Factbook

A Dynamic Compendium of Interesting Japanese Literary and Publishing Facts
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    Japanese officials handed out a novel by Banana Yoshimoto at the 1993 Tokyo G-7 Summit[UPDATED: 9-3-2026]

    Long before Japan’s Foreign Ministry had developed its official Japan Brand Program (a framework it uses today), in the 1990s its officials decided to hand out hundreds of copies of a newly translated novel, Kitchen, by Banana Yoshimoto with media packs to the hundreds of international journalists attending the 1993 Tokyo Group of Seven (G7) summit. 

    The novel, which was especially popular in Italy, one of the Group of Seven nations, where an edition was published in Italian translated by Giorgio Amitrano in 1993, helped Banana Yoshimoto to become Japan’s first author to “go-global”, a feat that perhaps only Haruki Murakami has managed to replicate since. The novel sold more than 90,000 copies in Italy alone and sold well in many other international markets. 

    It wasn’t just the Japanese Foreign Ministry that promoted the book. International publishers also invested heavily in the book’s marketing at a time when Japan’s economic bubble was starting to deflate. This said, international interest in Japan (a nation that some thought was about to overtake the United States to become the world’s new economic superpower), was still extremely high.

    This young Asian woman with the odd sounding name Banana, who found comfort in kitchens, sparked international curiosity and fame. Long before Japan’s so-called lost decades when interest in Japan alongside its economy declined. 

    When the book was initially published in Japan in 1988 it triggered an amazing response that was dubbed by the media as Bananamania. The novel went on to win several literary awards and establish Yoshimoto’s reputation as an important contemporary Japanese author.  

    Kitchen, which was Yoshimoto’s debut novel, has now been adapted for both film and television and is often included on must read book lists by Japanese authors helping position Yoshimoto alongside Haruki Murakami as one of Japan’s two most famous and global contemporary authors.

    Japanese officials handed out a novel by Banana Yoshimoto at the 1993 Tokyo G-7 Summit Posted by Richard Nathan
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    Futabatei Shimei, a Russian speaker who actually wanted to be a diplomat not a writer, left a major literary legacy in Japan[UPDATED: 9-3-2026]

    Futabatei Shimei (1864-1909) learnt Russian with the aim of becoming a diplomat or international businessman, but a lack of employment options forced him to turn to writing and translation instead.

    He was the first Japanese writer to use colloquial language in his writing, avoiding established writing styles, thereby writing what has been called, by academics and experts in Japanese literature, ‘Japan’s first modern novel’, Ukigumo, The Drifting Cloud, a hugely important milestone in the development of the canon of Japanese literature.

    Translating Western novels forced many translators, including Shimei, to render the works they were translating in colloquial Japanese, which led to this new realistic style. And many considered traditional literary Japanese inefficient and old fashioned.

    In the late 19th century this new style, known as Write it Like It Is, Genbun Itchi, was widely adopted by translators, as it added flexibility and allowed for creative expression.

    There were, however, ‘dissidents and rebels’ who bucked this emerging new trend, but its supporters wanted to try to fuse written and spoken Japanese together in a manner that would generate new European-style novels written in Japanese, such as The Drifting Cloud, the first of its type. 

    Japanese women were said to have an advantage, according to some academics, as they had been trained to write letters, dairies and journals in spoken language, while men were historically always encouraged to write in a more formal style. 

    Shimei, born Tatsunosuke Hasegawa, wrote in a colloquial style about the society around him in addition to translating Russian authors into Japanese, including Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (1818-1883).

    The Drifting Cloud was published in three volumes between 1887 and 1888 and was in fact never completed. Nevertheless, its realism, style and critique of growing materialism in Japan were highly influential. 

    Shimei died in 1909 at the age of 45 from tuberculosis, on his return from Russia where he had been working as a special correspondent for the Asahi Shimbun, a major Japanese national newspaper.

    Futabatei Shimei, a Russian speaker who actually wanted to be a diplomat not a writer, left a major literary legacy in Japan Posted by Richard Nathan
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    Japan’s most notorious author Yukio Mishima translated and adapted children’s books including children’s editions of Shakespeare[UPDATED: 9-3-2026]

    Yukio Mishima (1925-1970), one of Japan’s most famous authors and probably the nation’s most notorious, wrote 40 novels, 18 plays, 20 books of short stories, books of essays, hundreds of poems, as well as plays and film scripts before he died at the age of 45.

    He also translated and adapted several children’s books that were published as illustrated books including Lewis Carroll’s (1832-1898) Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and several of William Shakespeare’s (1564-1616) plays including: Hamlet (1951) with illustrations by Goro Kurosawa; and A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream (1952) with illustrations by Kazuo Ikeda.

    Mishima’s translation of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was published in 1952 with illustrations by Goro Kumada under the title Fushiginokuni Arisu. 

    Mishima also adapted and translated Don Quiote by Miguel de Cervantes (1605-1615), which was published in 1955, also as a children’s book by the Tokyo based children’s publisher Akane Shobo, which also published the other books mentioned above.

    Japan’s most notorious author Yukio Mishima translated and adapted children’s books including children’s editions of Shakespeare Posted by Richard Nathan
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    The arrival of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Japan in 1895 spawned thousands of translations and adaptions – with more Japanese translations than any other language[UPDATED: 3-31-2026]

    According to some academics the first Japanese translations of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (1832-1898) appeared in two Japanese magazines in serial form in 1895 and 1899, Shonen Sekai (A Boy’s World) and Shojo Sekai (Girl’s World).

    These translations, however, have little resemblance to Carroll’s original, published in 1865, in English, by Macmillan.

    In fact, there were several early Japanese translations and adaptations, and an edition published in 1920, with the title Fushigi no Kuni, Wonderland, is also sometimes cited as the first Japanese translation of Carroll’s work.

    That said, according to Japan’s National Diet Library, the first full and complete translation, in which the whole story of the original was translated faithfully, was published in 1910.

    A copy of this edition, Aichan no yume monogatari. containing copies of John Tenniel’s (1820-1914) famous original illustrations, translated by Eikan Maruyama and published by Nagai Shuppan Kyokai, is accessible online at the library.

    It has been widely commented that in some of these early translations changes were made not just because of the difficulty in rendering the story in Japanese, but also, according to some commentators, to reflect Japanese traditions of the time, such as Alice not arguing with the Mad Hatter,  “because it would be improper to disrespect one’s elders” and the Hatter not offering Alice tea, probably because it was “inappropriate for men to serve food or drinks to women in Japan” at that time.

    This and the story itself has helped spawn a burning desire amongst many to try and create the prefect translation, or a brilliant creative adaptation, or an unusual homage that challenges society’s expectations, a rabbit hole of a challenge that some of Japanese most famous and highly-regarded authors, including Ryunosuke Akutagawa (1892-1927) and Yukio Mishima (1925-1970), have felt compelled to go down.

    Perhaps unsurprisingly, this has created a field day for many including academic researchers who have written papers and arranged conferences on the topic such as: Being Alice in Japan: performing a cute, ‘girlish’ revolt; Alice in evasion: adapting Lewis Carroll in Japan; and Alice in Wonderland in Japan: Contemporary media and Carroll’s creation.

    There are now literally thousands of translations, more than 1,271 at pixel time, according to Wikipedia. And there have been many other types of creative adaptations by artists like Yayoi Kusama, as well as many manga and anime versions. So much so that a special section titled Through the Looking-Glass and into Manga was included at The British Museum’s landmark 2019 exhibition on manga in London.

    The arrival of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Japan in 1895 spawned thousands of translations and adaptions – with more Japanese translations than any other language Posted by Richard Nathan
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    Japan’s two oldest history books were translated into English for the first time by two British Japanologists in 1882 and 1896[UPDATED: 3-31-2026]

    The best sources for myths about the foundation of the Land of the Rising Sun are two early chronicles, the Kojiki, the Record of Ancient Things, and the Nihongi, the Japanese Chronicles.

    The Koji was complied in 712 and is the oldest extant Japanese book, while the Nihongi, the second oldest book of ‘classical Japanese history’, was compiled in 720 eight years later.

    Basil Hall Chamberlain (1850-1935), an academic and son of an Admiral who taught at Tokyo Imperial University and translated haiku amongst other things after arriving in Japan in 1873, was the first person to translate the Kojiki into English. His translation was published in the Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, in 1882.

    The Nihongi was translated into English by a contemporary, William George Aston (1841-1911), another 19th century British Japanologist, who started his Japan-related career in 1864 as a student translator at the British Legation, the precursor to the British Embassy in Tokyo.

    Aston’s translation was published in the Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan in 1896.

    That said, the oldest surviving Japanese book is not a book about Japan and its history, but a religious text written in 615. It is owned by Japan’s Imperial Family.

    Japan’s two oldest history books were translated into English for the first time by two British Japanologists in 1882 and 1896 Posted by Richard Nathan
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    Sherlock Holmes arrived in the Land of the Rising Sun in 1894 when a Japanese summary translation of ‘The Man with the Twisted Lip’ was published[UPDATED: 3-11-2026]

    The history of Sherlock Holmes in Japan goes back to 1894, when a Japanese summary translation of The Man with the Twisted Lip by Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle (1859-1930) was published in the January issue of Nippon-jin. It was originally published in English in the Strand Magazine in 1891.

    A few years later in April 1899, the Mainichi Shimbun, a major national newspaper, began a three-month series featuring an anonymous adaptation of A Study in Scarlet.

    However, the first complete Japanese translation of a Homles story, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes was published in another newspaper in 1899 and the first book length translation in 1907.

    Ever since, Holmes has been massively popular in Japan. Adaptations, pastiches, parodies, manga, anime, TV dramas and a large number of research papers on Holmes and Victorian society and culture have been produced.

    Papers in Japanese include, for example, The London of Natsume Soseki and Holmes, A Comparative Study of Japanese Translation Techniques in Holmes Stories, The Influences of Holmes Stories on Japanese Mysteries and many others.

    Other British mystery and detective writers including Agatha Christie (1890-1976), have been and continue to be popular in Japan but none seem to have had the impact as Holmes or generated as many studies and spin-offs.

    The only comparable character from a book by a British author is probably Lewis Carroll’s (1832-1898) Alice from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, which was published in English in 1865, before the very first Holmes story, which first appeared in print in 1887.

    Sherlock Holmes arrived in the Land of the Rising Sun in 1894 when a Japanese summary translation of ‘The Man with the Twisted Lip’ was published Posted by Richard Nathan
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    The first English language edition of Kobo Abe’s ‘The Woman in the Dunes’ was illustrated by his wife Machi[UPDATED: 6-17-2024]

    In 1964, the year of the first Tokyo Olympics, Alfred A. Knoff published the first American Edition of Kobo Abe’s (1924-1993) The Women in the Dunes in English, translated by E. Dale Saunders (1919-1995).

    This first edition is beautifully illustrated with multiple drawings, rendered in pen and ink, by the author’s wife Machi who he met while he was at university studying medicine. Many believe his wife, who was an artist and theatre designer, was the inspiration behind his decision to quit the medical profession shortly after he graduated from university and one year after they married in 1947.

    The drawings depict not just the protagonists, but also the insects one of the novel’s protagonists collects while on a break from work at the start of the narrative, a break he finds it impossible to return from.

    One such illustration, for instance, consists of four rows of insects, each with four similar looking insects holding the feelers of the insect next to them, as if they are line dancing on the page.

    The Women in the Dunes, a jarringly dry novel about the futility and repetitiveness of modern Japanese existence, was Abe’s first novel published in English.  It had already won the Yomiuri Prize for Literature in Japan in 1960 and was published in America in English 16 years after Abe had made his debut as a writer in Japan.

    A film adaptation of The Women in the Dunes, directed by Hiroshi Teshigahara (1927-2001), with its unusually memorable sound track by Toru Takemitsu (1930-1996), also went on general release in the same year as the English edition was published in America in 1964.

    The film subsequently won the special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival the same year, helping launch Abe’s reputation and career outside Japan.

    Abe, son of a medical doctor, was brought up in Mukuden, Manchuria where his father was working at a medical school. And like the protagonist in The Women in the Dunes, Abe was fascinated with and collected insects from a young age. Despite all of this or because of it his own son subsequently decided to continue the family tradition and became a doctor.

    Abe was a fan of Nietzche, Heidegger, Jaspers as well as Kafka, an author that he has often been compared to. In fact, he is often given the moniker ‘The Kafka of Japan’.

    Abe studied medicine like his father, but in 1948 the year he graduated from Tokyo Imperial University, his debut book, The Road Sign at the End of the Road, was published. Three years later he went on to win the prestigious Akutagawa Literary Prize for his novel The Crime of Mr. S. Karuma.

    Abe was a highly creative individual who ran his own avant-garde theatre group and also wrote science fiction. His best-known work of science fiction, Inter Ice Age 4, published at the height of the Cold War in 1959, is thought by many to be one of the best works of science fiction written by a Japanese author.

    Unsurprisingly, Abe and The Woman in the Dunes in particular are still popular today amongst some of Japan’s most creative individuals. People like the up-and-coming film director Yuka Eda, director and screenwriter of the 2018 crowd-funded film Shojo Kaiko, Girls’ Encounter, and the 2019 drama 21st Century Girl.

    Such Japanese artists often cite Abe as being inspirational and hugely influential on their own work, but few recall or seem to be aware of the talents of his wife and her illustrations.

    The 1964 American edition of The Women in the Dunes contains the following text on the page opposite its copyright page: “Without The Threat Of Punishment There Is No Joy In Flight”.

    1964, Japan’s Olympic year, was not only a pivotal year for Abe with the twin milestones of his English language edition and the release of the book’s prize-winning film adaptation. It was also a significant year for Japanese publishing, other creative writers, and for Japan itself.

    The first English language edition of Kobo Abe’s ‘The Woman in the Dunes’ was illustrated by his wife Machi Posted by Richard Nathan
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    A poem about a frog written in 1686 by Japan’s most famous poet is Japan’s best known poem[UPDATED: 10-2-2023]

    Matsuo Basho, the 17th-century Japanese haiku master said to be Japan’s most famous poet as well as one of the world’s most influential, wrote the most famous Japanese poem and the most famous haiku ever penned.

    The poem, which he wrote at the age of 44 in 1686, is a very a simple poem about a frog.

    Translators have been trying ever since to find the perfect way to render the poem English, and there are unsurprisingly a myriad of versions of the poem in English translation as well as many other languages.

    Old pond – frogs jumped in – sound of water. (Lafcadio Hearn)

    Into the calm old lake A frog with flying leap goes plop! The peaceful hush to break. (William J. Porter)

    Old pond frog leaping splash (Cid Corman)

    A lonely pond in age-old stillness sleeps … A part, unstirred by sound or motion … till Suddenly into it a lithe frog leaps. (Curtis Hidden Page)

    The original Japanese is:

    古池や蛙飛び込む水の音

    Furu ike ya, kawazu tobikomu, mizu no oto

    A poem about a frog written in 1686 by Japan’s most famous poet is Japan’s best known poem Posted by Richard Nathan