For his translation of Botchan: A Modern Classic by Natsume Sōseki

Joel Cohn studied Japanese language and literature at Cornell University, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, and Harvard University. He has taught at the University of Hawaii at Manoa since 1988 and is now Associate Professor of Japanese Literature and Chair of the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures. He has translated several works of Japanese literature from the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, including "In the Soup, Hand Made: The Thousand Sliced Arms of the Bodhisattva of Mercy" ("Oteryōri oshiru no mi Daihi no senrokuhon," 1785), a kibyōshi by Shiba Zenkō, as part of An Episodic Festschrift by Professor Howard Hibbett (Hollywood: Highmoonoon, 2003); "In the World of Men, Nothing But Lies" ("Ningen banji uso bakkari," 1813), a kokkeibon by Shikitei Sanba in an anthology of Edo-period literature edited by Professors Sumie Jones and Watanabe Kenji (University of Hawaii Press, forthcoming); as well as works by Kanagaki Robun and Ōba Minako. He is also the author of Studies in the Comic Spirit in Modern Japanese Fiction (Harvard University Asia Center, 1998).

For his translation of A Man with No Talents: Memoirs of a Tokyo Day Laborer by Ōyama Shirō

Edward Fowler’s first experience in Japan was as an exchange student during the summer of 1964, immediately before the Tokyo Olympics. He has spent a total of ten years living, working, and studying in Japan. His early research on Japanese literature, particularly the autobiographical shishosetsu form, resulted in a monograph, The Rhetoric of Confession (Berkeley, 1988). Later, he turned his attention to the problem of translation (its politics as well as its aesthetics) and examined the ways in which the existence of an English-language "canon" of Japanese literature has affected, and in some ways skewed, the West's perception of the literature. More recently, he has investigated the ethnic, social, and cultural diversity that has been commonly written out of accounts of late twentieth-century Japan. This research interest has resulted in several articles; a book-length study—part oral history, part personal account—of Tokyo's largest day-laborer quarter (San'ya Blues; Ithaca, 1996); and a translation of Ōyama Shirō's a prize-winning memoir of life in San'ya, A Man with No Talents (Ithaca, 2005). He has translated stories by Shiga Naoya, Tanizaki Jun'ichirō, and Tamura Toshiko, as well as essays on the city in literature by the celebrated cultural critic Maeda Ai. He currently teaches in the School of Humanities at the University of California, Irvine.

The 2006 prizes were presented to Professors Cohn and Fowler during an award ceremony at Columbia University on April 3, 2007.

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