For Women in Translation Month this August, I’m planning to share a few short translations. These are all stories pieces available in the public domain and the Japanese can be found on Aozora Bunko. I’ll link to the specific texts at the end of each story as well.
This first one is a really tiny thing by an amazing author who is criminally undertranslated in English. Yuriko Miyamoto’s The Beauty of the Sky.
Miyamoto (1899-1951) was a writer and activist. During her life, her writing was interrupted by frequent arrests and regular government censorship, but she still published extensively when she was able to. Now her works are regularly collected in anthologies on women’s writing and proletariat literature. For many years Japan’s Communist Party also offered a literary prize named partially in her honor.
The Beauty of the Sky is a small piece, but one that shows Miyamoto’s commitment to observing and capturing the details of life. Read it here.