Jeffrey Angles
Encyclopedia
is an American scholar of modern Japanese literature
and an award-winning literary translator
of modern and contemporary Japanese poetry
and fiction
. He is an associate professor of Japanese language
and Japanese literature
at Western Michigan University
.
. When he was fifteen, he traveled to Japan for the first time as a high school exchange student, staying in the small, southwestern Japanese city of Shimonoseki in Yamaguchi Prefecture
, which represented a turning point in his life. Since then he has spent several years living in various Japanese cities, including Saitama City, Kobe
, and Kyoto
.
While a graduate student in Japanese literature at The Ohio State University in the mid-1990s, Angles began translating Japanese short stories and poetry, publishing in a wide variety of literary magazines in the United States, Canada, and Australia. He is particularly interested in translating poetry and modernist texts, since he feels these have been largely overlooked and understudied by academics in the West. He is passionate about translation as a discipline, stating that “without translation, we would be locked within our own cultures, unable to access the vast, overwhelming wealth of the rest of the world’s intellect. By translating literary works, we are making that world heritage available to literally millions of people.”
Angles earned his Ph.D. in 2004 with a dissertation about representations of male homoeroticism in the literature of Kaita Murayama and the popular writer Ranpo Edogawa. This is the basis for his book Writing the Love of Boys published in 2011 by University of Minnesota Press
, which also includes new research on Taruho Inagaki and Jun’ichi Iwata. Other research involves studies of popular Japanese culture in the 1920s and 1930s, writing about contemporary Japanese poetry, and studying the history of translation in Japan.
He has also contributed a critically acclaimed voice-over commentary to the Criterion Collection’s release of Kenji Mizoguchi
’s 1954 film Sansho the Bailiff
.
, administered by the Donald Keene Center for Japanese Studies at Columbia University
for his translation of Forest of Eyes: Selected Poems of Chimako Tada. His book of translations, Killing Kanoko: Selected Poems of Hiromi Itō
, published in published in 2009 by Action Books, was a finalist in the poetry category of the Best Translated Book Award
offered by Three Percent.
Angles has also won grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the PEN American Center for his translation of the memoirs of the contemporary poet Mutsuo Takahashi
.
In 2008, Angles was invited to the Kennedy Center in Washington DC to serve as the curator for the literary events in the Japan: Culture+Hyperculture Festival. He has also been interviewed on NPR
’s All Things Considered
about the short story collection Japan: A Traveler’s Literary Companion, which he co-edited with J. Thomas Rimer.
In 2009-2010, Angles was a visiting researcher at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies
, where he organized a group research project about the history of translation practices in Japan. In 2011, he was a visiting professor in Comparative Literature at the Komaba campus of the University of Tokyo
.
Japanese literature
Early works of Japanese literature were heavily influenced by cultural contact with China and Chinese literature, often written in Classical Chinese. Indian literature also had an influence through the diffusion of Buddhism in Japan...
and an award-winning literary translator
Translation
Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. Whereas interpreting undoubtedly antedates writing, translation began only after the appearance of written literature; there exist partial translations of the Sumerian Epic of...
of modern and contemporary Japanese poetry
Japanese poetry
Japanese poets first encountered Chinese poetry during the Tang Dynasty. It took them several hundred years to digest the foreign impact, make it a part of their culture and merge it with their literary tradition in their mother tongue, and begin to develop the diversity of their native poetry. For...
and fiction
Japanese literature
Early works of Japanese literature were heavily influenced by cultural contact with China and Chinese literature, often written in Classical Chinese. Indian literature also had an influence through the diffusion of Buddhism in Japan...
. He is an associate professor of Japanese language
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
and Japanese literature
Japanese literature
Early works of Japanese literature were heavily influenced by cultural contact with China and Chinese literature, often written in Classical Chinese. Indian literature also had an influence through the diffusion of Buddhism in Japan...
at Western Michigan University
Western Michigan University
Western Michigan University is a public university located in Kalamazoo, Michigan, United States. The university was established in 1903 by Dwight B. Waldo, and as of the Fall 2010 semester, its enrollment is 25,045....
.
Biography
Angles was born in Columbus, OhioColumbus, Ohio
Columbus is the capital of and the largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio. The broader metropolitan area encompasses several counties and is the third largest in Ohio behind those of Cleveland and Cincinnati. Columbus is the third largest city in the American Midwest, and the fifteenth largest city...
. When he was fifteen, he traveled to Japan for the first time as a high school exchange student, staying in the small, southwestern Japanese city of Shimonoseki in Yamaguchi Prefecture
Yamaguchi Prefecture
is a prefecture of Japan in the Chūgoku region on Honshū island. The capital is the city of Yamaguchi, in the center of the prefecture. The largest city, however, is Shimonoseki.- History :...
, which represented a turning point in his life. Since then he has spent several years living in various Japanese cities, including Saitama City, Kobe
Kobe
, pronounced , is the fifth-largest city in Japan and is the capital city of Hyōgo Prefecture on the southern side of the main island of Honshū, approximately west of Osaka...
, and Kyoto
Kyoto
is a city in the central part of the island of Honshū, Japan. It has a population close to 1.5 million. Formerly the imperial capital of Japan, it is now the capital of Kyoto Prefecture, as well as a major part of the Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto metropolitan area.-History:...
.
While a graduate student in Japanese literature at The Ohio State University in the mid-1990s, Angles began translating Japanese short stories and poetry, publishing in a wide variety of literary magazines in the United States, Canada, and Australia. He is particularly interested in translating poetry and modernist texts, since he feels these have been largely overlooked and understudied by academics in the West. He is passionate about translation as a discipline, stating that “without translation, we would be locked within our own cultures, unable to access the vast, overwhelming wealth of the rest of the world’s intellect. By translating literary works, we are making that world heritage available to literally millions of people.”
Angles earned his Ph.D. in 2004 with a dissertation about representations of male homoeroticism in the literature of Kaita Murayama and the popular writer Ranpo Edogawa. This is the basis for his book Writing the Love of Boys published in 2011 by University of Minnesota Press
University of Minnesota Press
The University of Minnesota Press is a university press that is part of the University of Minnesota.Founded in 1925, the University of Minnesota Press is best known for its books in social and cultural thought, critical theory, race and ethnic studies, urbanism, feminist criticism, and media...
, which also includes new research on Taruho Inagaki and Jun’ichi Iwata. Other research involves studies of popular Japanese culture in the 1920s and 1930s, writing about contemporary Japanese poetry, and studying the history of translation in Japan.
He has also contributed a critically acclaimed voice-over commentary to the Criterion Collection’s release of Kenji Mizoguchi
Kenji Mizoguchi
Kenji Mizoguchi was a Japanese film director and screenwriter. His film Ugetsu won the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival, and appeared in the Sight & Sound Critics' Top Ten Poll in 1962 and 1972. Mizoguchi is renowned for his mastery of the long take and mise-en-scène...
’s 1954 film Sansho the Bailiff
Sansho the Bailiff
-External links:* at the Japanese Movie Database* * and QuickTime trailer* essay by Mark Le Fanu...
.
Honors
In 2009, Angles received the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese LiteratureJapan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature
The Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature was established in 1979 and is administered by the Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture at Columbia University...
, administered by the Donald Keene Center for Japanese Studies at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
for his translation of Forest of Eyes: Selected Poems of Chimako Tada. His book of translations, Killing Kanoko: Selected Poems of Hiromi Itō
Hiromi Itō
is one of the most prominent women writers of contemporary Japan, with more than a dozen collections of poetry, several works of prose, numerous books of essays, and several major literary prizes to her name...
, published in published in 2009 by Action Books, was a finalist in the poetry category of the Best Translated Book Award
Best Translated Book Award
Best Translated Book Award is an annual literature award given by Three Percent, the online literature magazine of Open Letter Books, which is the book translation press of the University of Rochester. It is awarded to the best original translation published that year. A long list and short list...
offered by Three Percent.
Angles has also won grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the PEN American Center for his translation of the memoirs of the contemporary poet Mutsuo Takahashi
Mutsuo Takahashi
is one of the most prominent and prolific male poets, essayists, and writers of contemporary Japan, with more than three dozen collections of poetry, several works of prose, dozens books of essays, and several major literary prizes to his name. He is especially well known for his open writing about...
.
In 2008, Angles was invited to the Kennedy Center in Washington DC to serve as the curator for the literary events in the Japan: Culture+Hyperculture Festival. He has also been interviewed on NPR
NPR
NPR, formerly National Public Radio, is a privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization that serves as a national syndicator to a network of 900 public radio stations in the United States. NPR was created in 1970, following congressional passage of the Public Broadcasting...
’s All Things Considered
All Things Considered
All Things Considered is the flagship news program on the American network National Public Radio. It was the first news program on NPR, and is broadcast live worldwide through several outlets...
about the short story collection Japan: A Traveler’s Literary Companion, which he co-edited with J. Thomas Rimer.
In 2009-2010, Angles was a visiting researcher at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies
International Research Center for Japanese Studies
The , or Nichibunken , is an inter-university research institute in Kyoto. Along with the National Institute of Japanese Literature, the National Museum of Japanese History, and the National Museum of Ethnology, it is one of the National Institutes for the Humanities...
, where he organized a group research project about the history of translation practices in Japan. In 2011, he was a visiting professor in Comparative Literature at the Komaba campus of the University of Tokyo
University of Tokyo
, abbreviated as , is a major research university located in Tokyo, Japan. The University has 10 faculties with a total of around 30,000 students, 2,100 of whom are foreign. Its five campuses are in Hongō, Komaba, Kashiwa, Shirokane and Nakano. It is considered to be the most prestigious university...
.
Translations
- Translations of stories by Ranpo Edogawa, Kaita Murayama, Taruho Inagaki, Kyūsaku YumenoYumeno Kyusakuwas the pen name of the early Shōwa period Japanese author Sugiyama Taidō. The pen name literally means "a person who always dreams." He wrote detective novels and is known for his avant-gardism and his surrealistic, wildly imaginative and fantastic, even bizarre narratives...
, and Sakutarō HagiwaraSakutarō Hagiwarawas a Japanese writer of free-style verse, active in the Taishō and early Shōwa periods of Japan. He liberated Japanese free verse from the grip of traditional rules, and he is considered the “father of modern colloquial poetry in Japan”...
in
Articles, Videos, Author Interviews
- Personal homepage of Angles at Western Michigan University
- Fuller list of Angles’ publications
- Videos of Angles giving readings with the poet Hiromi Itō at Western Michigan University
- Article by Angles on translation, especially on translating Tatsuji Miyoshi, in Poetry International Web
- Angles interviews the poet Takako Arai, whom he has translated, for the journal Full Tilt
- Angles interviews the prominent Japanese-to-English translator Hiroaki Sato about Sato’s work for the journal Full Tilt
- Jeffrey Angles interviews the writer Mutsuo Takahashi about his experiences in the gay world of Japan for the journal Intersections
Translations Online
- Six poems by Tatsuji Miyoshi on Poetry International Web (Links to poems on upper right-hand side. The translations marked with an asterisk are by Jeffrey Angles.)
- Ten poems by Yōsuke Tanaka on Poetry International Web (Links to poems on upper right-hand side.)
- Four poems by Hiromi Itō on Poetry International Web (Links to poems on upper right-hand side.)
- Five poems by Hiromi Itō in the literary journal Action Yes
- Three poems by Takako Arai in the journal Octopus
- Six poems by Takako Arai in The Other Voices International Project
- Two poems by Takako Arai in the journal Ekleksographia
- Three poems by Takako Arai in the journal Action Yes
- Three poems by Mutsuo Takahashi in the journal Full Tilt
- Five poems by Mutsuo Takahashi in the journal Intersections
- Poem by Hinako Abe in the journal HOW2