Only in Japan

This page is a link at Amazon Japan to a book called “ユダヤ人の力！ユダヤ人はなぜ頭がいいのか、なぜ成功するのか！” or “Jewish Power! Why Jews are so smart and succeed!”

The recommended books on the rest of the page are all about Jewish thought and value systems.

Tip from Gen Taguchi’s blog.

He summarizes a point in the book: “they believe going to a good school increases your abilities.”

Haruki and Jay

At the age of 29, a bar owner attended a baseball game and suddenly decided he could become a writer.  He became one of Japan’s most famous contemporary authors.  He is Haruki Murakami.

I was writing and writing every day, then when that darkness came, I was ready to enter it. It took time before that, to reach that stage. You can’t do that by starting to write today and then tomorrow entering that kind of world. You have to endure and labor every day.          

 A Harvard professor of Japanese translated the majority of Murakami’s works, including the gory and violent.  He is Jay Rubin.

When you translate, you do not just passively absorb what’s on the original page, you get actively involved in imagining every detail the author put in there – every sight, sound, smell, touch and taste – and in finding the right words for them in your own language. It may be possible to translate technical documents passively and mechanically, but not literature. And the kind of active involvement required in the translation of literature takes time. You stay with the text far longer – probably longer than the author ever did. In the case of a blood-soaked scene, this can mean a lot of excruciating days at the computer.   

 Interesting insight into the task of fiction translation and more unfortunate reasons to expand my already bloated library.

 Good thing I have Library Thing!