Desire is No Light Thing: An Interview with Hiromitsu Koiso on Translating Anne Carson and Teju Cole into Japanese

February 5, 2026 | in Interviews | by Alton Melvar M Dapanas and Hiromitsu Koiso

Rather than being shaped by any single figure, I’m more interested in how one’s present moment can be placed in relation to a much longer history.

Hiromitsu Koiso’s path to becoming one of Japan’s most ruminative literary translators was anything but linear. It began, as he recounts, in the second-hand bookshops of western Tokyo, poring over paperbacks and comparing translations by seasoned Japanese translators, a sort of discipleship that would later lead him on a peripatetic route to the MA in Literary Translation and MA in Creative Writing (Poetry) programmes of the University of East Anglia in Norwich, United Kingdom. His body of work reveals a translator who is attuned to works of hybridity and gravitas, from the Sebaldian solivagant of Teju Cole’s Open City to the mythopoetic vestiges of Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red. This extends to the works of Ocean Vuong, Isabella Hammad, Grayson Perry, Noor Hindi, and Ursula K. Le Guin, as well as more recent translation projects like Carson’s Wrong Norma (published on 10 January by honkbooks’ thoasa) and Bryan Washington’s Memorial (forthcoming in Spring 2026). He has also co-translated Japanese poets Kamiyu Ogyu, Naha Kanie, and Ayaka Satō into English.

When asked about influence, Koiso speaks less of particular poetic lineages and more of situating himself within and against literary history, and of navigating the orientalising gaze directed at Asian writers: a “gaze [that] shapes both how we are read and how we respond, creatively and intellectually.”

In this interview, I spoke with Koiso (who is in Tokyo) about his unorthodox career trajectory, the immersive craft behind recasting specific genres and texts, and the poetic reflection underpinning his work as a poet and translator who seeks to meditate on “how one’s present moment can be placed in relation to a much longer history.”

Alton Melvar M Dapanas (AMMD): Koiso-san, I want to begin with how you started as a translator. As a university student, you pored over Paul Auster and J.D. Salinger paperbacks at the second-hand bookstore Nishi Shoten in Kunitachi. By comparing your early attempts with the translations of seasoned practitioners like Motoyuki Shibata and Takashi Nozaki, you developed an appreciation for the craft. Yet you didn’t pursue translation right after university. So, what were the key moments that ultimately led you here?

Hiromitsu Koiso (HK): After graduating from university, I wanted to work in literary translation, but I had no idea how to enter the profession. Throughout my twenties, I worked various jobs while studying and trying to find my way into the field. I took temporary positions, worked in offices, saved money, and eventually decided to pursue postgraduate studies at the University of East Anglia in the UK.

I first learned about UEA’s MA in Literary Translation program and a particular centre for literary translation through the Japanese translations of W. G. Sebald. Discovering that Sebald had taught at UEA and helped establish the translation centre made a deep impression on me. I felt strongly that I wanted to study Literary Translation in the very place where he had lived, taught, and built a community for translators. READ MORE…

Contributors:

Alton Melvar M Dapanas
Hiromitsu Koiso

Language:

Japanese

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Japan
United Kingdom

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The Sea Will Dream In My Ears: Megumi Moriyama on Recasting Virginia Woolf into Japanese and Spiral Translation

September 18, 2024 | in Interviews | by Alton Melvar M Dapanas

Translation can never be just a flat movement between two points, merely returning to its origins.

Japanese poet, critic, and translator Megumi Moriyama has so far worked on metamorphosing Virginia Woolf’s The Waves (1931) into the Japanese and on a ‘back translation’ of Arthur Waley’s poetic rendition of the world’s first novel, The Tale of Genji by Lady Murasaki Shikibu, in collaboration with her sister, haiku poet and critic Marie Mariya, published by Sayusha. As a poet, Megumi confesses that even her original poems in Japanese are layered with translation across varying texts within and outside her native language. Of her forthcoming poetry collection, she told me, “Perhaps you might say that through translation, I have made a journey into the depths of Japanese language.”

In this interview, I spoke with Megumi, currently in Tokyo, on rendering Virginia Woolf and Waley’s The Tale of Genji into the Japanese; how spiral translation goes beyond back-translations; and the new-age scene of literary translation in Japan.

Author headshot courtesy of Benjamin Parks.

Alton Melvar M Dapanas (AMMD): You translated Virginia Woolf’s experimental classic The Waves into the Japanese as Nami (2021), published by Hayakawa. Could you speak about your process in rendering a 1931 polyphonic novel set in England by a prose writer known for her stream of consciousness narrative mode with the modern-day Japanophone readership in mind? I heard there was so much hype about it, especially on Japanese book Twitter, as it was the first translation of this novel in almost 50 years.

Megumi Moriyama (MM): The new translation of The Waves was welcomed much more enthusiastically than I had expected. When I posted the announcement on social media, it went viral. And after the publication, the book was immediately put into reprint.

I studied Virginia Woolf as a student, and The Waves was one of my favorites of hers, but I never thought I would have the opportunity to translate it. It was thanks to social media that I got the chance. I tweeted very casually that I was interested in translating The Waves, an editor took notice of it, and the project became a reality.