Life in Japan is as exotic as one may imagine, and every bit as routine as life anywhere.  Which end of the scale one experiences depends very much on what she or he chooses to make of each day.  For me, it is also rooted in how often I am willing to just stop, look, breathe, and allow awe to wash over me.

Giving a novel a sense of life in Japan presents a host of problems.  Include too much about Japan’s uniqueness and it becomes all travelog; the story gets lost.  Focus only on the storyline and the richness of the setting is lost.  

One challenge I have faced trying to capture life in Japan in writing is what to do about language, particularly: 1) how to handle the imperfect language of nonnative speakers, 2) how much Japanese to include, and 3) how to provide translation of the Japanese.  I think I have good answers, but not all of my readers agree.  I am still awaiting a professional edit of my first novel, Under Shōko’s Bed, so my solutions may change as I work with my editor.  Nevertheless, let me propose answers to my three “hows.”

How to handle nonnative speech

When dealing with non-native speakers’ English, particularly Japanese, my approach is to make it authentic.  Thus, Shōko in Under Shōko’s Bed makes common grammatical errors and uses a limited English vocabulary.  Some have commented that her style of speech makes her seem stupid, but I disagree.  Perhaps because I have lived in Japan for so long and am so used to very imperfect English spoken by people I know to be incredibly bright, English imperfections don’t feed my prejudices.  Besides, some of the greatest authors of our time (e.g., William Faulkner) have used dialects to great effect.  My view of nonnative Japanese speakers such as myself is the same.  It is a difficult language. Almost all of us have some trouble, so when writing the English equivalents of their Japanese conversations, I make the English imperfect.  Imperfection is part of being human.  Not merely accepting but appreciating the imperfection in others is a very worthy trait.  I think it’s a fine thing for a novel to reflect that.

How much Japanese to include

I feel like a reader gets a richer experience, more of a country’s flavor, when its language enters the text.  Some words, of course, simply have no English equivalent.  For example, a genkan is not just an entryway.  It is where a person removes his or her shoes before stepping up into the house.  Thus, it is a hybrid space that is treated in some ways as being both inside and outside.  For example, one does not step out of one’s shoes onto the genkan floor, as the floor of the genkan is “outside” in terms of cleanliness.  Instead, the step is made directly up into the house.  It can lead to some gymnastics for foreigners who are unused to it, but most master it well enough.  (I generally feel childishly unable to make the movement smooth and effortless.)  The inclusion of the word, though, highlights in a small way that Japanese homes are different and reminds the reader that this is a unique culture.

Other words I include are relatively simple ones that can be understood in context, and they often come in through dialogue.  The one way that longer Japanese text may enter is in scenes written from the point of view of a foreigner who does not understand what is being said.  If the Japanese is more than a couple of lines, I simply say that the person does not understand, but I think short dialogue with no immediate translation can be an effective way of putting the reader into the place of the character.

How to provide the reader with translation

My third issue, how to handle translation, depends on the words and where they appear.  At the outset, let me state that I think the reader deserves a translation of non-English words and phrases in an English novel.  I know I feel just a little cheated reading translations of Gabriel García Márquez as I cannot understand untranslated Spanish words or phrases—not cheated enough to go searching for meanings on the Internet, though.  I just read on, likely missing some of the color of the novel.  In Under Shōko’s Bed, I chose to deal with the translation problem in three ways.  First, the basic meaning (obviously not all nuances) of some words, such as “genkan” explained above, can be understood well enough from the context, so I include no translation within the text.  

Second, for words that appear more than once in the novel, and have simple English equivalents and that are not easily understood from the context, I put the English in parentheses after the Japanese the first time the word appears.  For example, “She walked past a kōban (police box) on the way to work.”  This is simple, direct, and if not done too frequently, does not significantly intrude on the reading experience.  The one place I try not to do this is in dialogue, as it breaks the flow and rhythm of speech.  

The third way that Japanese appears, as explained above, is in short bits of conversation as heard and not understood by nonnative speakers.  

Regardless of how a word is dealt with in the text, however, I include all Japanese words and phrases that appear in the text in a glossary at the end of the book.  Anyone interested in a word’s meaning can simply turn to the end and see.

I did not immediately come to the “appendix” solution.  In my first drafts, I put the translations in footnotes.  I am a slow and ponderous reader whose mind constantly wanders.  (Reading anything but the most engrossing fiction can be truly painful.)  So checking footnotes does not bother me at all.  Some readers, though, told me that the footnotes interrupted the flow of their reading.  The obvious solution was to put all the translation into a glossary.  This also serves as an excellent overall indicator of the amount of Japanese in the novel.  If the glossary is too thick, I am overloading the text with Japanese, to the detriment of the reader.  If it is too thin, the experience won’t be authentically Japanese.  Of course, what is too thick or thin is completely subjective.  Under Shōko’s Bed had too much Japanese in the early drafts, so I cut some.  The novel I am writing now is woefully short of Japanese.  As I rework it, I will add more.

I hope my solutions to the problem of language work for most readers.  I know they do for me and for others who have read my drafts.  I would love to hear others’ solutions, though, so please comment!