In his small office, Ioannis Mentzas is surrounded by more than 1,000 books, nearly all in Japanese. Most, he said, aren't worth translating for an American audience. It is his task -- his obligation, his burden -- to pick the few that are.
Mentzas said that as editorial director of Vertical Inc, a tiny publishing house dedicated to translating contemporary Japanese fiction into English, he tried to find novels that "should appeal to readers who are not necessarily interested in Japan."
PHOTO: NY TIMES
It is not lost on him that Japan is increasingly viewed as a source of hip culture, fueled by the popularity of anime, Japanese fashion and even the independent film Lost in Translation, the story of two lost souls in neon-lighted Tokyo, which won its director and writer, Sofia Coppola, a screenwriting Oscar.
"Japan has become a brand in terms of good storytelling and cool stuff, and I think that can carry over into literature," Mentzas said recently, his smudged glasses and battered sneakers betraying his former incarnation as a doctoral candidate in English and comparative literature at Columbia University.
Born and reared in Japan to a Greek father and Japanese mother, Mentzas still keeps student hours, rolling into the office at 2pm and staying after midnight, reading new novels or editing translations. He even slept in his office once to ensure that he wouldn't miss an
11:30am interview the next day.
The company, founded by Hiroki Sakai, a former book editor and business journalist in Japan, published its first 10 titles last year. They included two volumes of Buddha, a graphic novel by Osamu Tezuka, considered the godfather of the Japanese comic art form known as manga; Koji Suzuki's Ring, on which the Japanese horror film of that title and an American remake were based; and Twinkle Twinkle, a novel by Kaori Ekuni about a woman who marries an alcoholic gay man to assuage their parents.
This year the company plans 16 more titles, including Sayonara, Gangsters by Genichiro Takahashi, a novel that Mentzas described as "a postmodern masterpiece."
When Sakai used to visit the US he was struck by how few Japanese novels he could find in American bookstores. In 1998 he moved to New York with the idea of selling modern Japanese writing to American publishers. He tried unsuccessfully to sell four or five children's books. When he recruited Mentzas in 2001, he decided to form his own publishing house.
Sakai persuaded Itochu International, a Japanese trading and investment company, to invest US$600,000. Nihon Keizai Shimbun Inc, or Nikkei, as it is commonly known in Japan, Sakai's former employer, kicked in US$200,000.
When Sakai and Mentzas were looking for a name for the new publisher, they didn't want something that was too obviously Japanese. "So no Cherry Blossom Press for us," Mentzas said.
Still, Vertical subtly refers to the fact that Japanese characters are written and read vertically rather than horizontally.
So far Vertical's books have attracted a handful of reviews in publications like Time Out New York, The Guardian of London and Tricycle, a Buddhist magazine. Sales are quite modest. According to Nielsen BookScan, the first volume of Buddha has sold 1,400 copies. Ring has sold 7,900 copies and Twinkle Twinkle just 130.
But those who are interested in translated literature are excited about Vertical. "There is, I feel, far too little Japanese fiction translated into English," said Robert Weil, executive editor of W.W. Norton, which has brought some foreign titles, mostly European works, to the US.
Few modern Japanese novelists have found American audiences. Haruki Murakami, author of critically acclaimed novels like The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (Alfred A. Knopf, 1997) and A Wild Sheep Chase (Kodansha International, 1989), and Banana Yoshimoto, who wrote Kitchen (Grove Press, 1993), are among the handful who have a following in the US.
A few other publishers are trying to bring more Japanese books to English-speaking readers. The American arm of Kodansha International, a Japanese publisher, translates one or two Japanese novels a year. In January it published In the Miso Soup, a thriller set in underworld Tokyo by Ryu Murakami (no relation to Haruki).
Random House recently started a joint venture with Kodansha to publish books in Japan, and Kodansha hopes to translate some works into English.
Anyone trying to sell translations faces a difficult market. "Opening the door in many cases to a very different culture makes that aspect of the business wonderfully exciting," said John Glusman, editor in chief of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, which got its start translating European literature in the 1940s. "But at the same time it's very challenging, especially from an economic view."
Much of Vertical's success will depend on the books it selects from the hundreds published in Japan every year. So far Mentzas and Sakai have chosen novels whose plots can be easily described in a few sentences and, they hope, might readily translate to film.
"If there is a lot of good Japanese writing to be translated, then I would say great," said Marty Asher, editor in chief of Vintage Books and Anchor Books, units of Random House. "But if they're just doing it because Japanese is this week's literary flavor of the month, then I would be more skeptical. I hope they find lots of treasures." (Next year Asher's Vintage, which publishes Haruki Murakami's work in paperback, will publish Out, a mystery novel by Natsuo Kirino that was first published by Kodansha in hardcover.)
Paul Anderer, a professor of Japanese literature and film at Columbia whose former students include Mentzas and a number of Vertical translators, said that he supported Vertical's efforts but that he wondered whether some of the company's novels would attract strong reviews or readers. "I'm not sure that all of the fictions, as fictions, are necessarily going to hold up, no matter how cleverly packaged or marketed," he said.
Sakai admitted that his friends in Japan think he is crazy. But that hasn't stanched his ambition. His goal? "One million copies of one title, within this year," he said. He paused. "Within several years," he appended, smiling.
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