Translators’ Roundtable Series “More than Worth Sharing”

Convenience Store Woman by Murata Sayaka

Murata Sayaka was born in 1979 in Chiba Prefecture. Her first novel, Jyunyū [Breastfeeding], was awarded the Gunzo Prize for New Writers in 2003. In 2009 her novel Gin iro no uta [Silver Song] (Shinchosha, 2008) won the Noma Literary Prize for New Writers, in 2013 her novel Shiro-iro no machi no, sono hone no taion no [Of Bones, Of Body Heat, Of Whitening City] (Asahi Shimbun, 2012) won the Mishima Yukio Prize, and in 2016 her novel Convenience Store Woman (Bungei Shunju, 2016) won the Akutagawa Prize. Other books include Tadaima tobira [A Welcoming Door] (Shinchosha, 2012), Satsujin shussan [Birth Murders] (Kodansha, 2014), Shōmetsu sekai [Dwindling World] (Kawade Shobo Shinsha, 2015), and Seimeishiki [Ceremony of Life] (Kawade Shobo Shinsha, 2019).

Einat Cooper studied Japanese in Tokyo during her stay in Japan as a young student in the 1990s. Upon her return she began translating prose from Japanese into Hebrew, and her presence in the field of Japanese-Hebrew translation led to an important change in the translation of Japanese literature. Cooper is considered a particularly prolific translator and her translations were widely praised, mainly due to her stylistic loyalty to the Japanese language, which is not easily translated into Hebrew. She is often invited to attend panels and academic conferences to present her work as a translator and her position regarding the importance of diversity in Japanese literature translated into Hebrew. Her main translations include The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (Poalim Library, 2007) by Mishima Yukio, Some Prefer Nettles by Tanizaki Jun’ichiro (Modan Publishing, 2009), Kafka on the Shore (Keter Books, 2007), and 1Q84 (Keter Books, 2011–2012) by Murakami Haruki.

Dmitry Kovalenin was born on the Russian island of Sakhalin in 1966. He graduated from Far Eastern Federal University in Vladivostok in 1988, worked as a shipping agent for the West Port of Niigata from 1991 to 2000, and was a research fellow at the University of Tokyo from 2003 to 2004. His major translations into Russian include Murakami Haruki’s A Wild Sheep Chase (Alphabet, 1998), Dance Dance Dance (Amphora, 2001), and 1Q84 (Eksmo, 2009-2010), as well as Tawara Machi’s Salad Anniversary (Korovaknigi, 2006), Ogawa Yoko’s The Memory Police (Polyandria, 2020), and Murata Sayaka’s Convenience Store Woman (Popcorn Books, 2020). He also authored Sushi-Noir (Piter, 2004) and Sushi-Noir 2 (Piter, 2019), books that introduce and interpret the major works of Murakami Haruki.

Born in 1970, Gianluca Coci is a professor of Japanese Language and Literature at the University of Turin in Italy. He specializes in modern and contemporary Japanese literature. He has translated about 60 works into Italian, including books by Abe Kobo, Oe Kenzaburo, Tanizaki Jun’ichiro, Inoue Yasushi, Takahashi Gen’ichiro, Murakami Ryu, Kirino Natsuo, Furukawa Hideo, Abe Kazushige, Kakuta Mitsuyo, Murata Sayaka, Taguchi Randy, Kawakami Mieko, Ogawa Ito, and Oyamada Hiroko.

Rita Kohl is a Japanese-Portuguese translator born in São Paulo, Brazil, in 1984, and currently based in Princeton, US. She holds degrees in Japanese and Portuguese from the University of São Paulo and an MA in Comparative Literature and Culture from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Tokyo. She has translated several works into Portuguese, including full-length works by Murata Sayaka, Ogawa Yoko, Murakami Haruki, and Arikawa Hiro. In 2017, her translation of Hear the Wind Sing / Pinball, 1973 by Haruki Murakami (Alfaguara, 2016) received the Jabuti Award for Translation (Brazil).

Hovhannisyan was born in Yerevan, Armenia, and completed her PhD at the Graduate School for Language and Society, Hitotsubashi University, in 2017. After a part-time lectureship at Saitama University and an affiliation with the International Research Center for Japanese Studies as a visiting research scholar, she became a senior lecturer at Russian-Armenian University (Armenia). Her areas of research include the social history of medicine, eugenic ideology, and family planning movements. Major translations into Armenian include Murata Sayaka’s Convenience Store Woman (Antares, 2020) and Oe Kenzaburo’s Kōzui wa waga tamashii ni oyobi [The Flood Invades My Spirit], as well as short stories by Akutagawa Ryunosuke and Hayashi Fumiko.