ABSTRACT
This epilogue begins by returning to the narrative that opened the book’s introduction that traced the success of Japanese literature in translation – and in an important era for literary translation – in the late 2010s, and brings that story up to date. As the Introduction to this book argues, Japanese literature does not merely exist a priori to be translated. This epilogue offers further real, contemporary examples in which translation is actively constituting and reconstituting literary production in Japan. These developments offer a reason to celebrate. However, the second section of this epilogue also reflects on the findings of individual textual analyses within the preceding chapters to venture a more cautious perspective. If the dominant image of translation in a “world literature” and “trans-border” context is predicated upon tropes of connection and healing, the texts discussed in this book derive their energy and, paradoxically, connectedness through tropes of wounding. Though precarious and vicarious, these texts offer a vision of translating differently that allows an alternative vision of the world, Japanese literature, and the borders that separate each, to come into view.
