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, ... ). Your ticket for admission to Edward Seidensticker's presentation "Why I Became a Mystery Man" will be a copy of Seidensticker's trio of detective stories, The Snake That Bowed, bought from Good Day Books. Paperback copies of The Snake That Bowed may be purchased at Good Day Books for one thousand five hundred seventy five yen (¥1575) each, tax included, while our supply lasts. |
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