Tag Archives: fiction

Japanese Literature Review: 「猫を抱いて象と泳ぐ」 (Swim With an Elephant, Embracing a Cat) by 小川洋子 (Yoko Ogawa): A nostalgic ode to chess

Yoko Ogawa (小川洋子) is an award-winning Japanese author who has written over 30 works, with at least eight of them translated into English so far. She is perhaps most known for her novel “The Housekeeper and the Professor” (博士の愛した数式) which was also made into a movie. I read Ogawa’s book “Little Bird” (ことり) last year… Read More »

Book Release: Japanese Dystopian Fiction (“Eighteen O’Clock Music Bath” by Juza Unno)

(Update: I have since republished these stories in a larger compilation that you can find here, which is available in both paper and ebook format. I have changed the links in the article below to the original short e-book to point to this newer book.) (Quick link to the book on Amazon) Early this year, I published… Read More »

Novel review: “Invitation to a Beheading” by Vladimir Nabokov

The novel Lolita, written in 1955 by Russian American novelist Vladimir Nabokov, is a classic piece of literature that I think many people are at least vaguely familiar with (heck, even Sting has apparently read it back in the 80s). While I admit I haven’t read it, recently at the library I stumbled upon another… Read More »

Japanese novel translation: “House Ephemera” by Hatasu Shikishima [Chapter 7]

This is the 7th chapter of a story I am translating titled “House Ephemera” (蜉蝣の家) by Hatasu Shikishima (識島果). Thanks to Sherayuki for helping proofread this chapter. You can read the full Japanese text of this chapter here. See this page which contains a brief synopsis and links to other chapters (as they are posted).… Read More »

Juza Unno: Classic Japanese SF author published in English for the first time (reprise)

(Update: I have since republished these stories in a larger compilation that you can find here.) In late October, I announced I was working on a new translation project–after around two years of listing translations on my blog, for the first time I was aiming to publish a translation in a more formal media than… Read More »

Taking translation to the next level: Getting Published

For nearly two years I’ve been involved in a series of hobby translation projects, which I’d estimate to be at least 50 chapters and several hundreds of pages. My purpose for these was to improve my Japanese translation abilities on a variety of authors and genres, and I have been very satisfied with what I’ve… Read More »

Japanese novel translation: “House Ephemera” by Hatasu Shikishima [Chapter 6]

This is the 6th chapter of a story I am translating titled “House Ephemera” (蜉蝣の家) by Hatasu Shikishima (識島果). Thanks to Sherayuki for helping proofread this chapter. You can read the full Japanese text of this chapter here. See this page which contains a brief synopsis and links to other chapters (as they are posted).… Read More »