UH Hilo professor receives prestigious translation award

Date: Monday, October 11, 2004
Contact: Alyson Kakugawa-Leong, 974-7642

For Immediate Release

Dr. Lawrence Rogers, professor of Japanese and chair of the Languages Department at the University of Hawaii at Hilo , has been awarded the 2004 Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature by the Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture at Columbia University.

Rogers is being honored for Tokyo Stories: A Literary Stroll, a translated anthology of short stories by Japanese writers about Tokyo spanning most of the 20th century. Rogers’ book-length translation was published by the University of California Press.

A native of Oakland, California, Rogers studied Korean language and worked in U.S. Air Force intelligence in Korea. After his discharge, he went to Tokyo to study Japanese. Rogers received his B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. in Japanese language and literature from the University of California at Berkeley. His translation of Agawa Hiroyuki’s war novel Citadel in Spring appeared in 1990. Tokyo Stories: A Literary Stroll was published in 2002.

“I'm delighted to receive the translation award from the Keene Center,” said Rogers, who has been on faculty at UH Hilo since 1976. “Donald Keene is the foremost interpreter of Japanese culture to the West, so I'm honored to have my book receive this recognition from his center.”

“The Keene Center award is an honor bestowed only to the best of the best in the translation of Japanese literature,” UH Hilo Chancellor Rose Tseng noted. “This is an incredible accomplishment for Professor Rogers and validation of his scholarship as well as the first-rate status of the faculty at the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo.”

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