Translation Prize for Masaya Saito’s Take on Poet Saitō Sanki’s Record of Hard Wartime Days

On February 12, Masaya Saito was awarded the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation Translation Prize for his translation of The Kobe Hotel: Memoirs, which brings together two works by the haiku poet Saitō Sanki recording his hard wartime days in a run-down hotel in Kobe. The prize is sponsored by the foundation and administered by the Society of Authors.

Competition judge Maya Jaggi described the book as “an astonishingly frank wartime testament by one of Japan’s preeminent poets, and a gripping portrait of the artist as an anti-war bohemian rebel. . . . Masaya Saito’s sparkling revision of his own translation made 30 years earlier recovers this masterpiece for a new generation.”

Masaya Saito has also translated Selected Haiku 1933–1962 by Saitō Sanki, and writes his own haiku too. His book Snow Bones consists of four narrative haiku sequences.

David Boyd was the runner-up in the prize for the second successive year, again for a translation of a book by Oyamada Hiroko. The Factory zooms in on the absurdity of the workplace via three characters with mundane jobs in a surreal setting.

The prize considered translations published in Britain between April 1, 2023, and March 31, 2024, with £3,000 awarded to the winner and £1,000 to the runners-up.

The Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation Translation Prize Shortlist (2024)

• The Kobe Hotel: Memoirs translated by Masaya Saito (winner) from Kōbe and Zoku Kōbe (1975) by Saitō Sanki
• The Factory translated by David Boyd (runner-up) from Kōjō (2013) by Oyamada Hiroko
• What You Are Looking for Is in the Library translated by Alison Watts from Osagashimono wa toshoshitsu made (2020) by Aoyama Michiko
• Kappa translated by Allison Markin Powell and Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda from Kappa (1927) by Akutagawa Ryūnosuke
• Nails and Eyes translated by Kendall Heitzman from Tsume to me (2015) by Fujino Kaori
• Slow Down: How Degrowth Communism Can Save the Earth translated by Brian Bergstrom from Hito shinsei no shihonron (2020) by Saitō Kōhei

The Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation Translation Prize is one of eight Society of Authors translation awards for different languages. Last year, Alison Watts won the inaugural prize for her translation of The Boy and the Dog by Hase Seishū.

(Originally published in English. Banner photo © Natalie Thorpe.)