Bridgewater Review

Volume 38 Issue 1 Article 10

4-2019

Review Essay - Women in Translation: Yoko Tawada’s The Emissary

Robin Tierney

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Recommended Citation Tierney, Robin (2019). Review Essay - Women in Translation: Yoko Tawada’s The Emissary. Bridgewater Review, 38(1), 34-36. Available at: https://vc.bridgew.edu/br_rev/vol38/iss1/10

This item is available as part of Virtual Commons, the open-access institutional repository of Bridgewater State University, Bridgewater, Massachusetts. in 2018 the National Book Award REVIEW ESSAY and the Man Booker Prize were both awarded to the translations of Women in Translation: women writers. Four of the five final- ists for the National Book Award for Yoko Tawada’s The Emissary Translated Literature were works written by female authors. In contrast, Robin Tierney the literary prize that was in some ways a predecessor to the Man Booker hen, in 2018, the author Yoko Tawada Prize for International Literature, The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, won the inaugural National Book Award awarded just two female writers in its for Translated Literature and the translator twenty-one-year history. Social media W movements such as #womenintrans­ Jennifer Croft won the Man Booker Prize for lation, and its attendant #WIT month International Literature, I felt as though plucked from in August, have been key in raising a worldwide audience of bingo players as I realized awareness of the gender imbalance that my numbers, in the form of award-winning in translation. translations to which I had some connection, had been Adding to this Möbius strip of inter- locking causality is the desire expressed called. Yoko Tawada’s writing was the main focus by #namethetranslator; the movement of my doctoral dissertation in Japanese literature, a to recognize the significant role of the translator. (Think for a moment of dissertation that I wrote while in graduate school at the last work of literature in transla- the University of Iowa with Jennifer Croft. The dim tion that you read – isn’t it tempting to halls of our faltering Department of Comparative recall the words as though they issued directly forth from the author?) The Literature – Jennifer and I comprised precisely half of Man Booker Group expressed this the students in our year – were at quite a far remove recognition with the unconventional from the glamor of New York Times spreads and move of awarding equal purses to the writers and the translators. And when award ceremonies at the Victoria and Albert. How, I Flights won the award this past year, the wondered, did the cultural zeitgeist shift to form this author Olga Tokarczuk, and her trans- connection to my rather desultory academic studies? lator Jennifer Croft, appeared as a duo

As I set about writing a review of The of pushback against the bullying which Emissary for which Tawada had won Polish immigrants experienced in the the award, it became clear that the same wake of Brexit.) The publishing world drive for inclusion that has produced is now creating space, at the side of the broader programming, all-gender biggest literary awards, for literature not public restrooms, and the most racially originally written in English. In 2016 diverse and most female group ever the most internationally recognized elected to the U.S. House of repre- literature award for an individual work sentatives, is also strong in parts of the in English, the Man Booker Prize, English-language publishing world. established an award for literature in Opposition to reactionary forces is also translation. The U.S.-based National strong, as is the role of social media Book Award followed suit in 2018. in rallying together that opposition. The work of women writers is trans- (Jennifer has suggested that the selec- lated more and receiving greater tion of the Polish novel she translated, attention. While literature written by Flights, for the U.K. based Man Booker women has typically comprised less International prize may have been part than 30% of literature in translation,

34 Bridgewater Review at the many events and book readings School bathrooms had turned into Should a reader be looking for hope, that followed the announcement to an joyful places with colorful walls the ‘Emissary’ of the title provides unprecedented degree. I am tempted and lots of flowers and vegetation. some. An underground organization to posit causality between women The students heard that they used that has connections to the world out- writers who are increasingly translated, to be places you were supposed side of the now-isolated Japan searches and translators receiving more of the to get in and out of quickly. That for exceptional children – emissaries - spotlight; wouldn’t the recognition of was probably because of the germs. to smuggle out of the country with the hitherto unrecognized labor and genius But the teachers assured them that purpose of aiding international medical be a signature feminist move? “there were a lot more things more study and the possibility of extending frightening in their environment their life span. Mumei comes under Tawada is exemplary of the changes now” (115). consideration for such a mission. afoot in the literary world; she is a border-crossing woman writer who publishes in both her adult-acquired German and her native Japanese, she The publishing world is now has recently seen an uptake in the number of her novels being translated creating space, at the side of and she appreciates the role of the translator to such an extent that she the biggest literary awards, for prefers the word ‘transformation’ over ‘translation.’ Indeed, she has won two literature not originally written of the inaugural awards for literature in in English. translation: in addition to the National Book Award, Tawada also won the first Warwick Prize for Women in Translation (2017) for her German- When Yoshiro plans his 108th birth- Margaret Mitsutani’s translation allows language Memoirs of a Polar Bear, trans- day party he reflects back on his last a non-Japanese-reading audience to lated by Susan Bernofsky. birthday dinner with regret: “you could read a tale of environmental degrada- The Emissary, translated from Japanese tell the younger generation by their tion by a writer from a culture with a by Margaret Mitsutani, is a novel about rounded backs, thinning hair, pale historically unique experience of mass a future Japan that has been irrevocably faces, and by how slowly their chop- radiation. Translation, generally speak- altered by too much radiation; older sticks moved. Realizing their descend- ing, broadens the range of human expe- people can’t die and younger people ants were in such a bad state because rience and imagination to which we all are enfeebled. It is a clear response to they’d been so feckless made the elderly have access. But translation also does the Fukushima nuclear power plant feel guilty, dampening the festivi- something else; it can point us towards failure with echoes of the experience ties” (93). Surprisingly, however, the that which struggles to be translated. of hibakusha – victims of radiation sick- children have a fundamentally different Tawada, who writes in multiple lan- ness from the atomic bombs. Mumei emotional response to their situation guages, has said that she doesn’t want to (literally ‘no name’) is a young boy because their generation is “equipped cross the gulf that exists between two who is raised by his great-grandfather, with natural defenses against despair” languages, but that she “wants to live in Yoshiro. While Yoshiro is wearied by (128). It is as though Tawada casts the the ditch that separates them.” gloomy future by invoking our current the prospect of his possible immortality, In terms of The Emissary, that ‘ditch’ understanding of what a contaminated he is saddened by the short life span of is the wordplay that many Japanese world would look like, but recognizes his grandson who has little independent readers found to be the focal delight that twenty-first-century humans mobility and struggles to digest most of the story. The flexibility of written aren’t so all-knowing as to be able to food. Such a seemingly grim premise, Japanese is strikingly different from imagine the psychic developments that written in Tawada’s unsentimental that of a purely phonetic code. Chinese will ensue from that contamination. and slightly surrealist style, becomes characters – kanji in Japanese – derived We might be powerful enough to mess simultaneously a cautionary apocalyptic from China and therefore they typically things up, she seems to say, but it would tale and a fanciful exploration of un- possess a Chinese-affiliated reading be hubris to think we are powerful knowable consequences: and at least one, though usually more, enough to see the future. Japanese readings. There is a linguistic convention that also allows writers to

April 2019 35 attribute their own idiosyncratic use And this brings me back full circle to of a kanji as long as phonetic lettering the coincidence of both the subject is provided alongside for the reader. of my dissertation and my classmate Tawada takes advantage of this conven- receiving major awards for translated tion when composing the Japanese title, works within the same year. The nar- pronounced ken-toe-she, and rendered rator of Flights ponders the qualities with kanji that can also produce those of a global language in a way that was sounds, but do not contain the meaning entirely new to me: ‘emissary.’ Instead of the standard 遣 There are countries out there 唐使, she created 献灯使 for the title. where people speak English. But Why does this matter? Because the not like us – we have our own former set of kanji specifically refer- languages hidden in our carry-on ence the imperial knowledge-gathering luggage, in our cosmetic bags, only expeditions to T’ang China, while ever using English when we travel Tawada’s title drops that reference and then only in foreign countries, altogether and puts in its place ‘votive to foreign people… candles.’ Votive candles are the sole link that connects members of the under- How lost they must feel in the ground organization in the story; every world when all instructions, all morning members get up while it is still the lyrics of the stupidest songs, dark and light a candle before they head British book cover for The Last Children of all the menus, all the excruciating out for their day. It is a quiet and private Tokyo by Yoko Tawada. pamphlets and brochures – even ritual. Instead of alluding to cultural the buttons in the elevator – are borrowing from an august empire, the to articulate the vast possibilities of lan- in their private language. They title references a quotidian mode of guage creation and mental processing. may be understood by anyone at resistance. Or, rather, it does both at the Tawada is interested in using a language any moment, whenever they open same time. with as much awareness of the lan- their mouths…Wherever they are guage’s fabrication as possible. She does people have unlimited access to Tawada’s homophonic neologisms often not try to inhabit a language as though them – they are accessible to insert tension between grand public it were ‘natural’ – hence her desire to everyone and everything! (176) narratives and more base human reali- write in a non-native tongue - and ties. The new government declares a she rejects the confines of a ‘beautiful Would this perspective on English-as- slew of national holidays to memorial- national Japanese language.’ Her work the-global-language be written by a ize the past. One such holiday com- repeatedly unmoors selfhood from monolingual English-language writer? memorates the internet, since Japan language and national identity. One of Would Tawada’s nuanced, sometimes has lost its connection to the World her narrators reminds readers that when humorous take on post-radiation come Wide Web. The kanji that Tawada puts they see her jean-clad figure traveling from a writer whose parents hadn’t together to name that holiday -御婦裸 alone on a train they would be wrong experienced daily life after nuclear 淫- mean the ‘the honorable perversion in assuming that she has a kimono devastation? I don’t think so, and I am of female nudity.’ The sounds that these stored away at home somewhere. very glad that the publishing world is kanji individually produce in Japanese, Another narrator, in the short story creating greater access to translations of however, are o-fu-ra-een, approxi- Persona, is so tired of being harassed as such insightful women writers. mating the English ‘offline.’ Readers, an Asian woman living in Berlin that then, pronounce ‘offline’ at the same she puts a Noh mask on and wanders time that their attention is drawn to the the city, as though to make tangible extent to which the massive distribu- the ‘Japanese’ mask that people already tion of graphic and filmic pornography project onto her. A volume of Tawada’s comprised one of the largest functions vignettes is titled “Exophany: the of the internet. adventures of travelling away from the Translation itself does not illustrate mother tongue.” In an era of World- the marvelous differences that exist English such a drive to relieve oneself between languages, but the existence of the linguistic comfort of the center Robin Tierney is Adjunct Faculty in the of translations provides an opportunity is remarkable. Department of English.

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