Christmas gift guides, New Year¡¯s resolutions ... the time for making a list and checking it twice is upon us. As we head deeper into the holiday season, The Japan Times asked translators of Japanese literature for their biggest book wish: Which Japanese work or author do you most want to see translated into English? Read on for our holiday wish list for book lovers.
Polly Barton: One of the first Japanese books I really fell in love with is Nao-Cola Yamazaki¡¯s debut novella, ¡°Hito no Sekkusu o Warau Na¡± (which translates to ¡°Don¡¯t laugh at other people¡¯s sex lives¡±). It tells the story of a relationship between a young student and his art teacher twice his age, portraying all its clumsiness, humanity and wild, unpredictable loveliness. For me, it¡¯s that rare thing: a love story, relatively simple in its formulation, that manages to feel both startlingly new and achingly true and personal.
Sam Bett: My pick is Atsushi Sato¡¯s ¡°Arechi no Kazoku¡± (¡°Family of the wasteland¡±). Set 10 years after the 2011 tsunami, this Akutagawa Prize-winning novel is a reckoning with disaster: what it takes away, what it leaves behind and how we struggle to make sense of it. Yuji Sakai, a single father in his 40s, funnels his pain into pruning trees in his hometown north of Fukushima, where a new seawall serves as a ¡°monument to horror.¡± The descriptions of tree care have an ASMR quality, but the only thing Yuji can stop from changing is himself. It¡¯s a view of Japan the world needs to see.
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