“I do not, certainly, wish to suggest that I disapprove of such sentences but translating them is not very interesting. “Tanizaki wrote clear, rational sentences,” Mr. Seidensticker recalled in “Tokyo Central,” some writers required more dancing than others: Seidensticker became friends with many of the writers he translated, though the friendships were sometimes tested during the delicate diplomatic dance that is central to the translator’s art. On his return to the United States, he taught at Stanford and the University of Michigan before joining the Columbia faculty in 1978.ĭuring his years in Japan Mr. He lived in Japan full time from 1948 to 1962.

He spent several years in Japan as a foreign-service officer and studied Japanese literature at Tokyo University. Seidensticker earned a master’s degree in international affairs from Columbia in 1947. Seidensticker was a language officer with the Marines in the Pacific, going ashore at Iwo Jima, he later recalled, “loaded down with dictionaries.” At war’s end, he worked as a translator in occupied Japan. At the university, he also attended the Navy’s Japanese Language School, which had been moved there from the West Coast after Pearl Harbor. He earned a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Colorado in 1942. 11, 1921, on his family’s isolated ranch in Castle Rock, Colo. Seidensticker was closely associated with the work of three 20th-century novelists: Yukio Mishima (“The Decay of the Angel,” 1974) Junichiro Tanizaki (“Some Prefer Nettles,” 1955) and, most notably, Yasunari Kawabata, whose novels “Snow Country” and “Thousand Cranes” appeared in the United States in 19.Įdward George Seidensticker was born on Feb. Knopf in 1976, was praised by critics and attracted a popular following. Seidensticker’s translation, published by Alfred A. Seidensticker was most widely known for his translation of “The Tale of Genji,” the 11th-century epic of love and intrigue by Murasaki Shikibu, a Japanese lady-in-waiting at the imperial court.

Seidensticker, who leaves no immediate survivors, was, at his death, emeritus professor of Japanese literature at Columbia. Seidensticker sustained several months ago, said Haruo Shirane, Shincho Professor of Japanese Literature at Columbia University. The cause was complications of a head injury Mr.

Seidensticker, an eminent translator from the Japanese who brought the work of ancient and modern writers to a wide English-speaking public, died on Sunday in Tokyo.

The tale of genji seidensticker