Ueda Akinari translation
PMJS has published William Clarke and Wendy Cobcroft’s annotated translation of Ueda Akinari’s Tandai Shoshinroku, available as a free PDF and also ...
Category: Translation
Transvestite chickens late at night
I’ve been reading Cao Naiqian‘s There’s Nothing I Can Do When I Think of You Late at Night. It’s an odd sort of book, and you can see wh...
When translating, leave currency in the original units
I’m using Ivan Morris’ translation of Saikaku’s The Life of an Amorous Woman and other Writings this semester1, but one thing which is bugging...
Mountains, Vikings, and Chinese Poetry
Lots of people seem to like Chinese poetry. The latest NYRB has a review of a reprint of A.C. Graham’s Poems of the Late T’ang by Eliot Weinberger.1...
Pearl Buck's Intriguing Staying Power: Imperial Woman
Parade Magazine (September 14, 2008) asked Laura Bush what she’s been reading: “The Imperial Woman, by Pearl S. Buck. I picked up this book after re...
Lin Yutang and Chinese literature
One of my neighbors was doing some spring cleaning and brought me this. Lin was a notable if somewhat minor intellectual figure in China but his real fame came ...
Authors/Books/China/Culture/Current Events/Literature/Maoist era (1949-1976)/Post-Mao/Teaching/Translation
New Chinese Literature
The New York Times has published three reviews of new Chinese works in translation: Wang Anyi’s The Song of Everlasting Sorrow, Wolf Totem by Jiang Rong (pen na...
Remembering Meiji: Translations
Keene includes several extended reminiscences of Meiji published immediately after his death. Unfortunately, some are included in the original French (pp. 707 a...
'China Network' at Cambridge
If you will forgive the promotion, this may be of interest to other Frogs… Cambridge University’s humanities centre (CRASSH) recently received fundi...
Exporting Maoism
In my Intro to Asian Studies class this semester I am teaching Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s The Girl From the Coast The story is a fictionalized account of his...
Seidensticker’s Passing
I’m not one of those Japan scholars who came to the field as a Japanophile1 , and my preferred literary reading tends to speculative fiction, humorous ver...
Akutagawa the Pacifist
Japan Focus has expanded its mission one more time, this time to include new literary translations! They’ve published a Jay Rubin translation of an Akutag...
Japanese Culture is global culture
A lot of elements of Japanese culture have become part of the great global mash-up, especially food culture and pop culture. But none, I think, will have the en...
Autobiographical Essays by Donald Keene
Yomiuri newspaper published a long series of autobiographical essays by Donald Keene which I somehow missed until today. Professor Keene is one of the most impo...
Eloquent oddities
There aren’t a lot of good Japanese-themed quizzes out there…. You Are a Sarariiman! Or “salaryman.” Whatever. Treadmill off, treadmill ...