What do I like about Japanese Literature
Angel Bojadsen (Brazil)

In trying to answer this broad question, I could simply state my personal preferences. But let us take a look at how it started.

Editora Estação Liberdade was founded by Jiro Takahashi, a Japanese descendent who worked with the nikkei community around the Liberdade borrough of São Paulo, one of the main areas of Japanese influence and activity in Brazil. The first office of the publishing house was around the Liberdade underground station, and at the same time at the end of the eighties we were getting out of the dictatorship years in Brazil, hence the double reading of our name: liberty for political freedom, and the metro station. We now moved to another area in São Paulo more suitable for our operations, mainly due to logistics facilities and book transportation.

At first Estação Liberdade published books of Brazilian authors of Japanese descent, or books related to Japan but written here. When I arrived as a publisher in 1993, I decided to work on buying the rights and translate books of Japanese writers in direct translations. One of these translators played a special role in this sense: Leiko Gotoda translated an unabriged edition of Eiji Yoshikawa’s epic novel Musashi, a tour de force which took her seven years of hard work. As a first degree niece of Jun’ichiro Tanizaki, she was up to the task. Her translation of Musashi had been rejected by two large publishing houses before she addressed us on a hint by the Japan Foundation cultural director at the time, Mr. Jo Takahashi. This edition of 1,800 pages was a national bestseller: it was the largest book ever to have been number 1 at the bestseller lists by at least one of the main newspapers here, even if for only one week. But then we carried on with Leiko to translate works by her uncle Tanizaki here, and we introduced Haruki Murakami to the Brazilian readers with his first two books here.

I was already a reader of authors such as Tanizaki, Kawabata and Akutagawa before taking over as publisher and shareholder of Editora Estação Liberdade, so it was a tremendous honour for me to work with these authors in high quality translations as soon as I took over. I cannot read Japanese, but I often compared our translations with the ones in French, English, German, Italian or Spanish. The suceess of Musashi, and also for instance Tanizaki’s Makioka Sisters and Diary of an Old Man opened the way to a whole series of Japanese authors we were able to bring to our readers: Kawabata, with more than 10 works is our most translated Japanese writer. But we carried on with Yasushi Inoue, Kobo Abe, and our quartet of Japanse women writers: Hiromi Kawakami, Yoko Ogawa, Banana Yoshimoto and Sayaka Murata. And a very personal choice of mine: Kenzaburo Oe, for whom I have an unlimited admiration, a great source of inspiration, also due to his commitment to peace and disarmament. His very personal book on the suicide of his brother in law, A substituição ou as regras do Tagame [Torikaeko] is probably the Japnese novel which struck me most in all those years. He is a very challenging writer to whom I am very commited. Another source of editorial satisfaction is the success of an uncompromising work on Japanese culture and literature by Shuichi Kato: Tempo e espaço na cultura japonesa (Nihon bunka ni okeru jikan to kukan). People are really asking for books on Japanese culture, not only literature.

Other Japonese authors we carry are the great Natsume Soseki, and also Masuji Ibuse, Kafu Nagai, Osamu Dazai, Ogai Mori. Last but not least, we have two works by Mishima in our catalogue, with several others coming. As a whole, we are heading to 80 translations from Japanese, and as such we are at the forefront of bringing Japanese literature to Brazil. So this is more or less for what we have been working on.

But it stands very clear to us that we have to reach upon the younger generations and new readers. It is of utmost importance that we look into high quality Mangás and also productions such as the young adult serials by Eiko Kadono’s, which are faring quite well. In this sense, I have been reviewing my regard and experience on Japanese literature. This is not always easy due to my traditional literary upbringing, but with the help of my team we are working hard on that.

Also with the aim of diversity, we started getting into detective novels, and we just started translating Keigo Higashino´s The Devotion of Suspect X.

For me, with a strong influence by French and German literature (I also used to translate from these languages), dealing with Japan was a whole new world, and a very inspiring discovery. I have been twice in Japan (the first time on an invitation by the Japan Foundation), and the intensity and variety of Tokyo and Kyoto struck deep and helped me understand what the Japanese writers care about. Loneliness in the metropolis, the difficulty of relationships, the sheer organization of such an enormous urban conglomerate, these are matters which I try to undertand better and wish to find as subjects in the writings I try to prospect. I walked for several days through Tokyo, I really wanted to get deep inside that thriving enormity! But I regret I did not discover the book discrict of Jimbocho at the time...

On the practical side, distributing and selling Japanese literature in Brazil has been quite rewarding lately. We have a broad public, not only readers of the Japanese community here, far from that! People follow us on the medias, always ask what will be our next Japanese lauching, newspapers have a good coverage of what we publish (one of the main magazines here just published a large interview by Yoko Ogawa), and several bookstores have a separate section specifically on Japanese literature, which is a great achievement and of course is a good piece of marketing for us. And last but not least, in the coming months we will open a house for events, a place where people will be able to get along and discuss our books around a good sake.

[Angel Bojadsen, August 2023]

(Editorial Director, Editora Estação Liberdade)