Ginny Tapley Takemori

Ginny Tapley Takemori is a British translator of contemporary Japanese literature based in Ibaraki, Japan. She is the English translator of Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata, among other novels and works. Tapley Takemori was involved in the creation of Women in Translation Month, and led a series of articles published on LitHub called 10 Women Authors We Want to See Published, that highlighted untranslated women authors from a given language. ^[1] She is also a co-founder of a freelance women literary translator collection called Strong Women, Soft Power, along with Allison Markin Powell and Lucy North. ^{[2] [3]}

Biography

After spending her early years living in Tanzania, Tapley Takemori moved to Barcelona in the 1980s after graduating from high school. ^{[4] [5]} Prior to beginning her career as a full-time freelance translator of Japanese, she worked at the Ute Korner Literary Agency in Barcelona and translated works from Spanish and Catalan. ^{[5] [6] [7]} The agency she worked at represented the Japan Foreign Rights Centre and she sold the translation rights to books including The Friends by Kazumi Yumoto. ^[1] This motivated her to study Japanese and she obtained a Bachelor of Arts in Japanese from SOAS University of London and a Master of Arts from the University of Sheffield. ^[8] She also worked as an editor at the Japanese publishing house Kodansha. ^[8] She published her first translated story in 2008 in the online magazine Words Without Borders . ^[5]

As a translator, Tapley Takemori has translated over a dozen Japanese authors, including Murata, Kyoko Nakajima, and Mayumi Inaba. ^[9]

Selected works

Children's books

• Inui, Tomiko (2015). The Secret of the Blue Glass. Translated by Tapley Takemori, Ginny. ISBN   978-1-78269-034-4. OCLC   919220170.

Novels

• Inaba, Mayumi (2025). Mornings without Mii. Translated by Tapley Takemori, Ginny. ISBN   978-0-374-61478-2. OCLC   1431882173.
• Miyabe, Miyuki (2014). Puppet Master. Translated by Tapley Takemori, Ginny.
• Murakami, Ryū (2013). From the Fatherland, with Love. Translated by McCarthy, Ralph; de Wolff, Charles; Tapley Takemori, Ginny. ISBN   978-1-908968-49-4.
• Murata, Sayaka (2018). Convenience Store Woman. Translated by Tapley Takemori, Ginny. ISBN   978-0-8021-2962-8. OCLC   1055687262.
• Murata, Sayaka (2020). Earthlings. Translated by Tapley Takemori, Ginny. ISBN   978-0-8021-5700-3. OCLC   1181840856.
• Murata, Sayaka (2025). Vanishing World. Translated by Tapley Takemori, Ginny. ISBN   978-0-8021-6466-7. OCLC   1457231144.
• Nakajima, Kyoko (2019). The Little House. Translated by Tapley Takemori, Ginny. ISBN   978-1-85077-316-0. OCLC   1102538756.
• Nosaka, Akiyuki (2018). The Cake Tree in the Ruins. Translated by Tapley Takemori, Ginny. ISBN   978-1-78227-418-6. OCLC   1022085029.
• Nosaka, Akiyuki (2025). Grave of the Fireflies. Translated by Tapley Takemori, Ginny. ISBN   978-0-241-78021-3. OCLC   1483639627.

Short story collections

• Murata, Sayaka (2022). Life ceremony: stories. Translated by Tapley Takemori, Ginny. ISBN   978-0-8021-5958-8. OCLC   1314126461.
• Nakajima, Kyoko (2021). Things remembered and things forgotten. Translated by McCullough MacDonald, Ian; Tapley Takemori, Ginny. ISBN   978-1-908745-96-5.
• Nishimura, Kyōtarō (2013). The Isle of South Kamui and Other Stories. Translated by Tapley Takemori, Ginny. ISBN   978-1-78308-011-3. OCLC   852831510.
• Otowa, Rebecca (2020). The Mad Kyoto Shoe Swapper and Other Stories. Translated by Tapley Takemori, Ginny. Tuttle Publishing. ISBN   978-1-4629-2146-1. OCLC   1139329339.
• Shinkai, Makoto; Nagakawa, Naruki (2022). She and Her Cat. Translated by Tapley Takemori, Ginny. ISBN   978-1-982165-74-1. OCLC   1350742675.

References

1. Richard, Dreux (8 June 2021). "A Familiar Environment | Translator Ginny Tapley Takemori". Kyoto Journal. Retrieved 22 August 2025.
2. "Empowering Women's Voices: Translating & Publishing Japanese Fictions". University of Sheffield. 18 June 2025. Retrieved 22 August 2025.
3. Maloney, Iain (25 November 2017). "Ensuring women are not lost in translation". The Japan Times . Archived from the original on 2 February 2018. Retrieved 22 August 2025.
4. Alberoni, Caroline (15 August 2018). "Greatest Women in Translation: Ginny Takemori". Carol's Adventures in Translation. Retrieved 22 August 2025.
5. Kosaka, Kris (25 April 2021). "Ginny Tapley Takemori: 'Translation is a community'". The Japan Times. Archived from the original on 25 April 2021. Retrieved 22 August 2025.
6. Dougill, John (17 June 2021). "Ginny Tapley Takemori". Writers In Kyoto. Retrieved 22 August 2025.
7. Buritica Alzate, Juliana, "A Conversation Between Sayaka Murata and Ginny Tapley Takemori: Gender, Literature andTranslation" (PDF), Gender and Sexuality, vol. 15
8. "Ginny Tapley Takemori | Translators | Japanese Literature Publishing Project:JLPP". www.jlpp.go.jp. Retrieved 22 August 2025.
9. Ha, Thu-huong (16 February 2025). "'Mornings Without Mii': A cozy cat memoir that gets down in the muck". The Japan Times . Retrieved 22 August 2025.

External links

• Tapley Takemori's biography from Words Without Borders