5 Years After 3/11

Today is the fifth anniversary of the Great East Japan Earthquake (東日本大震災 Higashi nihon daishinsai ) on March 11, 2011.

Buddhist Lantern Ceremony, Kōmyōji, Kamakura
 March 10, 2016

Tomo: Friendship Through Fiction--An Anthology of Japan Teen Stories (Stone Bridge Press) continues to raise money by donating royalties from sales of the book.

The donations from Tomo: Friendship Through Fiction support high school students in the earthquake and tsunami affected areas via the N.P.O Hope for Tomorrow. In December, Hope for Tomorrow announced the most recent allocation of funds as follows:

The 2015 Educational Support Program will be allocated to the following five high schools:Haramachi High School (Minami Soma City, Fukushima Prefecture), Ishinomaki High School (Ishinomaki City, Miyagi Prefecture), Kesennuma High School (Kesennuma City, Miyagi Prefecture), Ofunato High School (Ofunato City, Iwate Prefecture) Takata Senior High School (Rikuzentakada City, Iwate Prefecture; temporarily located in Ofunato City).

Individual recipients are selected through their schools, and grants are awarded to students each February.

Five years have passed since the earthquake--both quickly and slowly. Recovery proceeds in Tohoku, but problems abound, and of course, after trauma of such magnitude, grief and pain are ongoing. In Japan, it is customary to keep true feelings to yourself, to mute your complaints, to suffer in silence. After the tsunami, a homeowner in the town of Otsuchi in Iwachi Prefecture wisely set up a telephone booth in his garden, placed a disconnected rotary dial phone inside, and invited people to step inside and speak to the loved ones they'd lost in the disaster. Called the kaze no denwa (風の電話) -- wind phone -- the booth has drawn over 10,000 visitors (see a reblogged version of a Mainichi Daily article here and NHK coverage in Japanese here). NHK recently featured a poignant documentary (trailer) on the phone and its power to enable individuals to speak words of deep pain. One segment featured a family of a mother and her three children who'd lost their father with all of them visiting the wind phone after the eldest child bravely did so.

Yoko Imoto has written and illustrated a children's picture book called Kaze no denwa (The Wind Telephone).  This book and one other are featured on the SCBWI Japan Translation Group Blog: Two Stories for Children Commemorate 3.11 in a post by Deborah Iwabuchi (translator of the Tomo story "The Law of Gravity" by Yuko Katakawa) with links to English-language readings.

For readers of all ages, today is a also good day to re-read the SCBWI Japan Translation Group post by Sako Ikegami (translator of the Tomo story "Hachiro" by Ryusuke Saito): The Tale of Hamaguchi Gohei and the Tsunami.  Kimiko Kajikawa's picture book Tsunami, written before 3/11, is based on the same tale.

Wishing compassion and the comfort of words and stories to all those affected by the disasters of March 11, 2011.

Tokyo Tomo Launch on March 10, 2012

On March 10, the evening before the one-year anniversary of the March 11, 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami, Tomo: Friendship Through Fiction--An Anthology of Japan Teen Stories was officially released and launched with a Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators event in Tokyo. Present were 16 contributors, including several translator-author pairs. All read excerpts from their stories to give the audience a sense of the great range of stories included in the anthology.

Here are a few photos of the contributors who were able to attend the Tokyo launch:

Back row, L to R: John Paul Catton, Juliet Winters Carpenter, Deborah Iwabuchi, Margi Napper, Louise George Kittaka, Ann Slater, Charles De Wolf, Trevor Kew, Hart Larrabee  Front Row, L to R: Arie Nashiya, Yuko Katakawa, Holly Thompson, Sako Ikegami, Fumio Takano, Leza Lowitz, Mariko Nagai

Louise George Kittaka, author, and Holly Thompson, editor

Juliet Winters Carpenter, translator, and Arie Nashiya, author

Sako Ikegami, translator

Fumio Takano, author, and Hart Larrabee, translator

Yuko Katakawa, author, and Deborah Iwabuchi, translator

It was wonderful for so many contributors to meet face to face and for translators to finally meet the authors whose works they'd translated. And the Tomo books sold out. Hooray!

Looking forward to the Boston Tomo launch at the Boston Children's Museum on March 23.

Interview with TOMO Contributor Sako Ikegami

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Sako Ikegami (translator of the Tomo story “Hachiro” by Ryusuke Saito) Sako Ikegami can lay claim to various titles (clinical pharmacist, medical translator/writer, children’s book reader), but best enjoys working with YA books. She aspires to bridge her two cultures, American and Japanese, by translating children’s literature in both. Her translations include Ryusuke Saito’s The Tree of Courage and Angela Johnson’s First Part Last into English. Visit her website: www.sakotrans.com

Can you tell us a bit about your own background and your relationship with Japan and the U.S.?

Sako Ikegami with her mother in Hawaii en route to New York

Back in the mid-1960s, I was the four-year-old excess baggage that tagged along when my dad, a corporate samurai, was transferred to the Manhattan office to attempt to addict Americans to Japan's electric products. By the time we returned to Japan eleven years later, I had grown up illiterate in Japanese, so English is my native tongue.  Trying to transition into a Japanese high school student was a disaster. My mom got called into school almost every single day.

"Sako came to school wearing a coat! Is there something wrong with her health? Maybe she should try kanpu-masatsu (stripping down and scrubbing one's body with a dry rough towel)."  "Sako was seen walking home with a boy after school!" (Old Japanese adage: Never allow boys and girls in the same room beyond the age of seven. And they wonder about our dwindling population.)

At fifteen, I didn't fit in with the other Japanese teens. Even today, I remain an anomaly in a culture where conformity and blending in are paramount. But there are perks. Being Japanese, but not quite, gives me both an insider's and outsider's view of this country. Translating YA and children's books is my way of making up for missing out on my Japanese heritage while growing up. Hopefully, I can help introduce new readers to the things about Japan that I have learned to love and respect.

“Hachiro” is an Akita tall tale, originally told in Akita dialect. Can you discuss some of the challenges presented by this dialect during the translation process?

Hachiro by Ryusuke Saito, illustrated by Jiro Takidaira (C) Fukuinkan-shoten

The original language is almost musical, involving repetition and onomatopoeia in the delicious cadence of the Akita dialect. I churned out various renditions, trying to get it into readable English, and even tried American dialects, but nothing really clicked. Finally, I asked for help from a senpai (a more experienced mentor or upperclassman), Tomo contributor Deborah Davidson, who has worked extensively with the Ainu yukar, and she had some great advice. Some of the expressions were also difficult to understand, but reading the Japanese repeatedly out loud helped to solve the mystery language. Limited by time and talent, I finally had to give up on a truly faithful reproduction of the dialect, but I hope at least a hint of Saito's flavor comes through intact.

Can you tell us a bit about Ryusuke Saito and his works?

Ryusuke Saito (photo courtesy of Kodomo to gakuryoku)

Ryusuke Saito was a young reporter working for a newspaper in Akita when he wrote this story in 1950. It was initially published in the Akita Newspaper for middle school students. Although he was from Tokyo, he loved the Tohoku region and its people, and many of his most famous tales are situated in this part of Japan. Saito specialized in short stories that sounded like ancient folklore, but were in fact, originally crafted tales. Together with his collaborative partner, kirie artist Jiro Takidaira, he created a series of beautifully illustrated books that have become children's classics. Like Hachiro, many of the stories focus on the beauty of self-sacrifice for the greater good, which some may find a little didactic for modern tastes. Many of these stories were written in the immediate post-WWII period when Japan was undergoing drastic changes in culture and ideology. These two creators felt it was important that the youths of "new" Japan retain those traditional values that have always been treasured here.

What we've witnessed over this past year proves those values are still intact in the people of Tohoku and reassure us that Japan will pull through in spite of the huge losses it's suffered.

You have lived in the U.S. and Japan, and have actually translated fiction in both directions, J-E and E-J. Which direction of translation do you prefer? What challenges do you encounter in both?

Like most translators, I prefer working into my stronger language, English. Also, so very little of Japanese YA literature has been translated and ii's about time that changed. Japan is not just about manga and anime. Unfortunately though, translated books rarely do well in the English language market. While huge numbers of children's books are translated into Japanese from English and lots of other languages every year in Japan, it just doesn't happen in the opposite direction. Talk about trade imbalance!  But even here with one of the highest literacy rates in the world, we have trouble getting our teens to read, and publishers struggle to keep even the most outstanding books in print.

The great thing about translated books is that you get an authentic look into a completely different culture without having to learn the language! So next time you're in the bookstore or library, take a chance. Pick up one of those books that has “translated by...” on the cover, and prepare to enter unfamiliar territory.

Hachiro Lake was the second largest lake in Japan. It was a shallow, brackish water lake, but it has been mostly landfilled for agricultural purposes beginning in the 1950s. Perhaps we need to write a sequel to the story! This folktale seems even more important as a memory of the unfilled Hachiro Lake. What do you think the author would say today? What do you think Hachiro would do?

The sad fate of Hachiro Lake has much to do with a post-WWII Japan rushing to get back on its feet and started in creating a thriving rice industry for its starving population. Unfortunately, back then, they didn't understand the risks of changing an ecosystem or foresee that westernization of Japan would lead to a decrease in rice consumption. Arable land has always been in short supply in Japan and communities needed a way to increase their income. “Hachiro” was written at a time when they were still arguing back and forth on the merits and demerits of landfill. If his thoughts were with the local people, it is possible Saito believed that sacrificing part of Hachiro Lake was a sad but acceptable choice. Perhaps a sequel could have an ecological slant where Hachiro would return the lake to its former glory.

Hachiro Lake's name originates from a series of pourquoi stories that explains how the three great lakes of Tohoku came into being. Perhaps we can tell those stories here at a later time.

Do you have any message for teens in Tohoku?

When I visited Miyagi and Iwate twenty years ago, my first impression was that here, finally, was the Japan that my mom had always taught me to be proud of while I was growing up in the U.S. The old folktales passed from generation to generation by your kataribe storytellers speak of the contentious yet loving relationship that you have always had with nature. It doesn't seem fair that your land has been the target of so much destruction throughout history. But adversity comes only to those strong enough to conquer it. Nourished by the rice and fish so abundant in your beautiful region, Tohoku represents the foundation upon whic