Professor Motoyuki Shibata is Japan's leading translator of contemporary American literature and the founder of a Tokyo-based literary magazine, Monkey Business. He has translated the works of Paul Auster, Steven Millhauser, Stuart Dybek, and Richard Powers, among others. In 2010, Professor Shibata has received the Japan Translation Cultural Prize for his translation of Thomas Pynchon's Mason & Dixon.
He also received the Suntory Prize for Social Sciences and Humanities for American Narcissus in 2005. He has been a professor of American literature and literary translation at the Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, University of Tokyo until Spring 2014.
Professor Keijiro Suga is a renowned Japanese poet, writer, and translator (French/Spanish/English). He is author of many books, including Strangeography (2013), The Moon When the Wolves Run Together (2012), The Rain that Falls on the Sea (2012), The Water of the Island, the Fire of the Island (2011), AgendʼArs (2010), among others. He has also translated works of fiction, including Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince. In 2011, Professor Suga was awarded the Yomiuri Prize for Literature for his travel essay, Transversal Journeys (2009). He is a professor of Digital Content Studies at Meiji University.
In addition to individual lectures, Professors Shibata and Suga are going to give Readings of the work of Kenji Miyazawa, acclaimed Japanese poet. Miyazawa's work include Milky Way Railroad (1934) and "Ame ni mo makezu" (Be Not Defeated by Rain). This is a one-night only, special version of the Play/Reading, "Milky Way Railroad," in which Professors Shibata and Suga participated. The play re-imagines Miyazawa's work after the experiences of 2011 Tohoku Earthquake. Filmmaker Hiroki Kawai has recently completed a documentary film, Hontō no uta (One True Song), about the play. We are going to screen Hontō no uta after the Reading by Professors Shibata and Suga.
The schedule of their lectures, reading, and screening is as follows. Attached please find a poster of this Special Lectures and Screening as well. All the events are open to the public.
Thursday, May 15
4-5:50pm
229 Mckenzie Hall
"What We Talk about When We Talk about Translation.”
Lecture by Professor Motoyuki Shibata.
Friday, May 16
4-5pm
221 Mckenzie Hall
"Strangeography, etc."
Lecture by Professor Keijiro Suga.
5-7:30pm
"All Aboard the Milky Way Train!: Some Little Things We Did after March 11, 2011.”
Special Reading by Professors Motoyuki Shibata and Keijiro Suga.
Followed by the Special Screening:
Hontō no uta (One True Song; Directed by Hiroki Kawai, 2014).
In Japanese, no English subtitles.