- Date/Time：Saturday, November 20, 2021, 14:00 – 17:15 (JST)
- Location：The Waseda International House of Literature (The Haruki Murakami Museum),
Audio Room (Live Simulcast on YouTube Live) - Organizer：Waseda International House of Literature
- Co-organizer：Top Global University Japan Project, Waseda University Global Japanese Studies
- Cooperation：Yanai Initiative for Globalizing Japanese Humanities
14:00 – 14:05 Opening Remarks
– Hirokazu Toeda (Director, Waseda International House of Literature; Professor, Waseda Faculty of Letters, Arts and Sciences)
14:05 – 14:15 Online Tour of the Waseda International House of Literature
Tour of WIHL with Robert Campbell
14:15 – 15:25 Session One: Dialogue – “Heart in the Story”—A Dialogue of Tales Coming into the World
– Yōko Ogawa (Author, Waseda alum)
– Robert Campbell (Advisor, Waseda International House of Literature; University Professor, Waseda University)
15:40 – 17:10 Session Two: Roundtable -“Border Crossings”—Literary Creation and Translation
– Li Kotomi (Author, Waseda alum)
– Hitomi Yoshio (Associate Professor, Waseda Faculty of Letters, Arts and Sciences)
– Richi Sakakibara (Associate Director, Waseda International House of Literature; Professor, Waseda School of International Liberal Studies)
17:10 – 17:15 Closing Remarks
– Robert Campbell
Moderator
– QUAN Hui (Assistant Professor(without tenure), Waseda International House of Literature)
Event Report
Because the Symposium was held online due to the COVID-19 pandemic, an online tour of the Waseda International House of Literature (WIHL) was broadcast to the YouTube Live viewers who were unable to attend the event in person. This pre-recorded tour was produced by Waseda University’s own Broadcasting Association (WHK)—the same student group that organized and broadcast the Symposium live on YouTube. WHK’s live stream of the Symposium included the help of WIHL Assistant Professor Quan Hui taking the role of event MC, and WIHL Research Associate Eric Siercks acting as technical assistant.
Session One involved an in-depth discussion between the author Yōko Ogawa and WIHL Advisor Robert Campbell on the theme “Heart in the Story”—A Dialogue of Tales Coming into the World. Ogawa opened the session by giving her impression of WIHL, comparing the building to Haruki Murakami’s debut novel Hear the Wind Sing: “There is no space here where the wind might stagnate. Sometimes I even lose track of which floor I’m on.” Professor Campbell explained that when he gave Ogawa a tour of his office, she noticed that there was a cemetery next to Waseda’s Tsubouchi Memorial Theatre Museum (Enpaku) and some residential homes next to the cemetery. The office would make a fine place to engage with literature, she said, because one could see the living and dead from the same window.
Professor Campbell then proposed a question to Ogawa. “When I read your stories and consider what ties them together under the surface, doesn’t it seem that there is concern for how people find an internal balance between having some commonplace thing snatched away from them and how they react to that very act snatching?” Professor Campbell illustrated his point by discussing the essence of Ogawa’s The Hostage’s Public Reading (Hitojichi no rōdokukai, 2011) and reading a passage for the audience.
Ogawa responded, “I’m interested in writing about the strength of people that don’t resist, the strength that comes from accepting reality.”
Professor Campbell drew from his own research on early modern Japanese literature, responding, “I think we could say that there are some ubiquitous modes of feeling that are shared amongst people living in Japan. First, there is the feeling that if one is prepared, one might be able to stave off misfortune. Second, there is the feeling that misfortune and joy are connected. This shared world comes from experiences with Buddhism and Confucianism. People don’t shout out about ‘happiness.’ ‘Sorrow’ and ‘joy’ are tied together in the word ‘kuraku,’ where both sorrow and joy arrive in a cycle. Fundamentally speaking, letting misfortune pass you by brings joyfulness.”
Session One closed with Ogawa reading selections from her 1994 novel Hisoyaka na kesshō, with Professor Campbell reading from Stephen Snyder’s 2019 English translation, The Memory Police.
Session Two, “Border Crossings”—Literary Creation and Translation, opened with a presentation by Professor Hitomi Yoshio on the theme “The Translation and Reception of Japanese Literature Abroad.” Professor Yoshio focused on the women authors and translators that are currently active in the English-speaking world. What began as the “Big Three” of Japanese authors—Jun’ichirō Tanizaki, Yasunari Kawabata, and Yukio Mishima—then became “The Next Big Three”: Kōbō Abe, Shūsaku Endo, and Kenzaburō Ōe. Generally speaking, it was works written by men that were translated for the English-language world. Starting from the 1990s, however, women writers like Mieko Kawakami, Yōko Tawada, and Yōko Ogawa made their appearance in the English-language literary marketplace. Professor Yoshio pointed out that this phenomenon was accompanied by the simultaneous emergence of women translators.
Professor Richi Sakakibara spoke next, introducing the critical conversation she had with her students when they read Li Kotomi’s recent novel The Island Where Red Spider Lillies Bloom (Higanbana ga saku shima, 2021) together in class. For example, they compared the novel’s utopian adventure with its dystopian setting—and Professor Sakakibara passed on the students’ request to Li for a sequel.
Finally, Li Kotomi explained the process that goes into her writing, as well as her self-translations of her works. “It is precisely because they are my own works that I understand the details and devices in them—and have the authority to ‘fix’ them,” she said. She added that her novel Dance Solo (Hitorimai, 2018) had some variations between the Japanese- and Chinese-language versions. Li demonstrated this by reading selections from the Japanese novel and her self-translation. After the presentations concluded, the panelists engaged in a discussion based around Li’s works, touching on texts written in multiple languages, the question of writing and gender, and the idea of border-crossing literature.
Building from the Symposium’s title, “Explore Your Story, Speak Your Heart,” the Waseda International House of Literature was pleased to welcome these two contemporary writers as special guests, and connecting their writing to the research and educational activities of the three Waseda professors that joined them. With the aid of the Waseda Broadcasting Association, the online event was viewed live by around 190 people. These viewers supplied numerous questions for the live Q&A sessions, showing a great interest in contemporary Japanese literature and literature that crosses national borders.
