PRESS
Literature Is Meant to Be a Journey
DECEMBER 21, 2021
MONKEY vol. 2 review by Eric Margolis
"What makes contemporary Japanese literature so cool? A stylish magazine, which prides itself on the quality of its translation and an irresistible urge towards literary play, offers more than a few answers.
The stories that can be found in Volume 2 of Monkey: New Writing from Japan are as intriguing as they are varied. This volume is loosely themed around travel, which makes a simultaneously obvious and intriguing truth float to the surface. True travel is about experiencing and digesting the world around us anew, which is why travel-related stories can produce such good writing. And in this case, it produces an excellent compendium of new and old Japanese writing.”
Japan Spotlight
Monkey Magazine Exchanges Literatures Between the US & Japan
MAY 10, 2021
An interview with Roland Kelts by the editor-in-chief of Japan Spotlight, Naoyuki Harada
"I find women writers’ ability to look at the low level of culture quite fascinating. In Mieko Kawakami’s novel Breasts and Eggs the narrator talks a lot about poverty, and characters deal with not having enough money . . . . It’s quite different from Haruki Murakami’s novels. Of course, Murakami’s characters sometimes visit the low levels of society, but they usually live a comfortable middle-class life. They enjoy cooking; they enjoy wine; they can travel. But in Kawakami’s books, the characters are often at quite a low level of society without any illusions. That’s an interesting point of contrast between Murakami and Kawakami."
Monkey Magazine: Exploring Contemporary Japanese Literature and Supporting Translators
APRIL 2, 2021
"As Roland Kelts says, 'Japanese fiction can give us a sense of how the culture perceives its own societal DNA and the world beyond through a writer’s choice of words, characters, description, routine, and drama. What might seem like sudden bursts of magical realism to an American or European reader of a story by Mieko Kawakami, Aoko Matsuda or Haruki Murakami, for example, may be found embedded in placid everyday prose in their fiction. What might that reveal about a certain type of awareness in the Japanese self?’"
MONKEY: New Imprint to Showcase Japanese Fiction in Translation
FEBRUARY 24, 2021
“Berkeley, CA February 24th, 2021 - MONKEY New Writing from Japan, a literary magazine based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and produced in Pittsburgh and Tokyo, and Stone Bridge Press of Berkeley, California, announce a new imprint devoted to contemporary Japanese fiction in translation.”
Literary magazine Monkey serves up a full meal of delights
OCTOBER 31, 2020
“Heartfelt, family-oriented entries about food and eating round out this enjoyable collection... Monkey presents what I know Japanese contemporary literature can be at its best — wild, dizzying fun.”
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Event report – “Voices from Japan: Launching the New Literary Journal MONKEY”
OCTOBER 27, 2020
Hearing the music of language: New magazine helps Japanese literature score big abroad
OCTOBER 21, 2020
“Yoko Ogawa narrates a haunting sequence of illustrations by Canadian artist Jon Klassen. Aoko Matsuda shows us how to physically dissect a misogynist. And that’s before you get to a Noh play, haiku and tanka poems, and the sketches, photographs, and manga of a themed section on the allure of food.”
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Motoyuki Shibata is always ready to listen to writers’ voices
OCTOBER 17, 2020
Motoyuki Shibata’s advice to translators: “People tend to think fidelity is the most important thing, to convey the surface meaning accurately into another language. Yet as a translator, your first obligation should be to give readers the sense of pleasure you had while reading (the original text). Of course, every translation to some extent is a mistranslation, but it’s a more serious type of mistranslation if the sense of pleasure is missing.”
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New literary magazine makes contemporary Japanese fiction accessible to English readers
OCTOBER 10, 2020
“With translations of cutting-edge novelists like Kawakami and others, Monkey promises to be a lively, exciting literary journal.”
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Brooklyn Public Library Names Inaugural Poet-in-Residence, Allison Hill Urges Readers to Shop Indie, and More
OCTOBER 5, 2020
“After a hiatus of several years, editors Motoyuki Shibata and Ted Goossen are resurrecting Monkey Business, a literary journal for English translations of Japanese literature, under a new abbreviated name, Monkey.”
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Japan Writers Conference and revival of Monkey magazine make for a literary October
OCTOBER 4, 2020
“The international appetite for Japanese literature is very, very good right now,” says Motoyuki Shibata, translator of American authors such as Paul Auster and Steven Millhauser into Japanese and founder of Monkey. “We want to let the world know what’s going on in Japanese literature.”
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Book Review: Monkey Business
JUNE 16, 2015
Monkey Business offers the very latest dispatches from the frontlines of the Japanese literary scene.
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Review: Monkey Business Vol. 1
JULY 14, 2011
“Monkey Business is a smorgasbord of differing literary styles and taste, guaranteeing that wherever the discerning reader dips in she'll be struck by a quirky writer she's not previously familiar with... As Identity is increasingly realized in an ever growing global context, Monkey Business serves as an integral take on how further possibilities of understanding in the world might be realized.”
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TLS: The Times Literary Supplement
Still swinging for the fences: Murakami in conversation
by Roland Kelts
FEBRUARY 2019
Roland Kelts talks to the novelist about his legacy, his critics and the pleasures of translation.
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Translating Haruki Murakami: Interview with Ted Goossen
SEPTEMBER 2018
Haruki Murakami’s novels are perennially popular, due in no small part to a network of translators working in 50 languages. Ahead of the release of his latest title, Killing Commendatore, I caught up with long-time English translator, Ted Goossen.
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Interview with Motoyuki Shibata by Susannah Greenblatt
SEPTEMBER 2017
We sat down with Japanese translator and editor Motoyuki Shibata, cofounder (with Ted Goossen) and editor in chief of the literary magazine Monkey Business, which brings new writing from Japan into English translation for the first time.
Interview with Motoyuki Shibata by Linh Dinh
JUNE 2016
In Japan, even a serious writer may be seen on mass advertising, and a translator can become a star. One of Japan’s most famous intellectuals, Motoyuki Shibata is a specialist on American literature. He has translated books by Thomas Pynchon, Paul Auster, Steven Millhauser and Stuart Dybek, among others.
Interview with Motoyuki Shibata by Fran Bigman
JUNE 2014
Although he’d just flown in from a trip to Toronto, San Francisco and New York City to launch the English translation of the third issue of his literary journal, Monkey Business, Professor Motoyuki Shibata was kind enough to sit down with me in his office at the University of Tokyo last September for a chat about Western writing on Japan as well as Japanese literature today.
Literary Bridge-Builder: An Interview with Shibata Motoyuki at the Tokyo International Literary Festival
MAY 2013
Authors, editors, and translators gathered in Tokyo on March 1–3 for the city’s first major international literary festival. We spoke to one of the organizers, scholar and translator Shibata Motoyuki, about the international potential of Japanese literature.
Interview: Translator Motoyuki Shibata on Manga, Murakami and Monkey Business
MAY 2012
Widely referred to as Japan's leading translator of contemporary American literature, Motoyuki Shibata has been responsible for rendering American writers as diverse as Thomas Pynchon, Paul Auster, Richard Powers and Edward Gorey into Japanese.
Interview with Motoyuki Shibata by Sim Yee Chiang
OCTOBER 2011
In a country where even translators may aspire to become superstars, not many can outshine Motoyuki Shibata, who has introduced writers like Paul Auster and Steven Millhauser to Japanese readers, and certainly no one is as engaged as he is in introducing a new generation of Japanese writers to international readers via the English-language version of his literary magazine Monkey Business.
Voices from Japan Interview with Roland Kelts
by Hannah Gersen
MAY 2011
Aside from Haruki Murakami, much of Japanese writing remains unknown in the U.S., simply because it is not translated into English. Now, thanks to collaboration between the Brooklyn-based literary magazine, A Public Space, and the Tokyo-based literary magazines, Monkey Business, a special English-language edition of Monkey Business is available in the US.