Hiragana Times Archive
This month Selection 1
Yokai Culture: International Couple Publishes a Unique Book about Japanese Yokai
AltJapan Co., Ltd.
President, YODA Hiroko
Vice President, Matt ALT
Did you know that the sushi roll called kappa maki takes its name from the kappa, one of the many legendary Japanese folk creatures known as yokai? Yokai-related phrases such as “Tengu ni naru,” an idiom that means “someone who is overly self-confident,” pop up in daily Japanese speech as well. Summer is a time when all sorts of ghosts and yokai are prevalent in Japanese films and plays. Some say that ghosts are the restless spirits of people who have died and can’t rest in peace. But what about yokai?
Japanese YODA Hiroko and American Matt ALT are a married couple who love yokai. They run AltJapan Co., Ltd., a translation company, and in June 2008, they published Yokai Attack! The Japanese Monster Survival Guide. The book introduces 46 yokai, including everything from the ancient Tengu that has appeared in Japanese legends for more than 1,000 years, to the Slash-Mouthed Woman, who first appeared only a few decades ago.
Hiroko has been a fan of yokai since childhood. “Japan has a cultural tradition of anthropomorphizing inanimate objects by drawing eyes and mouths on them,” she says. “Through our research, we were surprised to learn how deep the roots go. In Japan, there is a long tradition of nature worship, and a belief that everyday objects can have souls or be inhabited by spirits. Yokai are part of that same tradition.”
Hiroko also explained their reasons for writing the book. “Even though Japanese anime and manga are popular around the world, yokai remain all but unknown abroad. Some people know of them as characters from various cartoon shows, but very few understand their true roots in Japanese culture,” she says. “So we got the idea that while the yokai may be old, in a certain sense they’re also very cutting edge.”
When the pair commissioned the illustrations for the book, they asked the artist to exaggerate them to make the yokai easier to understand for readers abroad. “For the illustration of the Tsukumo-Gami (“Artifact-spirits” that are tools which have become sentient after a long period of time), we used Western ‘objects’ such as old telephones and typewriters rather than Japanese ones,” explains Matt. “In Japan, even people who aren’t fanatics have a certain degree of knowledge about the yokai, but we had to start from square one when explaining them to non-Japanese.”
The names of the yokai appear in Romanized English rather than as translations. “It isn’t wrong to translate ‘samurai’ as ‘Japanese warrior,’ but it doesn’t exactly feel right, either,” explains Matt. “Since ‘samurai’ has entered the English language as a loanword, we wanted to do the same thing for ‘yokai.’ Translations like ‘goblin,’ ‘fairy,’ or ‘spirit’ simply don’t do the job.”
“Words are culture,” continues Hiroko. “But if you simply Romanize the names of the yokai, they look like long jumbles of letters. So we added pronunciation guides and transliterations. We put a lot of time into making sure that the explanations were fun – not too long or overly complicated. There have been many academic books on the subject, but we wanted to make something that was entertaining.”
Hiroko quit her job as an office worker in Japan to enroll in the University of Maryland, where she first met Matt at a house party. Matt was working as a technical translator at the US Patent and Trademark office. One day, Matt was approached by a friend who asked him to translate a video game. Realizing it was too much work to handle on his own, Matt asked Hiroko to help.
“When you translate a game,” explains Hiroko, “you can’t be too literal, you can’t be too loose, and above all else you have to make it entertaining. It’s a delicate balance, but when we worked together it went really smoothly. That’s when we started thinking this could be a new career for both of us.” In 2000, the couple founded AltJapan in a Maryland suburb. In light of the fact that most of their growing list of clients were located in Tokyo, the pair made the decision to relocate. They moved to Tokyo in 2003, re-naming their company AltJapan Co., Ltd.
The process of writing Yokai Attack! went so smoothly that the American editor remarked that it was one of the easiest projects he had ever worked on. But just two weeks before the manuscript was to be sent to the printers, the Australian designer’s computer crashed, taking all of the page data with it. He worked overtime to lay out all of the pages again in just one week. Talk about a real-life yokai attack!
“We wanted to create a resource of information about Japan and the yokai. If opportunities for international yokai exchange increase as a result, we’ll be happy,” laugh Hiroko and Matt. “And we have only introduced a tiny fraction of the yokai. There are still plenty more to write about. So stay tuned for a sequel!”
(From September Issue 2008)
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