First Westerner to Publish in Japanese Discusses Novel’s First English Translation

Hideo Levy: A Room Where the Star-Spangled Banner Cannot Be Heard

 

Tuesday, November 1, 2011, 6:30 pm, at Japan Society

リービ英雄：「星条旗の聞こえない部屋」
 

New York, NY – Hideo Levy became the first Westerner to publish a Japanese-language novel in Japan in 1992. Nearly 20 years later, his seminal story of an American coming of age in 1960s Japan, A Room Where the Star-Spangled Banner Cannot Be Heard, was translated into English.

 

In Hideo Levy: A Room Where the Star-Spangled Banner Cannot Be Heard, part of Japan Society’s ongoing Authors on Asia series, Levy discusses his experience as a gaijin (outsider) in Japan, echoes of his life that informed the novel, and how he became the first American novelist to write in Japanese. Followed by a book signing and reception, the discussion takes place Tuesday, November 1 at 6:30 pm.

 

Published as Seijouki no kikoenai heya by Koudansha in 1992 (English translation published by Columbia University Press, July 2011), Levy's A Room Where the Star-Spangled Banner Cannot Be Heard follows a privileged and alienated gaijin thrust into the political and social upheavals of 1960s Japan. Ben Isaac, a blond-haired, blue-eyed American youth living with his father at the American consulate in Yokohama chafes against his father’s strict authority and the trappings of an increasingly remote America culture. Ben flees home to live with a Japanese friend, who refuses to speak English and shows the young American the way to Shinjuku, the epicenter of Japan’s countercultural movement. Barely able to decipher the signs around him or make sense of the sounds, Ben breaks free from English and the constraints of being a gaijin. Eventually the symbols and sensations take root, and he becomes one with Japanese language and culture, and the closest he has ever felt to home.

 

Born in 1950 as Ian Hideo Levy to a Jewish American father and a Polish immigrant mother, Levy Hideo is the first Caucasian American novelist to publish in Japanese. He became an assistant professor of Japanese literature at Princeton University at the age of 28. In 1981, he published an English translation of the first five volumes of Japan’s first Imperial poetry anthology, Man’yōshū (Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves), for which he won a National Book Award for Translation. Now based in Tokyo, he travels frequently to the U.S. and China in connection with his writing.

 

Founded in 1907, Japan Society is a world-class, multidisciplinary hub for global leaders, artists, scholars, educators, and English and Japanese-speaking audiences. At the Society, more than 100 events each year feature sophisticated, topically relevant presentations of Japanese art and culture and open, critical dialogue on issues of vital importance to the U.S., Japan and East Asia. An American nonprofit, nonpolitical organization, the Society cultivates a constructive, resonant and dynamic relationship between the people of the U.S. and Japan.

 

Hideo Levy: A Room Where the Star-Spangled Banner Cannot Be Heard takes place Tuesday, November 1 at 6:30 pm. Japan Society is located at 333 East 47th Street between First and Second avenues (accessible by the 4/5/6 at 42nd Street-Grand Central Station or the E and V at Lexington Avenue and 53rd St.) Tickets are $12/$8 Japan Society members, seniors and students. For reservations or more information, visit www.japansociety.org or call the box office at 212-715-1258.

 

Japan Airlines is the exclusive Japanese Airline sponsor of Lecture Programs at Japan Society. United Airlines is the exclusive U.S. Airline sponsor of Lecture Programs at Japan Society. Additional support is provided by Chris A. Wachenheim and the Sandy Heck Lecture Fund.  

 

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Media Contacts:

 

Shannon Jowett, 212-715-1205, sjowett@japansociety.org

 

Kuniko Shiobara, 212-715-1249, kshiobara@japansociety.org