A Life in Japanese

SPEAKING VOLUMES

The news of Edward Seidensticker's death had been expected for several months "" at 85, the legendary translator had suffered a bad fall, and has been in a coma ever since April. When I heard that Seidensticker was dead, the first book that came to my mind was, oddly enough, not one of his hundred or so celebrated translations from Japanese classics.

The Diary of Murasaki Shikibu is one of the world's hidden classics. Written in AD 1000-1007, the Lady Murasaki reinvents literature as gossip, moving and salacious in turn. The Lady Murasaki hinted strongly at a great sorrow in her past, wrote often of her religious yearnings, but never let these get in the way of her sharp-eyed observations of the Japanese court.

If there was a new fashion for carrying pretty folded fans, she would record it. If the Queen was in labour, the Lady Murasaki was there to note how the smallest details of a birth were observed in accordance with hierarchy: "The navel cord was cut by the Prime Minister's Lady. Lady Tachibana of the Third Rank gave the breast for the first time [ceremonial]." A few paragraphs later, she is more mischievous, "Sometimes the Honourable Infant did a very unreasonable thing and wet the Lord Prime Minister's clothes. He, loosening his sash, dried his dress behind the screen. He said: "Ah ! it is a very happy thing to be wet by the Prince."

The Lady Murasaki did not get on with Sei Shonagon: "A very proud person. She values herself highly, and scatters her Chinese writings all about. Yet should we study her closely, we should find that she is still imperfect." It is tempting to analyse this as the jealousy of one accomplished writer for another. Sei Shonagon was much acclaimed as an author, and the Lady Murasaki is considered by many authorities to be the author of The Tale of Genji, often, if controversially, called "the world's first novel".

Regarded as one of the great classics of Japanese literature, the Genji was almost unknown outside Japan before the 20th century. Suematsu Kencho attempted the first translation in 1881, but this was weak and unsatisfactory and stumbled over the admittedly complex court language used by the Lady Murasaki. Around 1926, Arthur Waley began publishing his extensive translation of the Genji""an excellent work, but his language is dated to our ears. Seidensticker took 15 years to study the Lady Murasaki's classic, but it is his version, finally published in 1976, that stands as the authoritative one for our time.

What I loved about Seidensticker's story of his life as a translator was the complete absence of sentimentality when he speaks of Japan. In his memoir, Tokyo Central, he explained why he had never felt the mystic pull of the East: "Geisha, with their massive, unwashable heaps of black hair, were ugly, unclean creatures. Fuji was an uninteresting pimple of a mountain. And Japanese gardens were dark, murky places. Imagine it, they had no flowers."

He came to Japan in the wake of Pearl Harbour "" he was looking for ways to get through the war in relative safety and comfort. He learned Japanese in the Navy, and instead of a love affair with the country, what he embarked on was a slow, deepening relationship. By the end of his life, Seidensticker was seen as one the most important translators of the age. Most of us came to the works of writers like Junichiro Tanizaki, the master of intellectual eroticism, Yasunari Kawabata, and Yukio Mishima via Seidensticker's translations.

Seidensticker's approach was to "stay as close to the work" as he could, but to imbue the translation with a certain literary quality. "A literal translation cannot be a very literary translation," he said once. The authors he worked with were not always helpful. He applied to Tanizaki once, asking him whether a certain passage was not too complicated. Tanizaki read it through in silence, then looked up and nodded. "Yes," he said. That was all the assistance Seidensticker received from him.

His observations were dry, but acute. He was asked once of his opinion of Yukio Mishima "" the author who committed ritual seppuku, performing the last thrust of the blade himself and ensuring that a close friend performed the final beheading. "I got on with him very well," Seidensticker said, "But he laughed too much. And when people laugh too much, you wonder whether anything amuses them."

One of the best ways to appreciate Seidensticker's work is to compare his translation of the Genji with Arthur Waley's work. Writing of the emperor's lover on her deathbed, Waley translates the passage in this fashion:

"Sadly and tenderly looking up, she thus replied, with almost failing breath:-'Since my departure for this dark journey/ Makes you so sad and lonely/ Fain would I stay though weak and weary/ And live for your sake only!"

This was Seidensticker's version, and I for one, prefer it: "She looked sadly up at him. "If I had suspected that it would be so "" "She was gasping for breath. "I leave you, to go the road we all must go./ The road I would choose, if only I could, is the other."

He spent his life "in Japanese", he wrote in Tokyo Central. Those of us who come to Japanese writing only through English are very glad that he did.

nilanjanasroy@gmail.com  

The author is chief editor, EastWest and Westland Books. The opinions expressed here are personal