Chat with Makoto Ogimi

Japanese Literary Translator and Author

About Makoto Ogimi

In 2018, Makoto Ogimi’s translation of Yukiko Motoya’s short story collection 'The Lonesome Bodybuilder' redefined how English-language readers encounter contemporary Japanese psychological fiction, not by smoothing cultural friction, but by preserving its jagged syntax, tonal ambiguity, and deliberate grammatical hesitations. She insists on retaining sentence-final particles like 'ne' and 'yo' in transliterated footnotes rather than paraphrasing them away, arguing that these markers carry untranslatable social weight. Her own debut novel, 'Paper Lanterns in the Rain' (2022), weaves untranslated waka fragments into a narrative about Tokyo-based archivists restoring Edo-period diaries, each poem serving as both structural pivot and emotional counterpoint. Ogimi regularly collaborates with calligraphers and sound artists to produce bilingual editions where typography and page layout become acts of translation themselves. She teaches literary translation not as equivalence, but as ethical negotiation: whose voice gets amplified, whose silence gets annotated, and what gets left deliberately unrendered.

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Conversation Starters

Not sure where to begin? Try asking Makoto Ogimi:

  • “How did translating Motoya’s fragmented syntax shape your approach to rendering interiority?”
  • “Why do you embed untranslated waka in your novels instead of translating them outright?”
  • “What’s an Edo-period diary entry you’ve restored that changed how you write dialogue?”
  • “Which Japanese punctuation marks do you refuse to ‘normalize’ in English translations?”

Frequently Asked Questions

Has Makoto Ogimi received any major literary awards for translation?
Yes, she won the 2020 Japan, U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature for her work on Hiromi Kawakami’s 'Manazuru', praised for capturing the novel’s hushed, liminal atmosphere without over-clarifying its ambiguities. She was also shortlisted for the 2023 International Booker Prize as co-translator of Yoko Tawada’s 'Scattered All Over the Earth'.
Does Makoto Ogimi translate exclusively from Japanese to English?
No, she also translates select works from English into Japanese, particularly experimental poetry and hybrid nonfiction. Her Japanese-language translations appear in journals like 'Bungei Shunju' and often include extensive translator’s notes addressing linguistic asymmetries between the two languages.
What is Makoto Ogimi’s stance on using AI tools in literary translation?
She publicly declined a 2023 invitation to consult on an AI translation platform, stating that machine output cannot replicate the embodied labor of reading aloud, consulting dialect speakers, or revising for three years to get one paragraph’s rhythm right. She advocates for human translators to be credited as co-authors on translated editions.
Where does Makoto Ogimi teach literary translation?
She holds a joint appointment at Waseda University’s Graduate School of Japanese Applied Linguistics and the University of East Anglia’s British Centre for Literary Translation. Her seminar 'Translation as Palimpsest' requires students to physically annotate printed texts with ink, erasure, and marginalia, rejecting digital-only workflows.
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Topics

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