Guitarist Pickles Tamura, Alison, and Durian outside the farm temple at the 2016 Nasu performance where Alison first met Durian.Īfter that, he came back to Japan and resumed many of his creative endeavors. ( Deborah: For more on Alison’s meeting with Durian, see the story Alison wrote about it for the Words Without Borders website.) He offered to show me around Tama Zenshoen, which he said the French translator of Sweet Bean Paste also found very helpful. He wasn’t even aware that a translator had been assigned, so it was a complete surprise to him.

They wanted me to consult with the author as well, but instead of contacting Durian by email, I turned up at a musical-dramatic reading performance he was giving in Nasu to introduce myself. Then in 2016, Oneworld Publications contacted me and I got the contract to translate it. After that I didn’t hear anything for a couple of years. I wanted to translate it, so I did a synopsis and sample translation, and gave it to the agent. The story includes the basic history of the treatment of people with Hansen’s disease in Japan, and takes the reader inside Tenshoen, based on Tama Zenshoen in Tokyo, a sanatorium where many people were forced to stay for decades even after they were cured.Īlison Watts, a translator and long-term resident of Japan, found Sweet Bean Paste in 2013 when a foreign rights agent working on behalf of Poplar, the original publisher, gave her the book to read.Īlison: I read the book and couldn’t stop thinking about it. She cooks up huge batches of the bean paste for dorayaki as she teaches Sentaro how to make it too. Sentaro turns her down again and again, but her bean-paste making skills win him over. Tokue turns out to be a former Hansen’s disease patient.

She’s quite elderly and her hands are misshapen. One day, a woman named Tokue comes to call and apply for a job. His only pleasure in life is an occasional beer. He makes dorayaki, sweet bean paste sandwiched between pancakes, and sells it from a little shop. First of all, the book is about Sentaro, a man of about forty who has spent time in prison, is in debt, and works at a job he doesn’t particularly like.

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