Note: This episode originally aired in November 2021.
My guest today is Motoyuki Shibata, one of Japan’s most celebrated translators of American literature and a hugely important figure in the world of literary exchange between Japan and the English-speaking world.
Shibata is Professor Emeritus at the University of Tokyo, an essayist, editor, scholar, and award-winning translator whose work has helped introduce generations of Japanese readers to some of the most distinctive voices in American fiction. Over the course of his career, he has translated writers such as Paul Auster, Steven Millhauser, Stuart Dybek, Rebecca Brown, Brian Evenson, Kelly Link, Laird Hunt, Thomas Pynchon, and many others. His translations are not simply acts of linguistic conversion; they are literary performances in their own right, helping expand what contemporary Japanese prose can sound like.
He is also central to the story of MONKEY, the Japanese literary journal he runs, and MONKEY: New Writing from Japan, its English-language offspring. Through MONKEY, Shibata has helped create a lively bridge between Japanese and international literary worlds, bringing together fiction, essays, poetry, manga, translation, and conversations across cultures.
In this conversation, we talk about his life in translation, the writers who shaped him, the philosophy behind his work, and the pleasure and difficulty of carrying literature from one language into another. We also get into MONKEY, his role as an editor and curator of contemporary writing, and some more personal reflections on reading, travel, language, and the life behind the work.
It was a real honor to speak with someone who has done so much to open doors between Japanese and American literature, and I’m very happy to bring this conversation back to listeners.