Grant Projects: Activities

On February 1, 2008, Noriaki Oshikawa received the Yomiuri Prize for Literature in the Academic Studies and Translation category for his translation of Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s House of Glass, which was published in August 2007 by Mekong Publishing Co. using a grant from the Toyota Foundation.

Mr. Oshikawa’s award-winning translation is of the fourth installment of Indonesian author Pramoedya’s The Buru Quartet, a tetralogy of historical novels that also includes This Earth of Mankind, Child of All Nations, and Footsteps. In translating and publishing the work, he received grant funding through the Toyota Foundation’s “Know Our Neighbors” Translation-Publication Program in Japan.

The books could be described as an epic saga through which Pramoedya, a political prisoner living in exile on the island of Buru, used literature to give a thorough and robust account of Indonesia’s dynamic contemporary history. Although the Suharto regime outlawed the sale of his books for fear of the effect they might have, they have been translated into more than 40 languages and had an enormous impact on the world at large.

Mr. Oshikawa’s placing of the original text alongside his translation has allowed him to produce a meticulous translation that readers can become absorbed in.