薰Fujino’s visit to campus to read excerpts from her award-winning novella “指甲和眼睛” was just one of many opportunities for Japanese language students to interact with Japanese authors during the spring 2024 semester.
Over 50 people gathered in the Wright Museum of Art to listen as author 薰Fujino 和 the book’s translator Kendall Heitzman took turns reading passages from “指甲和眼睛” in both Japanese 和 英语.
Hina, story’s narrator, recounts her experiences surrounding her mother’s mysterious death. She shares these thoughts in the second person to ‘you,’ the secret lover her father brings into the family just months after the loss of her mother. While ‘you’ remains indifferent to the young girl, Hina has kept a keen eye on this interloper, showing she has come to underst和 ‘you’ better than the woman knows herself.
Ten years later, story was made available in 英语 for the first time in the publication of 指甲和眼睛, which includes the titular story as well as two additional stories.
Heitzman, 英语 translator, is an associate professor of Japanese literature 和 culture at the University of Iowa where he teaches literature, 电影, 剧院, 和 Japanese-to-英语 translation. His translation of 指甲和眼睛 received the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature.
Many good questions 和 answers
The event started with the reading of three excerpts from the book: an introduction to the characters, a series of observations about ‘you,’ 和 the immediate aftermath of the mother’s death. After the readings, members of the audience asked many questions of both Fujino 和 Heitzman, with Heitzman translating Fujino’s answers to 英语 for the audience.
One student asked Fujino, “Where did the inspiration for the story come from?”
“There are a lot of stories out there about protagonists who are brilliant 和 easily hurt,” Fujino explained. “Instead, I wanted to write about somebody who isn’t really self aware 和 never gets hurt. When I got to a scene where this person ‘you’ – who has never been hurt, who gets away with everything – finally gets hurt: that is when I knew I had my story.”
Another student asked, “What does your writing process look like?”
“It starts with a situation or event,” Fujino shared. “从那里, I try to determine who is important, who is peripheral, 和 who should be telling the story. Until I am confident in the scenario 和 characters, I write the story over 和 over again. If when writing I find that the story should start at another point or be told from another character’s perspective, it may be painful, but there is no choice but to start over again.”
A different student asked Heitzman, “What was the translation process like?”
“Because I knew Fujino-san, I asked her a lot of questions,” Heitzman said. He noted that things that can be ambiguous in one language sometimes need to be defined in a different language, leading to many questions about the details in the works he has translated: “Is this a single door or double doors,” or, “Is the convenience store clerk a man or woman?” He continued, “Sometimes the author really knows, 和 sometimes the author can guess with you on what is happening. For me, I get all kinds of fun backstories 和 could work with Fujino to know what is important.”
Learning from the experts
This visit by Fujino was one of many opportunities for students taking Contemporary Japanese Literature (JAPN 230) to speak with the authors whose work they were reading 和 translating as a part of their course work.
- Yasuhiro Yotsumoto: Poetry from the collection 雨歌 – including “雨歌,” “A Poem about a Dangerous Cucumber,” 和 “A Poem about Burnable Trash” – as well as several not-yet-published poems.
- Keijiro日本须贺: Poetry from the collection One Week 和 Other Jaunts, including “To the Open Ground,” “Water Schools,” “One Week,” 和 “Tokyo Fragments.”
- Yusho Takiguchi: Entries from his memoir A Moment Along the Way that We Will Inevitably Forget (Iowa Diary) recounting his visit to Beloit College for a reading.
- 薰Fujino: The first fourth of the novella “指甲和眼睛.”
“Our goal this semester was to read 和 translate recent publications by authors who are currently active in the Japanese literary scene,解释说 苏珊古, associate professor of modern languages 和 literatures. “Many of the students in this class had taken an advanced Japanese class with me before, so I wanted to try something entirely different.”
The inspiration for the course started when Furukawa attended a poetry event at the University of Iowa, where she met both Yotsumoto 和 Suga. Impressed by the Iowa students’ translations of their work, she decided to have her students work with poetry in the spring. 一时兴起, she asked both poets if they could be interested in talking with the class virtually, 和 both immediately said yes.
Heitzman, who visited campus previously with other writers from Iowa’s International Writing Program (IWP) 和 knew that Beloit students would be well prepared 和 engaged, helped arrange Fujino’s visit during her U.S. 图书巡展 指甲和眼睛. Furukawa then reached out to Takiguchi, who visited Beloit in 2018 和 also immediately agreed to speak remotely with the class.
“I have been amazed by the generosity of all of these writers,” Furukawa says. “Not only did they readily agree to join my class on their own time, but they also engaged fully with the students: reading their work for us, talking about their process, 和 answering specific questions students had about use of language 和 translation.”
The opportunity to talk with the authors helped students better engage with their work in the course. The meetings provided clear deadlines for assignments, including bilingual research on the authors 和 their work as well as preparing questions they wanted to ask.
“Meeting the writers brought the language to life for them,” Furukawa explains. “Learning to read 和 translate Japanese is hard, 和 being able to ask the writers about specific words 和 images helped students to see just how dynamic the language is. The class definitely moved them out of the world of memorizing grammar, 汉字, 和 vocabulary 和 into the world of engaging with a living, 呼吸, 和 always changing language.”
The students in the course say the same.
“Our conversation with Fujino-san 和 Professor Heitzman was riveting,” Mahala Berg’24 shares, “和 it was packed with interesting stories, 灵感, 和 overall great advice about being an author/translator 和 the publishing industry.”
Charlie Starenko’24 agrees. “This class is like a sleeper hit，和 things we have gotten to do are unbelievable. As we have met with each author, reality of how rare an opportunity this is set in, 和 it has made me realize the Japanese program at Beloit has prepared me for a wider range of job possibilities than I thought.”
Fujino 和 Heitzman’s visit was co-sponsored by Beloit College’s departments of 英语 和 Modern Languages 和 文献, Japan Foundation New York，和 University of Iowa’s Center for Asian 和 Pacific Studies.
April 23, 2024
