Between Two Languages: The Translation an Reception of Anaïs Nin in Japan

Abstract

It was in 1966 that Anaïs Nin’s novel A Spy in the House of Love was first published in Japan. The translator was Koji Nakata and the publisher was Kawade Shobo, one of the major publishers in Japan at that time. The volume was a part of a series entitled ‘Human Literature’, a collection of new and experimental novels by Western writers. This male translator attached a beautiful postscript to his excellent translation.¹ Quoting extracts from the Diary, he introduced Anaïs Nin as a person who had been struggling to achieve her artistic completeness throughout her life. He also referred to Nin’s abstract style, admiring its artistic quality:

I had a hard time translating A Spy in the House of Love. Anaïs Nin’s highly poetic style, which is semi-surrealistic in its delicate structure, and which describes a subjective adventure of vague, psychic sphere, was truly difficult. Yet I was fascinated by the charm of her sensitive style. A more substantial world was loomed up out of her vague and abstract world of logos which is as delicate as glassworks, as faint and glimmering as light and shadow.²