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Walley's Eight Dogs translation wins Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize

CEAS book cover for Hakkenden (8 Dogs)
November 2, 2021

Glynne Walley, translator of Kyokutei Bakin’s Eight Dogs, or “Hakkenden”: Part One—An Ill-Considered Jest, is co-winner of the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature given by the Donald Keene Center for Japanese Culture.

The Japan-United States Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature was established in 1979, and the award has been administered by the Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture at Columbia University since the Center was founded in 1986. The Prize is awarded annually to outstanding works of translation into English from the Japanese language.

Eight Dogs is the fourth in the Cornell East Asia Series to win this prize, following Stephen D. Miller and Patrick Donnelly’s The Wind from Vulture Peak (2015-2016), Matthew Fraleigh’s New Chronicles of Yanagibashi and Diary of a Journey to the West (2011-2012), and Mae J. Smethurst’s Dramatic Representations of Filial Piety (2001).

Eight Dogs was awarded the 2018-19 William F. Sibley Memorial Subvention Award for Japanese Translation by the Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Chicago. In 2020, Glynne Walley received a Presidential Fellowship in Humanistic Study from the University of Oregon to further his translation of Eight Dogs.

Professor Walley discussed his translation at the first CEAS author talk, hosted by the East Asia Program, on October 20. For more information on Eight Dogs, visit the Cornell University Press website or read the review in the Wall Street Journal.

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