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When it comes to Japanese literary translation there are few who enjoy the reputation of Edward Seidensticker. From his consummate translation of the eleventh-century classic Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu through to his efforts with such modern masters as Jun'ichiro Tanizaki and the Nobel Prize-winning Yasunari Kawabata, Seidensticker has done more than most to spread the popularity of Japanese literature abroad. But as well as being a translator, he is also an author of considerable merit, and his books he has written about Japan have won wide critical acclaim. The scholar talks to Jonathan Watts.

How did you first come to Japan?
I was with the Occupation, with the Marine Corps. I was a Japanese-language officer and was ordered to come to Kyushu in September 1945. Others have inspirational stories about seeing cherry blossom in bloom or some other experience, but that is not the way it was for me. On Sunday, December 7, 1941, I was getting ready to graduate from college and on that day the attack on Pearl Harbor happened. I started looking around - no heroism in it - at ways to get through the war in relative safety and comfort, and I came across the Japanese language, specifically the Navy Japanese-language school. That was the beginning of it. Up till that point, I had no interest in Japan whatsoever.

How did you learn Japanese?
It was a revolutionary way in those days and hasn't changed much since. The service language school assumed that it was possible for us to learn Japanese. Before the war, it had been assumed that only the Japanese could learn Japanese - a ridiculous assumption. But the Navy language school said we could, providing we had a reasonable amount of ability and intelligence. They taught what was called the natural method. We didn't learn grammar, but learned from speaking and listening, the way a child does. I'm not sure it's a very valid theory, but it was a good school, probably the best I've ever been in. By the end of 14 months, we were able to read a newspaper. Before the war, that would have been thought impossible. The Army required its language students to be soldiers, but the Navy didn't require anything of us. Except that we study Japanese. It was complete concentration on one subject, which is not how most universities work. And we worked on it steadily without relief.

What were your feelings towards Japan before you came?
I was always very suspicious of propaganda and therefore the anti-Japanese propaganda had the opposite effect on me. It convinced me that they couldn't be that bad. I didn't feel hostility or bitterness. When we arrived in Kyushu, the people weren't exactly friendly, but they certainly weren't hostile. That didn't particularly surprise me.

What was your first impression?
My impressions were varied. As far as the Japanese were concerned, I thought they were rather marvelous in the way they very quickly shook off the shock of it all and went to work. That time in Sasebo in Kyushu was what really convinced me I should make a career of Japanese. It was the behavior of the Japanese that convinced me that the country would amount to something again one day. I did not foresee an economic miracle, but I saw that the language was worth studying.

How did you move into translation?
On my second visit to Japan, I stayed in Tokyo until 1962. I was several things: a graduate student at the University of Tokyo, I taught at Sophia University and I did a little freelance translation and writing. The first long translation I did was a scholarly thing that could not be called professional - a diary from the tenth century. Then I was approached by Alfred Knopf in New York. My first translation from that publishing house was a Tanizaki novel. I then did Kawabata and moved back and forth between Tanizaki and Kawabata.

Why did you choose those two?
Because I thought they were good. They were very delicate, very powerful novelists. I chose Tanizaki and Kawabata because I thought they were simultaneously classic and modern. They stood at the juncture of old and new. And I think a great deal of good literature does exactly that. Though someone can be at that juncture of old and new and still be a lousy writer.

When translating, do you put the emphasis on getting everything right word for word, or conveying sense?
I stay as close to the original as I can, but for me it is very important for the translation to read smoothly - in other words, to have a certain literary quality and that means very frequently in matters of small detail departing from the original. A literal translation cannot be a very literary translation. But I stay as close to the original as I can. My theory of translation is that it is imitation; it is counterfeiting. And the counterfeiter who makes George Washington on the dollar bill look handsomer than he was is not a good counterfeiter. There has to be a spiritual bond between the translation and the original work, which means the translator must like the original work. But if someone tells you your translation is better than the original, you should consider it an insult because that is not what you're supposed to be doing. You are not supposed to be improving.

Do you check with the authors when you depart from their original?
It's useless because authors don't like to talk about their work. At least the ones I have known best don't like to talk about their work. I never asked Tanizaki about anything, but it was very clear: Tanizaki is a very lucid writer; there are almost no problems of comprehension. I did ask Kawabata, but he was never any help, so I stopped.

What was your most satisfying translation?
That's easy - Tale of Genji. It was very difficult. Translation becomes a bore if it is not difficult. I enjoyed translating Genji more than anything else I did. And that is largely because I had a terrible time understanding what it meant. And sometimes I didn't understand and had to make a stab at the meaning. Some sections are so difficult to put into English. With that kind of work, you may be exhausted from time to time, but you are never bored. From start to finish, it took a dozen years, but I was doing other things at the same time. I think if I had worked only on Genji, it would have taken me five or six years.

What were Tanizaki and Kawabata like?
I did come to think of both of them as friends, and that is because of the translation work, I saw more of Kawabata than Tanizaki, which is curious because he was considered the less sociable of the two. But he was more accessible. He lived in Kamakura. We could go down to Kamakura and come back in a day. Then he won the Nobel Prize and took me off to Stockholm with him. I think that led to a very considerable feeling of nearness. He was a nice man. He took some getting used to. He was very silent and would go a whole evening not saying a thing. This initially made me very uncomfortable. But then I gradually saw that was just the way he was. It didn't indicate a lack of interest, dislike or hostility or anything of that sort. We got along just dandy saying nothing, looking into each other's eyes. He had extraordinary, large piercing eyes.

What was your impression of Mishima?
I never liked his writing, but he was a very interesting man. He was extremely intelligent. He had thoughts on lots of things, some of which I agreed with, others I didn't. I didn't like his fiction; I thought his plays were better than his fiction. But his best writing was his criticism. He was a superb critic. He was sometimes very mad at me, but I never heard that from him. I only heard that later from others. Some of the things I said made him very angry, but he never showed it. I got on with him very well, but he laughed too much. And when people laugh too much, you wonder whether anything amuses them.

Did you have any inkling that he would commit suicide?
I thought all along that he would one day kill himself. Suicide runs all the way through his writing. I thought that if he didn't someday kill himself, than it would all turn out to have been a lie. But I didn't expect him to do it the way he did or as soon as he did. I wasn't as startled with his suicide as I was with Kawabata's. Of course, there are people who still say that Kawabata didn't kill himself, that it was an accident. In Mishima's case, I think he decide how he would do it well in advance. That he knew when he would do it is quite clear. You know, he finished writing the last novel - the one that I translated, The Death of the Angel - in the summer. He killed himself that November. On the last page he gives the date of his death, so he'd obviously chosen that sometime earlier.

Why do you think that the fifties and sixties were such a vibrant period in Japanese literature?
I don't really know. I think it just happened. There are literary ups and downs. There are bleak periods and very good periods. It's not easy to tell why they come. I think the beginning of a very strong period was round about the time of the First World War; it lasted through the Second World War until the fifties and sixties. This would be a period from, say, 1910 to 1970, of 60 years. I think it can be looked upon perhaps as one cycle. Beginning with Natsume Soseki and ending with the deaths of the big writers - Tanizaki, Kawabata and Mishima. I suppose people who are good at this kind of thing can find sociological explanations. I'm not, I can't see it being anything more than chance. You can see why it started. At the beginning of the First World War, when Japan had pretty much assimilated influences form the West and was setting out on its own. The mystery is why nothing really good has come since. I guess you can explain that to a large measure by television. TV has had a terrible effect on arts the world over, and nowhere has the effect been more dreadful than here. And the computer. When young people have computers to play with, they no longer play with literature. The computer becomes an end in itself. But the worst thing is television, which has a very destructive effect.

Do you see any traits that link Genji with Kawabata?
Certainly, the Kawabata style is the Murasaki style. The elusiveness of the Kawabata style seems to be very akin to Murasaki. He can be clear, but he prefers to be elusive and foggy. And that is also Murasaki. You can think of classical Japanese literature falling into two categories. The Japanese style with Tale of Genji sort of at the beginning. And the Sino-Japanese style, Tale of Heike. The Japanese style is very elusive, very ambiguous, awfully hard to keep up with what's going on. One word will contain all the important elements of a sentence. A very long verb or adjective at the end, which will tell you who the speaker or doer is and what is his or her rank. It is all in that verb or adjective. The Sino-Japanese style is very clear by comparison. It is difficult to read because you have to know a lot of characters. You don't with Genji and in that sense Genji is the simpler of the two. But in the sense of being explicit, of coming to the point, the Sino-Japanese style is much clearer; I've often said that Kawabata is in the Japanese style, while Tanizaki is in the Sino-Japanese style.

You have been observing Japan for more than 50 years. Some say that it changes on the surface but never changes underneath.
I used to say that. People would say that Japan was changing. Look at the young people, and I would say, “Wait 20 years. Now they're 15, but when they're 35, they will be exactly like their mamas and papas.” But now I think they really are changing. The young people are beyond redemption. That puts it somewhat extremely, but I really am put off by them. I think this is a change that will not be overcome as they age, but maybe it will. Perhaps this current will turn out to be stronger than I thought it was. But now I think that things are finally changing.

Why do you think the young are so bad?
Because they have too much money. The Japanese are much nicer people when they are poor. This should not be taken to mean that I think they ought to be poor, but I think they are nicer when they are poor. The young people have too much money. They have an utterly hedonist outlook; they are interested only in pleasure, and they think they can do whatever they want to do. I think that is something we Americans taught them.

Do you feel that Japan has declined in the 50 years since you first arrived?
It seemed to be so remarkable for its durability - the old system of ethics and morals, the old dogmas. I think it's a great pity that it has diminished. But it hasn't been quick. It has been 50 years, but it's only now that I feel that some permanent change is occurring. People are a great deal better off. The Japanese have a great deal more material things than ever before in their history. That can be considered improvement. That some great things are gone or are going is hard to deny. But I'm very reluctant to be nostalgic. To be nostalgic, to yearn for a time 50 years ago, is to yearn for a time when I had money and they had none. And that would be immoral.

This article originally appeared in the January 2003 issue of the JAL inflight magazine, Winds, and is reprinted with permission.

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