WCN is excited to announce the first of two Japanese writers visiting Norwich UNESCO City of Literature this year, as part of a residency programme generously supported by the Nippon Foundation.
Mariko Nagai, in her own words
I never know what a space would do to the projects at hand – I’ve often started a residency thinking I would work on a particular writing, only to find that the space demanded that I work on a different project. When I came across Writers’ Centre Norwich’s call for Japanese translators and writers to apply, I was in Singapore for a conference/research, thick in the history of karayuki-san (oversea Japanese prostitutes from the late 19th – early 20th century). Of course, I thought, this is what I want to work on, and Norwich, being in the UK, is a perfect place to work on this project. It would only make sense, I reasoned, to work on this project about imperialism and body trafficking and migrant workers in the country that was one of the imperial powers, the country which Japan looked upon as a model of imperialism.
For the month of June, ever since I found out that I got the residency fellowship, I’ve been preparing for it: reading, thinking, creating an extensive outline, and daydreaming about these women’s lives who ended up in places like Singapore, Mumbai, Vietnam, Cape Hope, whose bodies were intimately connected with aspirations of the new empire. Then a week ago, when I invited Sawako Nakayasu to do a talk on translation (the 2016 PEN Translation Award winner, The Collected Poems of Chika Sagawa) at my university, her talk inspired me to dig up an old manuscript – an eight year old translation of Fumiko Hayashi’s Hourouki – and to reevaluate my relationship with it. Though portions of it have been published in journals, I didn’t revise it enough to pitch it for a book publication. Is it time to rework on it? Yes, I thought to myself, Fumiko’s book needs to be read now, maybe not eight years ago, but now – her book which deals with earthquakes, collapsing economy, unemployment, militarism, patriarchy, all the things that are relevant today, needs to go out in the world. And of course, I have a new project I’ve been daydreaming about for a year or so – about shifting borders and migrations and displacement and nationalism – that I still don’t know what narrative shape it will take.
What will I work on? These are the projects I will be packing in my bag, but to tell you the truth, I won’t know until I get to Norwich. Maybe the city will reveal to me to a project I haven’t even dreamt up yet.