{"id":6125,"date":"2025-08-19T21:19:00","date_gmt":"2025-08-19T21:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/anotherlook.stanford.edu\/?p=6125"},"modified":"2026-05-13T16:20:49","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T16:20:49","slug":"expressing-the-silent-nature-of-numbers-through-language-a-qa-with-author-yoko-ogawa-and-translator-stephen-snyder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/anotherlook.stanford.edu\/?p=6125","title":{"rendered":"\u201cExpressing the silent nature of numbers through language\u201d: A Q&A with author Y\u014dko Ogawa and translator Stephen Snyder"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Another Look interviews Y\u014dko Ogawa and translator Stephen Snyder, author of The Housekeeper and the Professor<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n

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On Tuesday, September 16, Another Look will spotlight <\/em>Y\u014dko Ogawa<\/em>\u2019s <\/em>The Housekeeper and the Professor<\/a>, a surprising story about what it means to live in the present and about the curious equations that can create a family. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don\u2019t forget to register for the September 16 event, in zoom or in person, <\/em>here<\/a><\/u><\/strong>:

Ogawa\u2019s book is translated by Stephen Snyder, professor of Japanese Studies at Middlebury College in Vermont and a leading translator of Japanese literature. Both agreed to talk to <\/em>Another Look for the upcoming event.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to his work with Y\u014dko Ogawa, Snyder has translated Kenzabur\u014d \u014ce, Ryu Murakami, and Miri Yu, among others. His translation of Natsuo Kirino\u2019s <\/em>Out<\/em> was a finalist for the Edgar Award for best mystery novel in 2004. His translation of Y\u014dko Ogawa\u2019s <\/em>Hotel Iris<\/em> was short-listed for the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2011.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both author and translator offered to answer a few questions about this surprising book, as well as the complex dynamic between translator and author, as we prepare for our Stanford celebration of Ogawa\u2019s book. Cynthia Haven was able to ask both translator and author a few questions.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Questions for author Y\u014dko Ogawa:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Y\u014dko Ogawa generously offered to answer a couple questions for Another as well. She is busy with the serialization of her next novel, so her comments are necessarily brief:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Question #1 for Yoko Ogawa: I\u2019ve read of your interest in The Diary of Anne Frank<\/em> and its influence on your work. Can you elaborate a little?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the major reasons I was drawn to The Diary of a Young Girl<\/em> is that, within the confinement and restrictions of being locked away, there existed the infinite freedom of writing a diary. The ability to make such seemingly contradictory states coexist gives people vitality. I believe I have continued to pursue this in my fiction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Professor can only retain memories for 80 minutes. But by letting his mind play within the infinity of numbers, he enriches his life. Here too, we find the coexistence of the finite and the infinite\u2014of contradiction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Question #2 for Yoko Ogawa: Can you tell us a little about the author\u2019s interest in mathematics?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The farther something is from language, the more I want to write about it in fiction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chess, birdsong, mementos, numbers\u2026 All are things that require no words. To express the silent nature of numbers through language\u2014this too contains the allure of contradiction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Questions for translator Steven Snyder:  <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Your collaboration with Y\u014dko Ogawa has been a fruitful one. How did your work together begin?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n

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I am extremely fortunate to have been asked to translate so many of Y\u014dko Ogawa\u2019s works. More than twenty years ago, I was asked to translate \u201cA Cafeteria in the Evening and a Pool in the Rain\u201d for a literary journal that ceased publication shortly after I had finished the translation. Y\u014dko\u2019s agent suggested that we send the story to The<\/em> New Yorker<\/em>, and after it was published there, Picador agreed to publish the first book-length works. (Photo courtesy Stephen Snyder) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019ve translated the dystopian The Memory Police<\/em>, The Diving Pool<\/em>, Hotel Iris<\/em>,and of course our fall feature for Stanford\u2019s Another Look book club, The Housekeeper and the Professor. <\/em>How was the work different on each? How did your understanding of Ogawa\u2019s work change with each translation?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I translated The Diving Pool<\/em> first, followed by The Housekeeper and the Professor<\/em>, Hotel Iris<\/em>, Revenge<\/em>, then The Memory Police<\/em> and, most recently, Mina\u2019s Matchbox<\/em>. The works are quite different\u2014novels, novellas, and linked short stories\u2014and the tone varies considerably from lighter works, such as The Housekeeper and the Professor<\/em> and Mina\u2019s Matchbox<\/em>, to much darker ones, such as The Memory Police<\/em> and Hotel Iris<\/em>, but Ogawa\u2019s style is consistent. Her prose is always lucid and stately, her imagery always original and striking. As I\u2019ve translated these works \u2013 and read many others that have not been translated into English \u2013 I feel I\u2019ve come to understand the common themes and the larger authorial vision that unites her work. A reader could explore this by making a careful comparison, for example, between The Housekeeper and the Professor<\/em> and Hotel Iris<\/em>. While one work is charming and uplifting and the other extremely dark, they share a common structure and any number of motifs, though employed to very different ends. As I\u2019ve translated successive works, I have also come to feel that I am better able to grasp the essence of Ogawa\u2019s style in Japanese and create an idiom for it in English that evolves from work to work but is also informed by the general consistency of her practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What are the challenges of translating Ogawa\u2019s work? What inevitably gets lost in translation?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A great deal is inevitably lost in any translation, especially one between languages as different as Japanese and English. The genius of Japanese linguistic economy \u2013 elided pronouns, formulaic nominal patterns repeated verbatim, etc. \u2013 is impossible to reproduce in English without making the prose seem nonsensical. English can seem wordier, more explicit, less suggestive, but a consistent translation strategy, especially with the luxury of being able to develop it over several works, can help mitigate the loss. There are also challenges specific to certain works and scenes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n

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In The Housekeeper and the Professor<\/em>, perhaps the most difficult scene was the one where the professor helps Root with his homework assignment on palindromes. Palindromes are, by definition, untranslatable. With the help of the editor, I had to find English language palindromes to substitute for the Japanese ones Root and the professor quote or invent. In a moment of translation serendipity, when the professor proposes the final palindrome, in Japanese he says \u201cReito toire<\/em>,\u201d a nonsense phrase that translates as \u201cfrozen toilet,\u201d but searching through English palindromes, we discovered \u201cI prefer pi\u201d\u2014a choice that could not have been better suited to the theme of the novel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019re not the first to showcase The Housekeeper and the Professor. <\/em>You note it has been a featured book in colleges and cities around the world \u2013 why do you think that is so? What reaction have you heard from readers around the world? Any stories about its reception?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I suspect it was adopted as common reading by libraries and colleges because it combines a moving human story with a clever and stimulating introduction to some basic math concepts. I think some of us who have little skill in mathematics are attracted to the gentle, manageable explanations. One town that selected the book for its library reading program invited a guest who had a disability that resembled the professor\u2019s and asked him to discuss the experience of memory loss. Sitting next to him at dinner added a new understanding to my own reading of the novel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a New York Times <\/em>interview in 2019, you said, \u201cHer narrative seems to be flowing from a source that\u2019s hard to identify.\u201d Has it been any easier to identify in the years since? Can you share what you have learned?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Did I say that? I suppose I was referring to the extraordinary range of Y\u014dko\u2019s work and her amazing productivity, but also to the mysterious way she structures a narrative for extraordinary effect. The linkages between the eleven stories in Revenge<\/em>, for example, are as clever and complex as they are illuminating and central to the power of the work, but it\u2019s difficult to say where that particular narrative impulse originates\u2014even when reading as closely as a translator must.

What\u2019s next for you two? Is there another book in the works?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n

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Yes, I am currently translating Chinmoku hakubutsukan<\/em> under the working title \u201cThe Museum of Silence.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prof. Robert Pogue Harrison had a question that is on all our minds: Does Ogawa have a passion for mathematics? How did the idea for this book come to her?<\/strong>

I noticed that in 2006, she worked alongside the mathematician Masahiko Fujiwara to co-write “An Introduction to the World’s Most Elegant Mathematics,” a dialogue on the extraordinary beauty of numbers. Surely that was an influence \u2013 The Housekeeper and the Professor <\/em>was published two years later. What has she said about it?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Professor Harrison is correct, Y\u014dko does indeed have a passion for mathematics, though the influence runs the other way. She published The Housekeeper and the Professor<\/em> (originally Hakase no aishita suushiki<\/em>) in 2003 as a result of her longstanding interest in mathematics and, on the basis of its great success in Japan, began the discussion with Professor Fujiwara that resulted in the book mentioned. Like many writers, Japanese or otherwise, she tends to develop great passions for a variety of subjects, many of which result in a novel. Her interest in chess became the wonderful \u201cHolding a Cat, Swimming with an Elephant,\u201d which has not yet been translated into English but has been translated into French by Martin Vergne.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chess, birdsong, mementos, numbers\u2026 All are things that require no words. To express the silent nature of numbers through language\u2014this too contains the allure of contradiction. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":6127,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[86,85,84],"class_list":["post-6125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-anne-frank","tag-stephen-snyder","tag-yoko-ogawa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/anotherlook.stanford.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/anotherlook.stanford.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/anotherlook.stanford.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anotherlook.stanford.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anotherlook.stanford.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/anotherlook.stanford.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6125\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anotherlook.stanford.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/anotherlook.stanford.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anotherlook.stanford.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anotherlook.stanford.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}