Hiroaki Sato

Hiroaki Sato is a prolific, award-winning translator of classical and modern Japanese poetry into English. American Beat poet Gary Snyder has called Sato" perhaps the finest translator of contemporary Japanese poetry into American English."

Hiroaki Sato has received several translation prizes. Among them are the PEN America prize, with Burton Watson, for From the Country of Eight Islands: An Anthology of Japanese Poetry (1981); the Japan-United States Friendship Commission translation prize for Breeze Through Bamboo: Kanshi of Ema Saikō (1997) and, this time, for The Silver Spoon (2015).

He has written columns for a dozen publications, among them The Mainichi Daily News (“Here and Now—in New York”) from 1984 to 1989 and for The Japan Times (“The View from New York”) from 2000 to 2017.

Titles by Author

A Bridge of Words

Hiroaki Sato

Prolific, award-winning translator of classical and modern Japanese poetry Hiroaki Sato recorded his
thoughts on American society in mainly two columns across 30-plus years, collected here for the first time.

Forty-Seven Samurai

Hiroaki Sato

One of the most spectacular vendettas ever: the history and haiku behind the mass-suicide featured in the 2013 film 47 Ronin.

Persona

Naoki Inose & Hiroaki Sato

A critical biography of a modern Japanese literary giant, whose brilliant career ended in a spectacular ritual suicide.

The Silver Spoon

Kansuke Naka & Hiroaki Sato

The Silver Spoon is a sharp detailing of life at the end of the Meiji period (1912) through the eyes of a boy as he grows into adolescence.