Lyric poet Hiromi Ito and professor of Japanese Studies Irmela Hijiya-Kirschnereit have built a close working friendship over the years. Hijiya-Kirschnereit began translating Ito’s poems in the 1990s. At the time, Ito – author, performer, and essayist in one – used poetry as a medium through which to discuss life. Here, she was able to shock her readers by using language in an innovative way. She discussed topics like menstruation and childbirth and, long before what has come to be known as the “regretting motherhood” debate had come to the fore, used literary text to explore women’s ambivalent feelings toward motherhood in a previously unheard-of manner.

However, Ito’s work is not limited to the sphere of poetry. The author also writes columns and philosophical prose; her contributions to the field of nature writing have won her international acclaim. The German-language translation of Ito’s novel, Dornauszieher (“The Thorn Puller”), translated by Irmela Hijiya-Kirschnereit, was published last year. It is a semi-autobiographical novel that tells the story of Shiromi Ito, who, like the author, has three daughters and travels back and forth between her frail parents in Japan and her sick husband in the USA.

The entertaining yet complex text, first published in Ito’s native language in Japan in 2007, opens a window into the fascinating history of Japanese language and culture, religion, and nature.

This spring, Hijiya-Kirschnereit’s translation of the book into German was shortlisted for the Leipzig Book Fair Prize for Translation, cementing the book’s status as an exceptional example of contemporary international literature. Thirty years ago, a book like this never would have been translated, claims Hijiya-Kirschnereit. It would have been considered too “foreign.”

Now, however, it represents an exciting work of literature for the “Temporal Communities” Cluster of Excellence, a group that focuses on global literature and the connections between texts that extend through time and space. As Dorothea Schlegel Artist in Residency, Hiromi Ito is able to carry out a residency with the literary research alliance “Temporal Communities: Doing Literature in a Global Perspective.” Among other things, the residency allows her to work together with Hijiya-Kirschnereit on questions surrounding translation, one of the Cluster of Excellence’s main research focuses.

Professor Hijiya-Kirschnereit, where did you get the idea to translate the book “The Thorn Puller?”

Irmela Hijiya-Kirschnereit: I was fascinated by the book when it was first published in Japan fifteen years ago. However, it made me wonder whether it could ever be translated. I thought it was far too complex! My husband encouraged me to give it a go. It took a lot of attempts before I had the feeling that I could make this dense yet entertaining text accessible for German readers.

What did you find particularly difficult?

Irmela Hijiya-Kirschnereit: The many different layers of the text. If you explain every little detail of a translation to readers, it doesn’t work. What’s more, the text had a very unique sound. That meant that I had to keep making decisions. It was an exciting, touching process – almost physical in a sense.

Did the fact that you both know each other help with the translation process?

Hiromi Ito: We spoke on Skype regularly throughout the pandemic. The book is full of quotes, so I explained where these quotes were from. What’s more, there are a lot of references that you just won’t get if you didn’t grow up in Japan. It’s great to be able to talk about these things and share what I know.

Irmela Hijiya-Kirschnereit: For me, it was a way to check my translation. Being able to ask questions directly was incredibly helpful.

The book doesn’t just play with literary quotes, it also contains many different references – like the somewhat baroque-sounding subtitle of the book: “Der fabelhafte Jizō von Sugamo” (“The fabulous Jizō of Sugamo”).

Hiromi Ito: The title and the chapter headings are a parody of ancient Japanese Buddhist stories taken from thirteenth-century Japan. I love classical texts! When I started writing the book, I was fascinated by a specific form of oral storytelling from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The stories – sometimes cruel, sometimes erotic – were told by people who wandered from village to village. The central figures in all these stories were women. They were usually former princesses who had to overcome a series of difficulties in order to go beyond their personal limits and grow. I saw a bit of myself in these princesses, and how my life used to be. (She laughs.)

How does the book fit into the Cluster of Excellence’s research program?

Irmela Hijiya-Kirschnereit: It’s an exciting text with which to test some of the Cluster’s theories. For example, the Cluster’s main area of focus is the global interconnectivity of literature, combined with the idea that there are many cases in which unexpected connections between texts occur. Hiromi Ito takes inspiration from Franz Kafka and Euripides, combining these classic European texts with Japanese mythology and early modernist poetry. She does so in a way that readers can see, hear, and even feel.

How can literary scholars and artists collaborate productively?

Hiromi Ito: I don’t know much about the academic side of literature. Irmela Hijiya-Kirschnereit knows much more about Japanese literature than I do! I just create literature.

Irmela Hijiya-Kirschnereit: One of the core ideas behind the Temporal Communities Cluster is to bring artists together with academics who are dealing with these works from a theoretical or historical perspective.

For me personally, having the opportunity to talk to Hiromi almost every day has been wonderful. We are able to develop new questions together, which then find their way into our work in a number of ways. One subject we have in common is our shared interest in the relationship between a literary work and its translation. For example, Hiromi has also translated various texts into Japanese and has even illustrated some of her own books. This means changing the art’s medium. To translate is to create something new. However, translation can also mean transforming something into a different artistic medium, for example, a dance.

These questions of medial translation and transposition are key topics for the Cluster – and for the research area “Travelling Matters,” which I belong to.

Ms. Ito, you take part in various conferences and workshops organized by the Cluster, reading from and discussing your work. Do you have any other special projects that you’re working on during your stay here?

Hiromi Ito: I am currently very interested in Mori Ogai …

… a doctor and author who studied under Robert Koch, among others, during the late nineteenth century in Berlin and translated German literature into Japanese …

… and am following the traces he left behind in Berlin, Leipzig, and Munich. Scholars have often focused on the content of his stories, but I am interested in his amazing style. I am also intrigued by the fact that he always wanted to become a hermit, but never did so due to his many interests and responsibilities.

He also translated the work of Hugo Landsberger, who wrote under the pseudonym Hans Land. Landsberger was a German author and contemporary of Ogai, who, despite not being very popular in Germany nowadays, is a beloved author in Japan thanks to his story “Erling.”

I have also had some other new ideas since coming to Berlin. I’m fascinated by all the trees here. I thought Berlin was a city but, in reality, it’s a forest. In Japan, I actively campaign to stop trees from being cut down in the cities – and in my local city, too. I am now considering combining both topics to try and encourage Japanese people to think more about trees – and about Mori Ogai, because the two are connected: Ogai was his pen name; his birth name was Mori Rintaro. In Japanese script, both names contain the written character for “trees” and “forest.”

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Nina Diezemann conducted the interview. It originally appeared in German on July 2, 2022, in the Tagesspiegel newspaper supplement published by Freie Universität Berlin.