Translators and Translation Projects

Translators and Current Translation Projects

Maplopo

The Very Best Writing From Japan. Like Short Stories? Get four short stories a year for life in our Reading Circle.

Official Website: https://maplopo.com/
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Doc and Reiko, the translating team behind Maplopo, are working to make more of Japan’s literary masterpieces available for English readers. Check out their website and their translations:

Reading Circle: Sign up for email updates when new stories are released. The best part? It’s absolutely free!
Translations: Read and download Maplopo’s translations of Dazai, Nakajima, Sakaguchi, and Soseki.
Learn with Literature: A collection of Japanese to English parallel texts, Japanese calligraphy, and Maplopo’s Monday Musings series.
Writings: Check out these Maplopo Originals, Doc’s Desk, Reiko’s Write-ups, and Aftertalks.
Videos: A collection of video trailers and samples.

Check back on Maplopo’s website and sign up for their Reading Circle for updates on translations and projects.

Purchase Maplopo's Translations on Amazon:

Legend of the Master by Nakajima Atsushi

In this classic tale of tortured ambition and the eventual discovery of artistic enlightenment, Nakajima Atsushi brilliantly blends Confucian and Zen Buddhist thought in a well crafted, cinematic story about an archer on a quest to be the greatest of all time. This Japanese literary masterpiece is the first in "Maplopo's "Masters of Story" collection.

Wish Fulfilled: A Vignette by Osamu Dazai

As we edge toward the 75th anniversary of Osamu Dazai's death, much of his masterful prose remains surprisingly unknown to most English language readers. This observational vignette written by a youthful Dazai offers a lovely introduction to the introspective master widely known and loved in Japan. Translated in Japan by Doc and Reiko Kane of Maplopo, this semi-autobiographical account should serve as a nice introduction to those unaware of Dazai's genius. For those well aware of his talents (and possibly the several decade-old translation of this particular work) this updated translation in English provides a fresh look at this masterful vignette.

Wind, Light, and the Twenty-Year-Old Me by Sakaguchi Ango

What is unhappiness? What does it mean to be unhappy? And can settling into it, breathing it in, enduring its weight upon us until we finally pass through it, actually be the answer to knowing its polar opposite? For Sakaguchi Ango, the answer to this last question would be an emphatic yes. To the first two, it would seem he never gave up the personal quest to find out.In this story, published in 1947 not long before his death, Sakaguchi confronts us no matter where we are on our journey in life to pause and think a bit more about where we're headed. Are we on the right path? Should we correct course? Do we think we're happy when we're really far from it?"Wind, Light, and the Twenty-Year-Old Me is the third in the Masters of Story series from Maplopo. This Sakaguchi Ango edition includes the full aftertalk from translators and publishers, Doc and Reiko Kane, as well as a biographical timeline of Sakaguchi Ango from his birth in 1906 to his death in 1955.

Daffodil by Osamu Dazai

We all feel the sting of the critic. Some, will pursue drastic means to avoid it.Around that time, I started reading your novels, which had me realize there was such a way of living, and it felt like I had discovered an aim in life. I’m a poor child like you. I wanted to meet you. On New Year’s Day three years ago, I was glad to see you for the first time in a very long time. Seeing your freewheeling way of getting drunk made me envy you to the point that I was jealous. This, I thought, was an honest way to live a life. No ostentation, no flattery, and yet a life lived mightily with pride on one’s own. How enviable to live such a life.Dazai's timeless tale of fame, doubt, family, and critics in a brand new translation from Maplopo. This Masters of Story edition also includes the previously published "Wish Fulfilled" (no longer in print), as well as the full Aftertalk with Dazai's translators, Doc and Reiko Kane.Doubt... the swell of "Should I?" "Can I?"

Yobanashi Café

Yobanashi translates to ‘night tales’; the stories we tell each other in the dark. The Café is only open at night. If you find your way there, you can meet and chat with writers long-gone from this world, over a cup of something warm.

Yobanashi Café creates open access English translations of public domain Japanese classics, particularly those without an existing English translation. Our translations will always be free, forever, under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Creative Commons license. Our focus is on early twentieth century modernism, buraiha (‘scoundrel school’), and genre fiction including horror (eg, ero guro nansensu), detective novels and science fiction.

Check out Yobanashi Café's website: https://yobanashicafe.com/

Translatioins Page: where you can find translations of literary works by Dazai Osamu, Satō Haruo, and Tokugawa Tsunayoshi
Biographies Page: where you can find short biographies on a variety of authors related to the translations.
Publications: Want to buy their translations and add them to your library? Check out these publications available for purchase.

Retrogression by Dazai Osamu

“Major credit must go to A. L. Raye for rendering Dazai’s Japanese in a vivid, sparking English.”
– Asymptote Journal

Buy it now!

Available in portable bunko format and ebook.

“I’ll stab him! I thought. What an absolute scoundrel!” So Dazai wrote to Yasunari Kawabata, one of the judges for the first Akutagawa Prize, when his story ‘Retrogression’ failed to win. Thus began what came to be known as the Akutagawa Prize Incident, which culminated in Dazai being forcibly hospitalised by one of the judges.

A collection of intertwined autobiographical tales from the author’s life, Retrogression starts with the protagonist’s death as an ‘old man’ of twenty-five and regresses back through a life of sin and decadence.

This book pieces together the fractured and disorderly lifestyle of one of history’s greatest romantics and pairs it with a particular moment in his life; losing the Akutagawa Prize. The ensuing drama that unfolded through private letters, newspaper articles, diaries, obituaries and fiction created a scandal that disturbed the early Shōwa literati with its coarse and indecent honesty. Dazai’s fiction, fiction written about Dazai, speculation and reality intertwined to create an explosive event that not only changed the desired trajectory of his life but also raised issues of discrimination within prominent literary circles and the treatment of mental illness in 1930s Japan.

Including: