“The Japan Foundation is pleased to announce the opening on the Japan Foundation website of a database of Japanese works of literature translated into other languages, and made possible through the cooperation of the Japan P.E.N. Club. This database is available free of charge to users all over the world at the following URL:

The Japan Foundation > Japanese Literature in Translation Search

The data included thus far covers Japanese literary works translated into other languages mainly from the end of World War II to the 1990s and is searchable by author, title of work, translator, or other keywords (terms may be input in either Japanese or roman letters). The basic unit of the database is the work rather than the publication, so short stories are listed individually by their own titles rather than in the anthology in which they were originally included.
This bibliography/database is based mainly on the printed catalogs listed below, but reference has also been made to the databases of the National Institute of Informatics and information available via NACSIS Webcat. We are indebted to Guest Professor Fujino Yukio of the Faculty of Liberal Arts, Aichi University for his cooperation in the organization and presentation of the data.

Japanese Literature in Foreign Languages 1945-1995 (Japan P.E.N. Club)
Japanese Literature Today (Japan P.E.N. Club)
Index Translation Cumulative Index since 1979 (UNESCO)

This database is by no means complete at this stage, and it is quite likely that important data has been omitted. As for works published from 2000 onward, as yet only a few are included. Especially with the many works that have been newly translated in recent years with the growing popularity of Japanese literature overseas, the Japan Foundation is keenly aware of the need to collect data on recent works as quickly as possible.

Arrangements are currently being considered with the Japan P.E.N. Club for the incorporation of this data. We look forward to your understanding of this ongoing endeavor and will be grateful to receive any corrections in the data already compiled as well as new data for inclusion.”

 

As the Japan Foundation notes, the database is hardly complete. Until it is updated, we will try to list other sources of Nakahara Chûya in translation below. If you locate other sources of his poetry in translation, please send a notification to the appropriate address at the Japan Foundation (located on the link above), and let us know as well. Thank you.

Nakahara Chûya and French Symbolism Noriko Thunman University of Stockholm, 1983 This study satisfied PhD dissertation requirements at the University of Stockholm. Unfortunately, English is not Thunman’s native tongue and the book has not been satisfactorily edited; parts of it are unreadable. Furthermore, the language deficiencies trouble its scholarship. It is, however, the first extended study of Chûya in English, it contains much useful information about Chûya and Japanese poetic history, and it is an early source of Chûya translations in English.

Nakahara Chûya: Poèmes Yves-Marie Allioux Phillipe Picquier, 2005 Allioux is one of the most respected scholars of Japanese poetry, with several books and numerous articles in print, some of them translated back into Japanese. This book marks the first anthology of Chûya’s poetry in French and is an exciting and welcome edition to Chûya literature, especially considering the extent to which Chûya read and translated French poetry! Merci beaucoup, Yves-Marie Allioux!