Speaker: Edward Seidensticker, translator (Tale of Genji,...)/author(Genji Days,...)
Translations by Edward Seidensticker, Professor Emeritus of Japanese at Columbia University, have introduced two generations of English native-speakers to the masterpieces of classical and modern Japanese literature. Seidensticker is arguably most renowned as a translator for rendering in its entirety Murasaki Shikibu's The Tale of Genji (Knopf, 1976), generally considered to be the first modern novel of world literature, from 11th-century Heian Japanese into 20th-century American English. Many readers (including the author of this sketch) believe that Seidensticker's Genji is the best of the three translations into English that have been accomplished to date, because only Seidensticker's translation brings the reader to Genji by presenting Murasaki's creation "warts and all" and does not bring Genji to the reader by performing cosmetic surgery on Murasaki's creation. Perhaps due to the acclaim that has accrued to him due to his translation of Genji, Seidensticker may be less well known for his translations of major works of the modern Japanese masters Tanizaki Junichiro (The Makioka Sisters, ... ), Nobel Prize winner Kawabata Yasunari (Snow Country, ...), and Mishima Yukio (The Decay of the Angel, ... ). Tokyo Central (Univ. of Washington Press, 2002) is Seidensticker's second memoir. In his memoir Genji Days (Kodansha International, 1977), which has long been out of print, he described his absorbing ten-year struggle to translate Genji. Although Seidensticker believes that Murasaki is the greatest writer that Japan has produced, he acknowledges that translating Genji was difficult, because Murasaki's language is remote and because Murasaki left so much unsaid. Both of Seidensticker's memoirs rely on extracts from a diary that he has faithfully kept for decades, except for occasional gaps occasioned by personal quirks that he candidly acknowledges - "I think I may have been drinking. That is the usual explanation for lacunae in my diary." Your ticket for admission to Edward Seidensticker's presentation will be a signed copy of his latest memoir, Tokyo Central, bought from our shop. Signed hardcover copies of Tokyo Central may be purchased at Good Day Books for three thousand seven hundred eighty yen (¥3780) each, tax included, while our supply lasts. (SOLD OUT) |
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