Granta - 20 for 2020

I'm a little late on this but I thought I'd post a link to this project from Granta that was due to be put out at the same time as last year's planned Tokyo Olympics, but things have turned out very differently. Hope that you are well and find this of interest.

https://granta.com/20-for-2020/

Careless by Hiroko Oyamada

I've a copy of The Factory by Hiroko Oyamada, translated by David Boyd to read very soon and I'm interested to read that a new title from her is forthcoming later in the year, The Hole, which won the Akutagawa Prize, again translated by David Boyd. Another short story Careless by Oyamada is translated by Lucy North and is available to read via Granta Online.

Apollo's Head by Kurahashi Yumiko

An author I've been meaning to return to is Kurahashi Yumiko, although the short story collection The Woman With the Flying Head and Other Stories, translated by Atsuko Sakaki has remained out of reach for the time being I thought I'd look out for the short stories that I have or am able to read online. So perhaps I'll have a mini season of reading her short stories, the first one stumbled upon is available over at Words Without Borders, Apollo's Head,  translated by Ian MacDonald, perhaps subconsciously whilst reading there's the hope that an affordable and accessible collection may appear in the near future. Apolon no Kubi first appeared in 1985.

There's an aspect of the imagery used in Apollo's Head that defies immediate interpretation, the reader has to accept the story as is, associations are made and contemplations of Apollo's significance or representations in ancient history are contemplated, but it feels that the story is a picturesque fantasy that presents a phantasmagoric and in places an erotically charged scenario to consider. The narrator is a student who whilst walking on campus discovers through a blue glowing hue, the head of a beautiful young man or boy at the base of a tree, at first beguiled by his beauty and then succumbing to fear and the realization that he is the victim of a murder she flees home. The head though seems to show some signs of consciousness, the eyes blink, the pupils move, this assessment of it's consciousness arises again later, but to the narrator there remains similarities to the head of Apollo, hewn in either Pentelic or Parian marble, the head's beauty gives rise to erotic speculations in the narrator leading to envisioning culpability for the decapitation, which provokes briefly the question of reliability of the narrator, amongst this the decision to retrieve the head.

The head is brought home, nurtured in a fruit bowel of water and puzzled over, somewhat placidly, by the narrator's fiance, Toru, who remains on the whole unimpressed, until near the end of the story where his forbearance gives out. The story is laced with the erotic, earlier the narrator kisses the head, later she and Toru make love in front of it, the head remains indifferent to these encounters. There is the disarming element in Kurahashi's ability to maintain and align the everyday against the unfolding of these macabre and erotic events. The head eventually begins to transform, taking on the resemblance of a pomegranate, a watermelon, a cactus, a comparison to a portrait by Arcimboldo is suggested, eventually a harvest of heads is cultivated. Apollo's Head appears to defy direct interpretation, the reader is presented with an unnerving blend of eroticism and hinted metaphors.


Apollo's Head at Words Without Borders    


image from Wikimedia

The Fruit of My Woman by Han Kang

The January edition of Granta continues the momentum of translations of Han Kang into
English with the short story The Fruit of My Woman from 1997, in her translator's note at the end of the story, Deborah Smith notes that it can be seen as a precursor, with some of it's themes similar to those that can be seen in The Vegetarian.  

The Fruit of My Woman at Granta

stories available to read online

A brief end of month post - some translated stories of interest available to read online - Asymptote Journal's October issue features a short story from prize winning author Tsutsui Yasutaka - entitled Descent into Yoppa Valley, translated by Sayuri Okamoto and Sim Yee Chiang, and another story from a prize winning author can be found over at Catapult where you can read A False Genealogy by Nao-cola Yamazaki, in a translation by Polly Barton. At Granta online you can read Kawakami Mieko's About Her and the Memories That Belong to Her, translated by Hitomi Yoshio, and also at Granta is Delira by Kanehara Hitomi, translated by Dan Bradley.



 

On Memory: New Japanese Writing

The March 2015 issue of online journal (Words without Borders) is edited by guest editor David Karashima and features translated fictions from Yoko Tawada, Kyoko Nakajima, Shun Medoruma, Mitsuyo Kakuta, Keiichiro Hirano, Hideo Furukawa, Toshiyuki Horie, Masashi Matsuie, Mieko Kawakami, Natsuko Kuroda.

On Memory: New Japanese Writing at Words Without Borders

Granta 127: Japan

 

Granta 127: Japan is now out and launches tomorrow at the Free Word Centre in London, a number of extracts and translators notes are available to read at Granta online, as well as additional pieces in full, including Hush ...Hush Sweet Charlotte by Kazushige Abe in a translation from Michael Emmerich. Very much looking forward to reading this. 

 

Granta 127: Japan

 

Japanese Literature Online Translations - Part Three

Amalgamating some older posts with some newer links, (apologies - in no particular order!)  -


Spirit Summoning by Sakumi Tayama tranlsted by Mark Gibeau at Words Without Borders, for more.
Tonight, in All the Bars by Ramo Nakajima translated by Sayuri Okamoto and Sim Yee Chiang at Asymptote Journal
Samsa in Love by Haruki Murakami translated by Ted Goosen at The New Yorker
A Walk to Kobe by Haruki Murakami at Granta Online
Waiting by Dazai Osamu translated by Angus Turvill at web.archive.org
Heading For Moscow by Nakano Shigeharu translated by Annika A. Culver winner of William F.Sibley Memorial Prize
Skin of the Pike Conger Eel by Kamizukasa Shoken translated by Andrew Murakami-Smith winner William F.Sibley Prize
Celan Reads Japanese by Yoko Tawada translated by Susan Bernofsky at The White Review
Soul Flight by Yoko Tawada, translated by Sim Yee Chiang at Asymptote Journal

two older novels over at archive.org

The Reluctant Bachelor by Kuni Sasaki, translated by Kuni Sasaki and Jiro C. Araki at Archive.Org
Human Bullets - A Soldier's Story of Port Arthur by Tadayoshi Sakurai, translated by Masujiro Honda and Alice M. Bacon - Archive

links to -

Part One

Part Two

Haruki Murakami - A Walk to Kobe

Murakami Haruki's A Walk To Kobe is available to read over at  >  Granta online included in issue number 124 - Travel.

Kobayashi Issa - Oraga Haru/The Year of My Life

15.06.2013 marked the 250th birthday of Kobayashi Issa, although I wanted to mark the day by posting on the actual day, the opportunity passed me by in the blink of an eye.

Kobayashi Issa's Oraga Haru - The Year of My Life in a translation by Nobuyuki Yuasa, (translator of the Penguin edition of Basho's The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches), is available to read in streaming format over at the out of print titles page at University of California Press.

The Poetry of Living Japan

A recent purchase in a nearby second hand bookshop - The New Poetry, selected and introduced by A. Alvarez, published by Penguin which I've only just begun to explore, simply divided into two halves, one a selection from American poets, the other from British poets. Among the British is included D. J Enright, who I couldn't help notice that in the 1950's was a visiting professor to Konan University in Kobe. A little further probing uncovered that he along with Takamichi Ninomiya edited and introduced a selection of Japanese poetry entitled The Poetry of Living Japan published back in 1958. It features poems from a wide range of poets including - Tōson Shimazaki, Sakutarō Hagiwara, Tatsuji Miyoshi, Shinkichi Takahashi, Michizō Tachihara, to name but a few here, and also that it's available to read via Archive.org.

Also over at the very excellent publicdomainreview.org an interesting selection of Sketches by Yoshitoshi and also a look at the texts featured in The Rings of Saturn by W.G Sebald.

The Poetry of Living Japan at Archive.org.

Waiting

Recently noticed this short, two page story by Dazai Osamu translated by Angus Turvill linked at the end of his wikipedia page, so I hope it's ok for me to link it here too. Originally published as Matsu in 1942, the narrative is similar to that of Schoolgirl.

Waiting

Three new titles from Anthem Press/Thames River Press

More good news from Anthem Press/Thames River Press who are due to publish another three titles from the JLPP list in May, click the titles to redirect to the publisher's page ~

In Pursuit of Lavender

By Akiko Itoyama Translated by Charles De Wolf

In this novel-length road story, the female protagonist, who is haunted by an audio hallucination –‘twenty ells of linen are worth a coat’ – that plays over and over in her mind, escapes from a mental hospital with a young man. This is the story of their journey together. [NP] The hallucinatory words come from a passage in Marx's Das Kapital, but the protagonist knows nothing of that; nor does she understand what they literally mean. After she starts to hear them, she attempts suicide and is then diagnosed as manic and placed in a mental hospital. Unable to stand life in the prison-like hospital, she makes a daring escape with Nagoyan, another patient. [NP] She is 21 and fluent in the Hakata dialect of northern Kyushu. Nagoyan is a 24-year-old company employee suffering from depression who insists that he is a native of Tokyo, though he is actually from Nagoya. This strange pair, just escaped from their Hakata hospital, struggle with the mental crises that constantly assault them as they head southward in a junky car, picking destinations at whim as they go. On the way, they sightsee, quarrel and yearn for the fragrance of lavender.

A Cappella

By Mariko Koike Translated by Juliet W. Carpenter

Kyoko Noma visits the city of Sendai, where she used to live, and reflects on the events that took place there 20 years earlier, in the second half of the sixties, when the winds of the counterculture student movement were sweeping Japan. This is a tale of intense, heartbreaking love in adolescence, and the tragedy it gives rise to.

Tokyo Seven Roses Vol I  and Vol II

By Hisashi Inoue, Translated by Jeffrey Hunter
 

Tokyo Seven Roses' is set in Japan during the waning months of WWII and the beginning of the Occupation. It is written as a diary kept from April 1945 to April 1946 by Shinsuke Yamanaka, a fifty-three-year-old fan-maker living in Nezu, part of Tokyo's shitamachi (old-town) district. After the war, Shinsuke learns by chance that the Occupation forces are plotting a nefarious scheme: in order to cut Japan off from its dreadful past, they intend to see that the language is written henceforth using the alphabet. To fight off this unheard-of threat to the integrity of Japanese culture, seven beautiful women – the Seven Roses – take a stand.

Very much looking forward to seeing these titles, Itoyama Akiko has been the recipient of the Akutagawa and Kawabata Yasunari Prize and has also previously been nominated for the Noma and Naoki Prize, Charles de Wolf has previously translated Itoyama Akiko's Akutagwa Prize winning story Oki de Matsu which is available to read over at Words Without Borders. In Pursuit of Lavender is the second novel of Itoyama's to be translated, It's Only Talk, translated by Raquel Hill was published by The Japan Times. Mariko Koike, a Naoki Prize winning author, A Cappella is her second novel to appear in English translation, the previous The Cat in the Coffin was published by Vertical Inc. Tokyo Seven Roses: Volume 1 is the first, (as far as I can see), novel of the Tanizaki Prize winning playwright/novelist Inoue Hisashi to appear in translation.

Harlequin's Butterfly

Among other great offerings, (which also include translations of Chuya Nakahara by Christian Nagle),  the January 2013 issue of Asymtote features a tantalizing translated extract of Toh EnJoe's Akutagawa Prize winning novel Harlequin's Butterfly, translated by Sim Yee Chiang and Sayuri Okamoto. The extract is also accompanied by an interview between Toh and the translators.

The Last Hour of the Bengal Tiger

A story I think from Yoko Ogawa's forthcoming collection Revenge, The Last Hour of the Bengal Tiger, translated by Stephen Snyder can be read over at online magazine Guernica, in another note it's also great to learn of a forthcoming selection of poetry by Gozo Yoshimasu, via International Dateline.

Revenge - Eleven Dark Tales at Macmillan

Descendants of Cain

Another find over at the Hathi Trust Digital Library is Arishima Takeo's 1917 story Descendants of Cain/Kain no Matsuei, translated by John W. Morrison. The story is featured in Morrison's book Modern Japanese Fiction, (University of Utah Press, 1955), alongside a critical note on the story the book also explores the emergence of Naturalism, the Shirakaba, (The White Birch Group - which Arishima was a founding member of), and goes on to look at Akutagwa, Kikuchi and also the emergence of Proletarian Literature. Arishima travelled in Europe and America where he worked for a time in a Quaker operated insane asylum, and also studied at Harvard and Haverford College. As with other titles at the Hathi Trust the book is available to read online by clicking through.

Modern Japanese Fiction by James W.Morrison at Hathi Trust Digital Library

Arishima Takeo at wikipedia

New Writing From Japan

Just a quick post to highlight that Words Without Borders July issue is entitled New Writing From Japan, the first of two issues dedicated to new Japanese writing, the second is coming in next months issue, and is guest edited by Michael Emmerich. Featuring fiction from EnJoe Toh, Kurahashi Yumiko, Nakai Hideo and more..

New Writing From Japan at Words Without Borders.

*The second part of Words Without Borders issue of New Writing From Japan has recently gone up with an excerpt from Chichi to Ran/Breasts and Eggs, translated by Louise Heal Kawai, Kawakami Mieko's Akutagwa Prize winning novella which has recently been published in French translation by Actes Sud, so here's hoping. The issue also features translations of Tsushima Yuko, Asa Nonami, Wataya Risa, Motoya Yukiko, Suzumo Sakurai, Nomura Kiwao and again comes with an editorial piece from Michael Emmerich.

(*edited post 01/08/2012)

Japan Earthquake Charity Literature Part 2

Since posting on this charity project two more short stories and an essay have been added to the Waseda Bungaku webpage. Nakamura Fuminori, whose Kenzaburo Oe Prize winning novel The Thief is due out in March from Soho Press, has the essay and observational piece 'When the Earthquake Hit', translated by Michael Staley, in which he recounts the day of the earthquake. From Jungo Aoki, who has been described as the Japanese Thomas Pynchon, comes the short story, Special Edition - Sack-toting Turtle Spotted in West Ikebukuro, translated by Ian McDonald, and Yoshikawa Yasuhisa's penetrative short story, Snow Dusk, Death Dusk, is translated by Lucy North.

Please remember to donate something via the Japanese Red Cross or through your country's Red Cross Society.

March Was Made of Yarn - Edited by David Karashima and Elmer Luke is published by Vintage in the USA in March, and also in the UK by Harvill Secker.

Japan Earthquake Charity Literature at Waseda Bungaku Department

Japan Earthquake Charity Literature Project

As it approaches being nearly a year since the events of the March Tsunami last year it's still difficult to comprehend and take in the scale of the disaster. Waseda Bungaku Department have organised the Japan Eartquake Literature Project and compiled a collection of stories by contemporary Japanese writers giving voice to their reactions and reflections, offered free to download in English translation as PDF's, but please remember to make a donation!. The stories will be published in book format edited by David Karashima and Elmer Luke in the U.S and in the U.K. under the title of, March Was Made of Yarn: Reflections on the Japanese Earthquake, Tsunami and Nuclear Meltdown of 2011, some of the stories featured are avilable to read through the Department's web page, please read through the introduction by Makoto Ichikawa, (director of Waseda Bugaku), to these stories and author profiles and make a donation to the Japan Red Cross or alternatively through your own country's Red Cross Society, and please remember to purchase a copy of the book when it is published.




The stories featured -




Ride on Time by Abe Kazushige, translated by Michael Emmerich


Poola's Return by  Hideo Furukawa, translated by Satoshi Katagiri


March Yarn by Mieko Kawakami, translated by Michael Emmerich


Almost Everything in the World by Shin Fukunaga, translated by Michael Emmerich


Silverpoint by EnJoe Toh, translated by Jocelyne Allen


Planting by Aoko Matsuda translated by Angus Turvill


The Day the World Ends, We...2011 by Akio Nakamori translated by David Boyd


Signals by Mayuko Makita translated by Allison Markin Powell


Japan Earthquake Charity Literature Project


Japanese Red Cross Society


Many thanks to the editor of Waseda Bungaku for allowing me to post a link to these stories and their webpage.

White and Purple

Keijo - Image from wiki Commons

White and Purple/Shiro to Murasaki, a short story by Sata Ineko was originally written in 1950, (the same year that the Korean War broke out), Sata Ineko is an author not widely translated into English so it was an insightful and in many ways a revelatory experience  to read this story translated by Samuel Perry. A novel I was reminded of whilst reading was Hayashi Fumiko's novel from 1951, Ukigumo/Floating Clouds, both narratives feature female characters recollecting their lives whilst living abroad in Japanese occupied territories, the stories in each of their own perspectives examine both colonialism and to a degree the post colonial conscience. White and Purple's main narrator, Osawa Yoshiko, has these memories prompted by hearing the name of a town  mentioned on a radio broadcast, the narration begins with observations of Yoshiko's appearance and physical mannerisms from the nameless person that Yoshiko  recounts her experiences to. Yoshiko recalls Suwon, a place whose ancient splendour is still conveyed in the ruins of an ancient palace, she evokes the tranquility of the place with herons, children playing and shockingly singing a Japanese song about the signing of a treaty at Port Arthur and of the famous General Nogi, she describes her passage from Kyushu to Keijo, (the Japanese name of occupied Seoul), and finding a job at the Railway Bureau of the Governor General. Yoshiko describes the attitudes of the Japanese community, with an exaggerated sense of self importance which soon turns to feelings of superiority of the Koreans. As the story progresses the relationship with a Korean colleague, Den Teiki and Yoshiko could be seen as mirroring and encapsulating the events occurring around them as Japan imposes the name order and begins to tighten it's control over the country, both geographically and culturally. But Yoshiko is an astute observer of these events occurring around them and these instances of cultural intrusion don't escape her eye, but we are left wondering to how much to a degree this effects the image she  has  of her own identity, she sees the beauty in the Korean people and landscape, but still seems to be rooted in a sense of superiority that she herself is unaware of, Yoshiko is a finely drawn character. Den Teiki, (who Yoshiko describes as a true intellectual), has studied in Japan and is a devotee of Japanese literature asking Yoshiko about the nuances of reading Murasaki and Sei Shonagon, and a particular Shimazaki Toson short story, together they go a trip to Mt Kumgang, during the trip another subject of contention arises when Den Teiki observes that, 'all Koreans want to visit Mt Kumgang before they die', the fact that so many Japanese tourists do so reasserts their dominance on the peninsula they now regard as their own. During their conversation Den Teiki also confesses that she is working on a novel but is uncertain which language to write it in, the talk sees Yoshiko hint at the linguistic superiority of her language, the relationship between the two women is a precariouly balanced one.  The translation of this story won Samuel Perry the 2010 William F. Sibley Memorial Translation Prize organised through The University of Chicago, this story and an introduction to the text by Samuel Perry, and also the other winners, including translations of Nakajima Atsushi, Kim Saryang and Chikamatsu Monzaemon are available to read online via the Prize's webpage.

Sata Ineko at Wikipedia

William F. Sibley Prize at The University of Chicago