Based on excerpts from: From the Edges of Disaster: Tanaka Takuya’s Poems on 3/11 and Tōkaimura Co-translated by Edith Sarra and Yasuko Ito Watt with Introduction by Edith Sarra, Red Moon Press in 2021.

This manuscript began as a translation of 50 poems by Tanaka Takuya that Professor Emerita Yasuko Ito Watt and Professor Edith Sarra collaborated on in 2013. In 2014, their translations won the William F. Sibley Memorial Prize in Translation of Japanese Literature and were published on the University of Chicago’s website. They continued translating more poetry by Tanaka over the next few years, focusing on his use of poetry as a medium for voicing political/environmental critique—specifically in response to the “triple disasters” of March 2011, and a nuclear accident in 1999 that, although under-reported at the time, highlighted the Tōhoku region’s status as an “internal colony.” The volume is now about 150 pages, with the poems and translations in bilingual format so that the text may be used as a teaching tool in intermediate and upper level Japanese language and literature courses, and in courses on literary translation.

If you are interested in purchasing the book, click here to go to the publication page.

Link to authors:

Yasuko Ito Watt https://ealc.indiana.edu/people/watt-yasuko-ito.html
Edith Sarra https://ealc.indiana.edu/people/sarra-edith.html