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Translators’ Roundtable: Okada Toshiki’s The End of the Moment We Had

Okada Toshiki’s debut novel, The End of the Moment We Had, combines a novelization of ”Sangatsu no itsukakan” [Five Days in March], his Kishida Prize for Drama-winning play, with ”Watashi no basho no fukusu” [My Place in Plural]. The book was the winner of the second Oe Kenzaburo Prize. For the fourth Translators’ Roundtable, Okada and four translators from Korea, Thailand, the US, and Germany will discuss the appeal of his book and share anecdotes about the translation process. They will also read passages from the book in Japanese and the translated languages. At the end of the roundtable, there will be a Q&A session for the viewers.

Outline of the book (PDF：3.81MB)

Outline of the event

Streamed live on: Tuesday, May 18, 2021, 8:00 p.m. – 9:30 p.m. (Japan Standard Time)
Access (URL):: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHskYSUZYxg(archived video)
Language:: Japanese (A video subtitled in English will be posted at a later date.)

Roundtable speakers

Author

Okada Toshiki

Okada Toshiki was born in Yokohama in 1973 and lives in Kumamoto. He is a playwright, novelist, and the founder and artistic director of the chelfitsch theater company. His play Sangatsu no itsukakan [Five Days in March] won the 49th Kishida Prize for Drama. His novel The End of the Moment We Had (Shinchosha, 2007) was the second recipient of the Oe Kenzaburo Prize. His production of Pratthana – A Portrait of Possession was awarded the Selection Committee Special Prize in the 27th Yomiuri Theater Awards. His dramatic works collection Miren no yūrei to kaibutsu – zaha/monju [Regret of Ghosts and Monsters Zaha/Monju] (Hakusuisha Publishing, 2020) won the 72nd Yomiuri Prize for Literature Drama Award.

Cover of Watashitachi ni yurusareta tokubetsu na jikan no owari,

Okada Toshiki, Watashitachi ni yurusareta tokubetsu na jikan no owari, Shinchosha, 2010, ISBN: 9784101296715.

Translators

Lee Hong-i

Born in Bangkok, Thailand, Matana Jaturasangpairoj is a faculty member in the Japanese Section of the Department of Eastern Languages, Faculty of Arts at Chulalongkorn University. She specializes in modern and contemporary Japanese literature. Her translations include Murakami Haruki's 1Q84 (co-translation, Gamme Magie, 2011-2012), Kawakami Hiromi's Zarazara (Sunday Afternoon, 2012), and Okada Toshiki’s The End of the Moment We Had (Gamme Magie, 2016).

우리에게 허락된 특별한 시간의 끝, translated by Lee Hong-i, Alma, 2016, ISBN: 9791159920271.

Matana Jaturasangpairo

Born in Bangkok, Thailand, Matana Jaturasangpairoj is a faculty member in the Japanese Section of the Department of Eastern Languages, Faculty of Arts at Chulalongkorn University. She specializes in modern and contemporary Japanese literature. Her translations include Murakami Haruki's 1Q84 (co-translation, Gamme Magie, 2011-2012), Kawakami Hiromi's Zarazara (Sunday Afternoon, 2012), and Okada Toshiki’s The End of the Moment We Had (Gamme Magie, 2016).

ณ จุดสุดท้ายของวาระพิเศษที่เราได้รับมา, translated by Matana Jaturasangpairoj, Gamme Magie, 2016, ISBN: 9786167591582.

Heike Patzschke

Heike Patzschke was born in 1959 and she resides in Germany. She majored in Japanese-English-German translation and interpretation at Humboldt University and Tokai University. She did doctoral work at Humboldt University and the University of Tokyo and in 1987 she received a PhD in Japanese Studies. She is currently a full-time lecturer in the Department of Japanese Studies, University of Bonn, and she is also a Japanese-German and German-Japanese interpreter and translator. Her translations include Okada Toshiki’s ”Kyori, hitsuju-hin” [Distance, Necessities] (in Jetlag Café, 2011), ”Mondai no kaiketsu” [Answer to a question] (in Neue Rundschau, 2012), The End of the Moment We Had (2012), all published by S. Fischer Verlag, and ”No Sex” (in Das Wetter, 2020), published by Das Wetter. She has also translated numerous other works by authors including Mori Ogai, Shiba Ryotaro, Masuda Mizuko, and Ono Masatsugu.

Die Zeit, die uns bleibt: Erzählungen, translated by Heike Patzschke, S. Fischer Verlag, 2012, ISBN: 9783100540171.

Sam Malissa

Born in 1981, Sam Malissa is a writer and translator based in Brooklyn, New York. He holds a PhD in Japanese literature from Yale University. His translations include The End of the Moment We Had by Okada Toshiki (Pushkin Press, 2018), Bullet Train by Isaka Kotaro (Harvill Secker, 2021), and short fiction by Sakaguchi Kyohei, Medoruma Shun, and Furukawa Hideo, among others.

The End of the Moment We Had, translated by Sam Malissa, Pushkin Press, 2018, ISBN: 9781782274162, cover design: Nathan Burton.

Facilitator

Uchino Tadashi

Born in Kyoto in 1957, Uchino Tadashi has an MA in American Literature and a PhD in Performance Studies from the University of Tokyo Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology. He was a lecturer at Okayama University, an associate professor at Meiji University, and a professor at the University of Tokyo, and he has been a professor at Gakushuin Women's College since April 2017. His main area of focus is performance studies (Japanese and American modern theatre). His books include The Melodramatic Revenge: Theatre of the Private in the 1980s (Keiso Shobo Publishing, 1996), From Melodrama to Performance: The Twentieth Century American Theatre (University of Tokyo Press, 2001), Crucible Bodies: Postwar Japanese Performance from Brecht to the New Millennium (2009, Seagull Books), and The Location of J Theatre: Towards Transnational Mobilities (2016, University of Tokyo Press)

[Contact Us]

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Arts and Culture Dept., Planning and Coordination Section
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More than Worth Sharing Translators’ Roundtable: Okada Toshiki’s The End of the Moment We Had