Batchelder Award.

Batchelder Award for Temple Alley Summer; Criteria Revised

By Holly Thompson, Kamakura, SCBWI Japan Co-Regional Advisor

Mariko Nagai, Tokyo, SCBWI Japan Co-Regional Advisor

Naomi Kojima, Tokyo, SCBWI Japan Illustrator Coordinator

 

Among the ALA YMA Awards last month, the 2022 Mildred L. Batchelder Award for a book translated from another language into English went to to Temple Alley Summer written by Japanese author Sachiko Kashiwaba, illustrated by Miho Satake, and translated from the Japanese into English by SCBWI Japan Translator Coordinator/SCBWI Translator Coordinator Avery Fischer Udagawa!

This was thrilling news for many: for publisher Yonder, an imprint of independent publisher Restless Books; for Sachiko Kashiwaba, author of many beloved children’s books; for illustrator Miho Satake; and for Avery. Avery has been an advocate for young people’s literature in translation and a champion of children’s and YA translators of other languages into English, co-organizing our biennial SCBWI Japan Translation Days since 2010, overseeing this SCBWI Japan Translation Group blog, and managing Google Groups for both SCBWI Japan translators and for all interested SCBWI translators who translate into English. Avery has helped build communities of translators and created opportunities for both emerging and established translators, and she has long been advocating for crediting translators, lately via #NameTheTranslator and #TranslatorsOnTheCover.

In the SCBWI Translation community, we were also delighted when, just days after the Youth Media Awards announcements, we learned the great news that the ALSC board passed a motion to revise the Batchelder Award criteria, such that translators must be named on, or in, the books submitted. As explained in this World Kid Lit blog post by Paula Holmes of ALSC, “The translator(s) shall be named on all titles submitted for consideration. The translator(s) name(s) shall appear, at minimum, on the title page along with the author(s) name(s), and ideally the translator(s) name(s) shall appear on the cover along with the author(s) name(s) as well.”

So a special hurrah and thank you to Avery! And to translators of children’s and young adult literature from other languages into English, we applaud you all! Do persevere! English-language young readers deserve to read the world.

Talking about Temple Alley Summer

By Deborah Iwabuchi, Maebashi, Japan

Avery Fischer Udagawa is the translator of a middle grade novel just out from Yonder, an imprint of Restless Books. Temple Alley Summer was written by Sachiko Kashiwaba, a well-known author in Japan. Her book The Mysterious Village Veiled in Mist influenced the Studio Ghibli movie Spirited Away.

Today, I’m talking with Avery about her work on Temple Alley Summer (TAS). In the past months, I’ve had the opportunity to do a few of these interviews. Each one brings new discoveries, and I’m enjoying it so much that I’m about ready to give up doing translation altogether and just READ translated books so I can talk to the translators about them.

TAS was thoroughly engrossing, and I sailed through the 200-plus pages. There’s no way a brief synopsis without spoilers can do it justice, but let me give it a try. What begins as a story about modern Japanese schoolchildren moves quickly into an old neighborhood legend and a mysterious statuette that can bring people back from the dead. Fifth-grade Kazu witnesses such an event and becomes privy to the truth behind Akari, a girl who suddenly appears in his class. If Akari’s story were not enough, Kazu and Akari end up in pursuit of another, older and darker fantasy, an unfinished story in a magazine that Akari read in her first life, and which Kazu is determined to find the conclusion to. The reader gets to read the story along with Kazu, and is left hanging as he searches for its author. This story within a story keeps the reader glued to the page until the very end. What happens to Akari? And what about Adi in the other story? Rest assured, all the puzzles are solved, but that’s all you’re going to get from me!

Sachiko Kashiwaba, author of Temple Alley Summer

Deborah: Avery, you were interviewed a year ago about another story by Sachiko Kashiwaba that you translated, “Firstclaw,” online at Words Without Borders. In the interview, you also talked about your impressions of TAS, so I encourage blog readers to visit that posting too.

You describe TAS as “a middle grade novel that showcases Kashiwaba’s gift for writing fairy tales, Japan-inspired fantasy, and contemporary realism, all in 52,000 engrossing words.” Can you tell me how you came to meet Kashiwaba and translate this book?

Avery: I met Sachiko Kashiwaba through translating another of her works for Tomo: Friendship Through Fiction: An Anthology of Japan Teen Stories. The opportunity to translate for Tomo and the introduction to Kashiwaba both grew out of involvement in SCBWI Japan (then called SCBWI Tokyo) and its network, and the impetus to translate TAS came from a competition connected with the Asian Festival of Children’s Content 2016. I asked the author’s permission to submit a translation of TAS to the competition and then, later, to English-language publishers.

Avery Fischer Udagawa, translator of Temple Alley Summer

Deborah: I’d like to look at the different layers of the story. The story begins with Kazu, his family, and a day at his typical Japanese school. I imagine the author wanting to bring her Japanese readers in close with a familiar setting before leading them into the supernatural. I find it difficult to translate beginnings of books that involve Japanese school life. To me, it’s always the most difficult part of a translation. The aspects of Japanese society familiar to people living here are the parts that I as a translator have difficulty explaining for non-Japan-based readers in a way that doesn’t get in the way of the original.

In this case, too, there was a certain amount of school and household terminology to get through to discover the old town map with the name Kimyō Temple—an essential plot element. After that, the story takes off. The cast of characters from Kimyō Temple Alley and the somewhat eccentric former resident, together with Kashiwaba’s fantasy, are all described—and of course translated—thoroughly and engagingly. Every time I thought I had the plot figured out, it took a step in a different direction. Any comments on parts of the translation you found more challenging, and parts that were more fun to do?

Avery: Thank you for your kind words about the translation! The opening was indeed a challenge, due to the setting’s many Japan-specific features. Young readers of English cannot be expected to know that class sections in every grade at Japanese school are numbered, or that these sections routinely subdivide into numbered small groups, or that students will remove their street shoes at school and wear indoor shoes, which they may take home during vacations. The early chapters contain many references to such details, which I needed to try to include without stopping the story to explain. It comforts me that you, too, have struggled with this! I would love to see enough Japan school stories become known in English that a bit of background knowledge can be assumed.

Another challenge, which actually arose after translating, has been conveying that religious practices and objects play a role in TAS yet do not make the story religious—just as religious activities are part of life for many people in Japan who are otherwise secular. Everyone in a community might turn up for a festival at a temple to the bodhisattva Kannon, yet not venerate Kannon otherwise. A small statuette of the Buddha might be experienced as simply a household object. A family altar, more than being a site of worship, might imply something closer to missing departed relatives.

Explaining the role of religion in Japan is hard even for scholars and for Japanese themselves. I have tried to convey that TAS unfolds in a culture that has many religious influences, which nonetheless is often nonreligious. And TAS is not a religious novel, any more than The Letter for the King and The Secrets of the Wild Wood by Tonke Dragt, translated by Laura Watkinson, are religious due to including a chapel, a monastery, a knight saying a prayer, and so on.

Deborah: This is an excellent point. As someone who has been in Japan for decades, I tend to forget about the flexibility of Japanese society when it comes to religion and how unusual it can seem.

Avery: As for especially fun parts of TAS to translate, I relished working with dialogue and narrative voice to bring out the relationships between characters. The love/hate connection between fifth-grade Kazu and his 83-year-old neighbor Ms. Minakami was fascinating to translate, because rough equivalents of their words rarely served anything like the same function in English. For example, in a spot where Kazu harps on Ms. Minakami to do something, she says urusai! to him. I could hardly render this literally as “(You’re) noisy!” because the issue is Kazu’s nagging, not his loudness. Nor could I express urusai! with the commonly used but overly blunt “Shut up!” I needed to fashion some English that preserved the level of respect a child and an elder in the same tight-knit neighborhood would show to each other, even when fighting mad. And they really do get fighting mad!

Deborah: So how did it work out in the end? What did they say to each other in English?

Avery: “Kazu. You’re driving me crazy,” she said on the phone. (かずくん、うるさい！)

“Crazy is as crazy does…” [Kazu] replied. （自業自得ってやつです。）

Deborah: Well done! Both the difficult-to-translate urusai (drive me crazy) and jigō-jitoku (crazy is as crazy does) with one fell swoop.

Avery: The embedded tale within TAS, “The Moon Is On the Left,” also offered many interesting passages to translate, including a dramatic scene with rockfalls, flames, volleys of arrows, and lightning bolts indoors! My daily life doesn’t afford many chances to say rockfalls.

Deborah: One thing I liked about TAS was the fact that it WASN’T written in five volumes—when it very well could have been. On the other hand, there are a few aspects that I’m left wondering about and that I wouldn’t mind visiting in a sequel. What happened to the Kimyō Temple statuette? Did Akari’s first-life mother ever find out she came back to life? Are there any aspects you wanted to know more about, and has Kashiwaba written any other books to follow?

Deborah Iwabuchi and Avery Fischer Udagawa

Avery: Sachiko Kashiwaba has not published a sequel to TAS; I, like you, would certainly love to read more, especially about Akari’s former mother Ms. Ando. At the same time, I appreciate that certain things remain a mystery, and I too like that the book stands alone.

Kashiwaba has gone on to publish a number of other works, including the young adult/adult novel Misaki no mayoiga (The Abandoned House by the Cape), which takes place during and after the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami of March 11, 2011. This book has recently been made into a play, and it is also the basis of an anime movie to be released in Japan in August 2021.

Kashiwaba’s other recent works include several fantasy novels, an adaptation of the beloved Tōno monogatari folk legends, and volumes in her long-running Monster Hotel series—rollicking early readers that bring together yokai and western-style monsters.

People interested in her earlier works can check out the film Spirited Away, influenced by her debut novel The Marvelous Village Veiled in Mist; and the film The Wonderland, based on another early book. We also have a blog post here at Ihatov with excerpts from a workshop that drew on her 2010 novel Tsuzuki no toshokan (The “What’s-Next” Library).

Deborah: The titles alone are fascinating! Thanks for sharing this book and your experiences with it, Avery. I hope we’ll be seeing more of Kashiwaba in translation before too long. Meanwhile, I’m heading out to look for rockfalls.

Nicky Harman and Avery Udagawa Discuss “Firstclaw” by Sachiko Kashiwaba

By Nicky Harman, London
On Translation Columnist, Asian Books Blog

NH: I’m delighted to be interviewing Avery Fischer Udagawa, because I have a huge admiration for translators who focus on young readers. I started by asking her about her latest translation piece in Words Without Borders, and why she wanted to translate it.

AFU: “Firstclaw” at Words Without Borders is my rendering of イチノツメと呼ばれた魔女 by Sachiko Kashiwaba, a fairy tale from her collection of linked tales, 王様に恋した魔女 (Kodansha, 2016). I encountered this story on precisely the morning of October 24, 2018, in the large Maruzen Marunouchi bookstore in Tokyo, where I had gone to spend time before a meeting with the author. Since we are all stuck at home these days needing vicarious outings, I’ll share that I savored this book over chiffon cake in Maruzen’s third floor café, glancing out as JR local trains and bullet trains pulled in and out of Tokyo Station. I even exchanged bows with a window washer who floated by in his rigging.

Hours later, Kashiwaba herself signed my book. That was a story scouting day for the ages!

“Firstclaw” struck me as a skillfully wrought, surprising tale of a reclusive witch, a resourceful princess, and a brave king. I found the ending (which I won’t spoil here) curiously joyful, and I chose to translate it out of readerly pleasure.

When I submitted my translation last year to Daniel Hahn, guest editor of WWB’s April 2020 issue, I also wondered if “Firstclaw” might contribute to discussions in publishing about authors writing outside their own cultural identities. Ms. Kashiwaba’s oeuvre of fantasy writing includes many works with distinctly Japanese characters—kappa spirits, yuki-onna, shape-shifting raccoon dogs, local gods—but she also writes witches, dragons, vampires, and in “Firstclaw,” a “blond sovereign.” She grew up reading western children’s literature in translation and counts Canadian author Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Chronicles of Avonlea as influential in terms of form. Hahn, for his part, sees a “kinship” with Europe in “Firstclaw” and observes that “the webs of influence in children’s literature are dense and rich.”

Does it matter that “Firstclaw” comes from Japan? Readers may find this question stimulating, but I mostly just hope that the story cheers them up, as it does me.

With Sachiko Kashiwaba on October 24, 2018

NH: I’ll confess to having much less experience translating children’s literature than adult novels, so I’m intrigued by this question: do you think there is an essential difference between the two?

AFU: I don’t think there’s an essential difference at all.

The English-language publishing world categorizes literature as children’s or adult—and as middle grade, young adult, and so on within children’s—largely for marketing purposes and to help booksellers and librarians shelve books. This practice can help to ensure that young readers encounter books appropriate to their developmental level, which no one can argue with. It does, however, sometimes obscure the fact that literature is literature, and much of what sells as children’s literature in fact offers much to adults. The reverse is true, as well. Fiction like Ms. Ice Sandwich by Mieko Kawakami, translated by Louise Heal Kawai, works not only as adult fiction but also as MG and YA.

NH: When you interviewed my friend and translation colleague Helen Wang (who is a whizz at all things kidlit from Chinese), she said, about her translation of Jackal and Wolf by Shen Shixi: “Some of the fighting scenes are quite graphic and intense, but it was the psychological behaviour that I found more disturbing, especially where Flame tests a potential suitor.” Have you come across similar dilemmas in translating from Japanese and if so, how did you deal with them?

AFU: Yes, Japanese children’s books do sometimes include elements that might disturb young readers of English, due to culture gaps. For example, children of divorce in Japan often experience the trauma of never living with one parent again, which shows up in children’s books involving divorce. This reality may shock young overseas readers accustomed to traditions of joint custody. I have not dealt with this challenge personally.

Sachiko Kashiwaba’s novel 『帰命寺横丁の夏』, which I am pitching as Temple Alley Summer, includes a nine-year-old whose impoverished father sells her into servitude. While set in a fairy tale section of the book, this character’s plight has historical antecedents in pre-modern Japan, which might make it normal-ish fare for readers of the original. It could trouble some readers of the English, however. As the translator, I would never dream of changing this plot element, but in selecting this book to work on, it mattered to me that it goes on to show the child seeking freedom and agency, ultimately overcoming her past. I believe that English-language publishers will appreciate this aspect, too.

NH: What’s the nicest thing a young person has said to you about one of the books you translated.

AFU: “Mom, would you hurry up and translate the next chapter?” (I have two daughters, aged 8 and 12.)

NH: What kind of promotion do you find yourself doing for a finished and published novel? and what do you find is most effective when promoting a children’s book?

AFU: When promoting children’s books, it’s key to engage not only young readers, but also adult “gatekeepers” such as parents and educators, who are often the ones actually buying the books. With J-Boys: Kazuo’s World, Tokyo, 1965 by Shogo Oketani—a historical novel set in Tokyo after the 1964 Olympics—I have done school visits to interact with students, talks for the general public, and presentations to teachers and librarians both on- and offline. In several cases, I have had the privilege of co-presenting with the author. Sharing with my Japan- and kidlit-focused colleagues has also been very helpful. I treasure the professional organizations SWET and SCBWI and conferences such as the Asian Festival of Children’s Content.

NH: I can see from your blogs and interviews that you champion Japanese literature for kids, and put a lot of effort into pitching the books you like and finding sources of funding. How do you balance your paid and your done-for-love work?

AFU: Wouldn’t I love balance! Translating J kidlit into E is my passion, but it is a true labor of love. Even the most decorated member of my field, Cathy Hirano—translator of Hans Christian Andersen Award (“little Nobel”) laureate Nahoko Uehashi, among others—cannot live on what her children’s work pays. (Cathy is also the translator of Marie Kondo’s decluttering books; she coined the English phrase “spark joy” for ときめく.) Less than five percent of children’s books published in the US each year are translations (I believe the UK is similar), compared with 15 percent or more in Japan. There just isn’t enough demand for #worldkidlit in English. Yet.

Meanwhile, I work as native language coordinator at International School Bangkok, a job that I find meaningful in itself, and I have a family. Under Covid-19, this means I facilitate virtual school on weekdays and chip away at work on evenings and weekends. Translation has to take a backseat. I know from experience, however, that this tough patch will make the future chances to translate, promote, and scout books in cafés all the sweeter.

NH: When you have time, what your current projects?

AFU: I am pitching Temple Alley Summer, a middle grade novel that showcases Kashiwaba’s gift for writing fairy tales, Japan-inspired fantasy, and contemporary realism, all in 52,000 engrossing words. A third-grade teacher who read this manuscript emailed me, “I stayed up reading when I should have turned out the light and gone to sleep.” She hopes to add it to her classroom library when it comes out.

For now, that’ll keep me going!

Cross-posted from the Asian Books Blog with permission.

Meet Master Editor Akiko Beppu

By Avery Fischer Udagawa, Bangkok

Akiko Beppu has edited many iconic works of Japanese children’s literature that are known in other languages, including English—books by Naoko Awa, Sachiko Kashiwaba, Yuichi Kimura, and 2014 Hans Christian Andersen Award winner Nahoko Uehashi, among others. Recently retired from Kaisei-sha Publishing Company, where she had been editor for some 42 years, Beppu-san has also supported SCBWI Japan since its very first event.

Earlier this year, the regional team invited Beppu-san to a special lunch in Ginza. Our write-up of this gathering includes an introduction to her many works.

Ready to meet a master editor? Join the Thank You Lunch for Akiko Beppu over on the SCBWI Japan blog.

Japan Kidlit for Women in Translation Month

August is Women in Translation Month! Here are Japan kidlit titles (picture book through Young Adult) by #womenintranslation that have appeared on this blog so far. Click to read more!

The Nurse and the Baker by Mika Ichii, translated by Hart Larrabee

Little Keys and the Red Piano by Hideko Ogawa, translated by Kazuko Enda and Deborah Iwabuchi

The Bear and the Wildcat by Kazumi Yumoto, illustrated by Komako Sakai, translated by Cathy Hirano

Are You An Echo? The Lost of Poems of Misuzu Kaneko by David Jacobson, illustrated by Toshikado Hajiri, translated by Sally Ito and Michiko Tsuboi

Totto-chan by Tetsuko Kuroyanagi, translated by Dorothy Britton

The Secret of the Blue Glass by Tomiko Inui, translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori

Brave Story written by Miyuki Miyabe, translated by Alexander O. Smith

 

TOMO with stories by Naoko Awa, Yukie Chiri, Megumi Fujino, Sachiko Kashiwaba, Arie Nashiya, Yuko Katakawa, and Fumio Takano; translated by Toshiya Kamei, Deborah Davidson, Lynne E. Riggs, Avery Fischer Udagawa, Juliet Winters Carpenter, Deborah Iwabuchi, and Hart Larrabee

Dragon Sword and Wind Child by Noriko Ogiwara, translated by Cathy Hirano

Mirror Sword and Shadow Prince by Noriko Ogiwara, translated by Cathy Hirano

Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit by Nahoko Uehashi, translated by Cathy Hirano

Moribito II: Guardian of the Darkness by Nahoko Uehashi, translated by Cathy Hirano

A True Novel by Minae Mizumura, translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter

Confessions by Kanae Minato, translated by Stephen Snyder

 

Two Stories for Children Commemorate 3.11

By Deborah Iwabuchi, Maebashi, Japan

As March 11 draws near, it’s time to count another year since the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami of 2011. It’s hard to believe it has already been five years.

NHK World/Radio Japan’s The Reading Room is currently featuring two stories for children that relate to the earthquake. The first is “The Cape for Waiting for the Wind” by Sachiko Kashiwaba, and the second is “The Wind Telephone” by Yoko Imoto (and our appreciation goes to the anonymous translators!).

Both stories illustrate the pain of loss in very Japanese ways, but they end with the  universal hope that thoughts sent up to the departed have been successfully communicated.

While listening, I was reminded of how Japanese children’s stories can sometimes cross the line of what we might expect young children to understand, but, in a culture where not everyone feels free to talk about their feelings, children’s stories are often a source of comfort to adults. “The Wind Telephone,” especially, prodded that inner child in me who will never quite recover from what happened on March 11, 2011.

Top: Illustration for NHK World/Radio Japan broadcast of Kaze machi misaki (The Cape for Waiting for the Wind) by Sachiko Kashiwaba. Above: Picture book Kaze no denwa (The Wind Telephone), written and illustrated by Yoko Imoto. Click on either image to access the NHK broadcast (20 minutes) and complete copyright information.

 

Fourth Anniversary of 3/11

This week marks the fourth anniversary of the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11, 2011.

Tomo: Friendship Through Fiction—An Anthology of Japan Teen Stories (Stone Bridge Press) is a collection of YA fiction compiled to help teen survivors of the 3/11 disaster. This benefit anthology was edited by Holly Thompson.

Tomo offers 36 stories including 10 translations from Japanese (one from Ainu). These are:

“Anton and Kiyohime” by Fumio Takano, translated by Hart Larrabee

“Blue Shells” by Naoko Awa, translated by Toshiya Kamei

“The Dragon and the Poet” by Kenji Miyazawa, translated by Misa Dikengil Lindberg

“Fleecy Clouds” by Arie Nashiya, translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter

“Hachiro” by Ryusuke Saito, translated by Sako Ikegami

“House of Trust” by Sachiko Kashiwaba, translated by Avery Fischer Udagawa

“The Law of Gravity” by Yuko Katakawa, translated by Deborah Iwabuchi

“Love Letter” by Megumi Fujino, translated by Lynne E. Riggs

“Where the Silver Droplets Fall” by Yukie Chiri, translated by Deborah Davidson

“Wings on the Wind” by Yuichi Kimura, translated by Alexander O. Smith

The epigraph of Tomo, an excerpt from the poem “Be Not Defeated by the Rain” by Kenji Miyazawa, was translated by David Sulz.

All proceeds from sales of Tomo benefit teens via the NPO Hope for Tomorrow. Interviews and an educators’ guide may be found at the Tomo blog. Tomo is also available as an ebook.

One Passage, Five Translations – Sachiko Kashiwaba

By Avery Fischer Udagawa, Bangkok

At SCBWI Tokyo Translation Day on June 16, 2012, Alexander O. Smith presented a workshop on translating excerpts from teen-appropriate novels in contrasting genres. One excerpt was from the novel Tsuzuki no toshokan (The “What’s-Next” Library) by Sachiko Kashiwaba, a work that began as an online novel and won a prestigious Shogakukan Children’s Book Award in 2010.

Kashiwaba is a prolific author of works set in contemporary Japan that weave in fantasy and folklore. Her novel Kiri no muko no fushigi na machi (The Marvelous Village Veiled in Mist) influenced Hayao Miyazaki’s film Spirited Away. 

In Tsuzuki no toshokan, Kashiwaba explores what might happen if the characters from children’s books sought to learn “what happened next” to readers who loved them, just as readers of books seek to learn what happens to their favorite characters in stories. The main character of the novel is a librarian named Momo who, in the excerpt discussed by Smith, has moved back to her childhood home and is reconnecting with a relative.

For this blog post, Smith shared an excerpt from Tsuzuki no toshokan along with translations of four participants in the workshop, followed by his own. He writes:

“Here’s a section from the wonderfully nuanced Kashiwaba piece we translated for the workshop on Saturday. The original Japanese comes first, followed by translations submitted anonymously by translators in attendance, followed by my own take on the section. It’s a great example of how many valid ways there are to translate any given line, especially when dialogue comes into play. See how different each translator’s approach was to the mention of Momo’s father at the top of the section, and how they dealt with the potentially gnarly second ‘mention of her father’ at the end. Also, here you will find five different translations, with four entirely different ways to translate Aunt Anzu’s admonition for Momo to ‘live better.'”

Enjoy! We welcome comments on these renderings of Kashiwaba’s text.

杏おばさんのほうが、
「義正に似て、不器用そうな子だね。」
と、桃さんのお父さんの名前を口にした。
「義正といっしょで、どうせ砂をつかむみたいに、手の中からみんなこぼれてしまったんだろう。どうして、上手に生きられないかねぇ。」
と、ため息をつく。
桃さんは、お父さんまでひきあいにだされて、くちびるをかんだ。

[Source: Tsuzuki no toshokan online version, part 1, pp. 7-8]

Translator A: Aunt Anzu spoke first, mentioning Momo’s father by name. “You seem to have Yoshimasa’s knack for making a hash of things. I suppose you’ve let it all spill through your hands like so much sand, same as he did. I don’t understand,” she sighed, “why you can’t live a little smarter.”
Momo bit her lip, annoyed at having her father brought into this.

Translator B: Her Aunt spoke,
“You look awkward, just like Yoshimasa,” bringing up the name of Momo’s father.
“Yoshimasa and me, we wanted to grab sand but it all spilt out from our hands. How come we can’t have a good life?” she sighed.
Momo bit her lip at having the subject of Dad dragged into the conversation.

Translator C: Aunt Anzu was the first to speak Momo’s father’s name. “You look like Yoshimasa. Clumsy.” She sighed. “You’re just like him. Everything spills out of your hands like sand. Can’t you do anything right?”
Momo bit her lip at the mention of her father.

Translator D: “You’re a bungler just like Yoshimasa, aren’t you?” Aunt Anzu said, mentioning Momo’s father. “You let everything slip through your fingers, just like sand. Why can’t you live like you ought to?”
Momo bit her lip at being compared with her father.

Alexander O. Smith: It was Auntie Anzu who mentioned Momo’s father first. “You’re an unfortunate child, just like Yoshimasa was. Always trying to grab on to everything, ‘til it slips through your fingers like sand. Really,” she sighed. “Can’t you do anything right?”
     She didn’t need to bring him into this, Momo thought, biting her lip.