What does it mean to write? Writing is a very simple task one can do with only a pen and paper. And yet, there’s an incredible amount of power to it, such as expressing your feelings to someone, gathering your thoughts into one place, leaving behind a record of present events to look back on in the future . . .

We’ll be using the Hobonichi Techo 2019 release to take another look at the action of writing, pondering and discussing what makes it so fun and what makes it so mysterious.

In this special article, we’ve taken a closer look at 10 people who draw and write in their professional or personal lives, checking out their favorite writing tools and hearing all about their writing process. We hope you enjoy reading all about the wide variety of approaches to writing.

What does it mean to write?

vol.6
Kazuko Matsuoka

“I write out the original text the same way Shakespeare did.”

Translator Kazuko Matsuoka is on a long journey to translate all 37 of Shakespeare’s plays. She writes the complete original text by hand.

ProfileKazuko Matsuoka

translator, theater critic.
Born 1942. Translating all of Shakespeare’s works into Japanese; currently working on the 34th one.

――
How do you usually do your translations?
Matsuoka
I type out the text, footnotes, and afterword on a computer. But I do write a great deal by hand. I keep a bunch of standard-size paper on me, folded in half, so I can write out the original text before translating it.
――
So you’re not writing out anything for the translation — just the original text?
Matsuoka
When I translate Shakespeare, I come across some incredibly complicated sentences. I can’t understand them if I’m only reading them, so at some point I just began writing out the original text myself. After I’ve written the complete text, I write sentences out one more time to clarify the various structures of the sentence, like the subject or the modifiers. That allows me to parse out a sentence and figure out the structure, even though it seemed so complicated when I first read it.
――
It’s almost like you’re pruning a sentence.
Matsuoka
Yeah. I write a sentence as many times as it takes to me to grasp what it’s saying. At first I write everything out; a mechanical pencil with a thick and soft lead is perfect for that task. Once I’m done translating a work, I’ve got a huge mountain of scrap paper left over.

When I first copied the original text and realized I was able to understand it, I had a sudden realization: I was sitting and writing out the very words that Shakespeare had sat down and written out himself with a quill pen. The action of writing something by hand connects your thoughts with your physical body. By writing the same words as Shakespeare, I felt a little closer to Shakespeare’s own thoughts.
――
That’s fascinating. Even though it’s obvious that Shakespeare wrote everything by hand, now that I really think about it it’s struck me differently. How long have you been writing out the original works by hand?
Matsuoka
About 10 years now, I think. By the time I started, I’d translated over half of Shakespeare’s 37 works. In the beginning, I would take handwritten notes for the translation. The story I most clearly remember writing out by hand is The Winter’s Tale. There’s a scene in which Leonties, the King of Sicily, is suddenly overcome with jealousy. He confesses his jealousy in this really drawn-out speech.
――
It’s full of a lot of digressions, isn’t it?
Matsuoka
Yeah. I realized it wasn’t enough for me to just read it over and over, so I started writing it out myself, and that’s what started it all. It was so much work that I wrote an afterword about how much I had to invest in that one section. (Laughs)
――
If you had that much trouble with it, after having already translated over half of Shakespeare’s works, that must have been difficult on a whole new level.
Matsuoka
I’ve written down Shakespeare plays in several genres, and I always read all the text first. When I find a word I don’t know, I write out all the different takes scholars have had on what it means, and then I pick out the explanation that seems the closest to me. But sometimes, like with The Winter’s Tale, none of it quite strikes me as right. If those notes are already translating sections of the plays differently, I figured no one would be upset if I added an additional interpretation of my own to the mix.
――
Wow, so you write down everything! That’s a lot of hard work to devote yourself to.
Matsuoka
It’s not much, I’ve just got the advantage of being able to look into aspects of a piece that researchers haven’t noticed yet. I’ve written research papers in the past, so I’m familiar with the process, and how it involves focusing on parts of the work that support the hypothesis of the paper. But translators can’t do that. Whether it’s Hamlet saying “to be or not to be” or the insignificant lines of a side character, it’s a translator’s job to treat every character fairly.
――
How many works by Shakespeare have you translated so far?
Matsuoka
I’m on my 34th right now, so I’ve got 3 more after this.
――
I’m sure it’s different for every piece, but how long does it take to translate something?
Matsuoka
Most recently I worked on Henry V, which took about a year to finish because I worked on it between other translations. But I’d like to finish about 1 act a month for my last 3 works. That would allow me to finish about 2 works per year, and if everything goes well I might be able to finish everything by 2020.
――
Wow! That’s quite a feat.
Matsuoka
When I first started translating Shakespeare, I felt very lucky to have the opportunity. After I’d translated 5 plays, Yukio Ninagawa, the theater director, let me know that the Sainokuni Saitama Arts Theater would be holding performances of all 37 of Shakespeare’s plays, and they’d be using my translations. At the same time, Chikuma Shobo contacted me to let me know they would be releasing a new complete set of Shakespeare’s works, and that they wanted to use my translations. I had never considered translating Shakespeare’s complete works, but it kind of fell into my lap.
――
I see.
Matsuoka
At the beginning, I didn’t pay attention to the fact that I was a woman translating these works. But reading through my new translations, I could see how they differed from a man’s work.
――
What do you mean by that?
Matsuoka
One of the spots that really struck me was the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet. Male translators had put Juliet’s speech into the humble form of Japanese.
――
Oh!
Matsuoka
When she talks of marriage, she uses a form of Japanese that suggests marrying Romeo is a honor she would humbly receive. When I began working on it, I was influenced by these early translations, and used the same kind of language. But halfway through, I realized something: that unique Japanese nuance wasn’t actually in the original text! In English Romeo and Juliet are on an even footing.
――
I see! Somehow I feel really happy to learn that.
Matsuoka
Once I noticed that, I began to feel that way about the rest of it. These translations probably reflected each translator’s individual ideals for Juliet, and those ideals differed between men and women. So while Romeo and Juliet address one-another as equals, Juliet was assigned a lady-like and modest speaking style in Japanese.
――
If you hadn’t done your own translation, maybe we would have always held that misconception about Juliet.
Matsuoka
People have been translating Shakespeare into Japanese for over a hundred years now, so I figured there was no room for reinterpretation, and that new translations were merely an update in the wording. I figured a playwright could just work it out. But as I translated, I thought, “Wait a minute, something’s not right.” I felt that more and more, and it led to my changing the way each gender spoke.
――
I see.
Matsuoka
When I participated in a talk the other day about Shakespeare, someone asked during the Q&A session, “There are already so many Shakespeare translations already. Why did you decide to do your own?” I hadn’t even considered that anyone would ask that, but they launched that clay pigeon into the air, so I shot it. “Because I’m a woman,” I answered.
――
Wow, what a great answer.
Matsuoka
I hadn’t even thought of it until they asked me that. But once I gave that answer, everyone on stage and in the audience cheered for me.

Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would be translating Shakespeare, but here I am. At this point I feel like I was given the duty to translate him because of this era we’re in, and because I’m a woman. So now I’ve only got 3 left. I can’t kick the bucket until I finish the last of Shakespeare's works. (Laughs)

(Next time we’ll be talking to Ryoji Arai)

photos:eric

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