The Winner of the 2004 Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Translation Award

Professor Lawrence Rogers

For his translation of Tokyo Stories: A Literary Stroll (University of California Press)

Lawrence Rogers is currently Professor of Japanese and Chairperson of the Languages Department at the University of Hawai'i at Hilo. He received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. (1975) in what was then the Department of Oriental Languages at the University of California, Berkeley. His research interests in graduate school were Edo-period literature, specifically the prose of the haiku poets, known as haibun, and guidebooks written for the newly prosperous townspeople of the urban centers of Japan. After he began teaching in Hawai'i, his focus shifted to modern literature– the novel, the short story, and, to a lesser extent, poetry. His translation of Agawa Hiroyuki's war novel Citadel in Spring appeared in 1990, and Tokyo Stories was published in 2002. The several dozen short-story translations he has had published over the last twenty years include works by Ôe Kenzaburô, Mishima Yukio, Endô Shûsaku, and Yoshiyuki Junnosuke. Many of these translations have also been reprinted in recent anthologies of modern Japanese literature. Professor Rogers is currently on sabbatical leave, reading and translating twentieth-century Japanese drama.

The prize was presented to Professor Rogers during an award ceremony at Columbia University on April 29, 2005.