在赖特艺术博物馆的庭院里，作家藤野香织(Kaori Fujino)向拥挤的人群朗读了她的中篇小说《十大菠菜台子》(Nails and Eyes)的选段.

Over 50 people gathered in the Wright Museum of Art 聆听作者藤野香织和该书的翻译肯德尔·海茨曼轮流用日语和英语朗读《十大菠菜台子》中的段落.

故事的叙述者希娜讲述了她母亲神秘死亡的经历. She shares these thoughts in the second person to ‘you,这个秘密情人是她父亲在她母亲去世几个月后带进这个家庭的. While ‘you’ remains indifferent to the young girl, Hina has kept a keen eye on this interloper, showing she has come to understand ‘you’ better than the woman knows herself.

作家藤野香树朗读她的中篇小说《十大菠菜台子》的选段，翻译肯德尔·海茨曼在旁边朗读. Fujino is best known for fiction that reimagines tropes from horror, science fiction, Hollywood thrillers, urban legends, fairy tales, and museum culture. In 2013, Fujino was awarded the Akutagawa Prize, Japan’s most prominent literary prize, for “Nails and Eyes.”

十年后，这个故事的英文版本第一次出现在 Nails and Eyes, which includes the titular story as well as two additional stories.

Heitzman, the English translator, 是爱荷华大学教授文学的日本文学和文化的副教授, film, theater, and Japanese-to-English translation. His translation of Nails and Eyes received the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature.

Many good questions and answers

活动以阅读书中的三个节选开始:介绍书中的人物, a series of observations about ‘you,’ and the immediate aftermath of the mother’s death. After the readings, members of the audience asked many questions of both Fujino and Heitzman, with Heitzman translating Fujino’s answers to English for the audience.

在Kendall Heitzman和Kaori Fujino回答问题后，Susan Furukawa教授向人群发表讲话.

One student asked Fujino, “Where did the inspiration for the story come from?”

“有很多故事的主角都很聪明，但很容易受伤,” Fujino explained. “相反，我想写一个没有真正自我意识、从未受到伤害的人. When I got to a scene where this person ‘you’ – who has never been hurt, 谁能逃脱一切——最终受到伤害:那是我知道我有我的故事的时候.”

Another student asked, “What does your writing process look like?”

“It starts with a situation or event,” Fujino shared. “From there, I try to determine who is important, who is peripheral, and who should be telling the story. 直到我对情节和人物有信心，我才会一遍又一遍地写这个故事. 如果在写作时，我发现故事应该从另一个点开始，或者从另一个角色的角度来讲述, it may be painful, but there is no choice but to start over again.”

A different student asked Heitzman, “What was the translation process like?”

“Because I knew Fujino-san, I asked her a lot of questions,” Heitzman said. 他指出，在一种语言中可能模棱两可的事物有时需要用另一种语言来定义, 这导致人们对他翻译的作品中的细节产生了许多疑问:“这是单门还是双门?,” or, “Is the convenience store clerk a man or woman?” He continued, “Sometimes the author really knows, and sometimes the author can guess with you on what is happening. 对我来说，我有各种各样有趣的背景故事，可以和藤野一起工作，知道什么是重要的.”

Learning from the experts

Kendall Heitzman和Kaori Fujino在当代日本文学课程上与学生交谈.

藤野的这次访问是选修《真人国际菠菜》(JAPN 230)的学生与他们正在阅读和翻译的作家交谈的众多机会之一，这是他们课程工作的一部分.

• Yasuhiro Yotsumoto: Poetry from the collection Song Rain – including “Song Rain,” “A Poem about a Dangerous Cucumber,和《菠菜白菜吧》，以及几首尚未发表的诗.
• Keijiro Suga: Poetry from the collection One Week and Other Jaunts包括《真人国际菠菜》、《菠菜白菜吧》、《菠菜白菜吧》和《真人国际菠菜》.”
• Yusho Takiguchi: Entries from his memoir A Moment Along the Way that We Will Inevitably Forget (Iowa Diary) recounting his visit to Beloit College for a reading.
• Kaori Fujino: The first fourth of the novella “Nails and Eyes.”

“我们这学期的目标是阅读和翻译目前活跃在日本文坛的作家的新作,” explains Susan Furukawa, associate professor of modern languages and literatures. “这个班的很多学生以前都和我一起上过高级日语课, so I wanted to try something entirely different.”

古川在参加爱荷华大学的一个诗歌活动时产生了开设这门课程的灵感, where she met both Yotsumoto and Suga. Impressed by the Iowa students’ translations of their work, she decided to have her students work with poetry in the spring. On a whim, 她问两位诗人是否有兴趣与全班同学进行虚拟对话, and both immediately said yes.

Heitzman, 谁曾与爱荷华州国际写作计划(IWP)的其他作家一起访问过校园，并知道伯洛伊特大学的学生将做好充分的准备和参与, helped arrange Fujino’s visit during her U.S. book tour for Nails and Eyes. Furukawa then reached out to Takiguchi, 他在2018年访问了伯洛伊特学院，并立即同意与班级进行远程交谈.

古川说:“我对这些作家的慷慨感到惊讶. “Not only did they readily agree to join my class on their own time, but they also engaged fully with the students: reading their work for us, talking about their process, 并回答学生关于语言使用和翻译的具体问题.”

Author Keijiro Suga meets with contemporary Japanese literature students remotely to discuss his poetry.

与作者交谈的机会帮助学生更好地参与到课程的工作中. The meetings provided clear deadlines for assignments, 包括对作者及其作品的双语研究，以及准备他们想问的问题.

古川解释说:“与作家见面让语言变得生动起来. “Learning to read and translate Japanese is hard, 能够向作者询问特定的单词和图像有助于学生了解语言的动态. The class definitely moved them out of the world of memorizing grammar, kanji, and vocabulary and into the world of engaging with a living, breathing, and always changing language.”

The students in the course say the same.

“Our conversation with Fujino-san and Professor Heitzman was riveting,” Mahala Berg’24 shares, “and it was packed with interesting stories, inspirations, 总的来说，这是关于作者/翻译和出版行业的好建议.”

Charlie Starenko’24 agrees. “这门课就像一场潜伏袭击，我们要做的事情令人难以置信. As we have met with each author, the reality of how rare an opportunity this is set in, 它让我意识到伯洛伊特大学的日语课程为我提供了比我想象的更广泛的工作机会.”

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Fujino and Heitzman’s visit was co-sponsored by Beloit College’s departments of English and Modern Languages and Literatures, the Japan Foundation New York, and the University of Iowa’s Center for Asian and Pacific Studies.