10 Questions for Ryan Choi
- By Franchesca Viaud
As the sharpened sword beheads the two-headed
serpent,
I shun the crude laughter and gossip of the mortal
world.
Thousands of autumns of virtue and vice are buried
in the yellow of the earth,
Under the sunny skies that forever shine on good
and evil the same.
The slightest breeze rumples the moon’s portrait on
the lake,
The faintest drizzle snatches the blooming flowers
from their branches.
—translated from Natsume Sōseki’s "Untitled Poems I, IV, and V," Volume 65, Issue 1 (Spring 2024)
Tell us about one of the first pieces you translated.
I’ll say something about Old Age, the original title story of my first book of translations, In Dreams: The Very Short Stories of Ryūnosuke Akutagawa. It was the author’s debut fiction (set during a music recital at a tea house on a snowy evening), written right before the more famous Rashōmon, which, by the way, was a story that impressed Sōseki, who befriended and mentored the younger author for a short while before his death. Old Age was one of my first attempts at translating Japanese prose into English. I had done some poems before but never prose and one day, while reading Jay Rubin and Charles De Wolf’s versions of his work, I noticed by chance in Akutagawa’s Wikipedia entry that Old Age hadn’t been translated yet, which I thought was a strange and glaring omission given the author’s stature, although later, browsing through his collected writings online (which number 350+ pieces), I came across many other untranslated works, more not done than done, like gems hiding in plain sight, hence the idea for my book. On my first run at the story, however, I gave up after a week or so—I guess it was the heavy-handedness of some of the writing, and I wasn’t really connecting to the text. But this latter feeling might have been more from the fact that Japanese isn’t my native language, and though skills improve with practice there’s often a certain amount of elementary study or training I have to do before I can read a Japanese literary text fluidly, not that different from learning a dance or a piece of music or a part in a play. In hindsight, trying to translate Old Age at that early stage of my career was like a novice mountain climber essaying a trail 5-6 out of 10 on the difficulty scale. But it all worked out. I returned to the story a few months later and completed it. I had to revise it like fifty-plus times though, and even now I’m not convinced I got it. But oh well, someone else can try.
What writer(s) or works have influenced the way you write now?
I’m going to dodge this question politely. There are too many names. As for translators, I won’t say “influenced,” but the first two I noticed in my language-pair were Edwin McClellan and Arthur Waley.
What other professions have you worked in?
I was driving a delivery van when I first got into writing and translating. I did music, too, but I would shy from calling that a “professional” pursuit.
What did you want to be when you were young?
My parents said when I was in kindergarten I wanted to be a fireman, and somewhere in the family archives there exists a bad crayon drawing that I did of myself as one. Back then, I must have had a fantastical view of what a “fireman” actually did, and the evocative name was likely to blame. For sure I didn’t dream of being a writer. And certainly not a translator. But it must be fairly rare anyway to have a child who aspires to be a literary translator. My gut tells me that literary translation, perhaps like art restoration or utensil design, is often a thing fallen into, and then pursued. In the case of my life, falling into literature in general seems a bit of a non sequitur, in the sense that as a boy I wasn’t into books and English was my worst subject in school. Even though my father was an avid reader and books were a presence in the house, the habit didn’t come to me until the end of high school, and in a dabbling way, and then more in earnest in my twenties (nowadays, I’ve regressed—I hardly read for lack of time, and if I do have the time, I’m grinding axes at my desk, or doing something that doesn’t involve sitting hunched for hours in front of a screen). Needless to say, my childhood and teenage selves would be bemused to hear what their future self is up to.
What drew you to write a translation of this piece in particular?
These poems are from a complete edition of Sōseki’s kanshi. The design of the book requires me to translate everything, whether I like a poem or not. This is not to say that I don’t like the poems that appear in The Massachusetts Review, because I do.
Is there a city or place, real or imagined, that influences your writing?
I still live now on the same island where I was born and raised. I’ve lived in other places—Philadelphia, New York, and Tokyo, for a spell—but I’m most productive when I’m home.
Is there any specific music that aids you through the writing or editing process?
Even though I spend more time listening to music than I do reading, I never listen to music when I’m writing or translating.
Do you have any rituals or traditions that you do in order to write?
Bland as it sounds, I just try to be consistent and treat it like a job, no matter how I feel. I don’t wait for “inspiration.” This usually means a few hours of work in the morning, another hour during the day (if I’m lucky), another few hours at night. I have children who dictate my schedule, so I clock in whenever I can fit it in. I have my desk, yes, but it’s not the only place that I write.
What are you working on currently?
This Sōseki poetry project, and I have two books of translation coming out over the next year, one of haiku and the other a second volume of Akutagawa’s writings—work continues on these, as needed. To be honest, I’m pivoting away from translation and writing fiction instead. I have some stories of my own due out this year.
What are you reading right now?
Outside of work I’m not reading anything.
RYAN CHOI is the author of In Dreams: The Very Short Stories of Ryūnosuke Akutagawa and Three Demons: A Study on Sanki Saitō’s Haiku. He is an editor at AGNI. His writings and translations have appeared in Harper’s Magazine, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Nation, The New Criterion, Raritan, Times Literary Supplement, and elsewhere. He lives in Honolulu, HI, where he was born and raised.
