Brian Bergstrom
Brian is a lecturer and translator currently based in Montréal after living in Chicago, Kyoto, and Yokohama. After graduate school at University of Chicago and Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, he has worked over ten years in the East Asian Studies Department at McGill University and has published academically in the peer-reviewed journals Mechademia, positions: asia critique, and Japan Forum on Japanese literature and contemporary society.
As a translator, Brian has worked in a variety of fields for over 20 years. He specializes in literary translation, many times working closely with living authors. His published translations include the collection We, the Children of Cats by Tomoyuki Hoshino (PM Press), which was longlisted for the 2013 Best Translated Book Award, and the short story “See” by Erika Kobayashi, which was the first runner-up in Asymptote’s Close Approximations Translated Fiction Contest in 2017.
Other translations of his have appeared in venues including Granta, Aperture, LitHub, Queer: LGBTQ Writing from Ancient Times to Yesterday (Head of Zeus, 2021), and The Art and Craft of Asian Stories (Bloomsbury, 2021).
Works
Trinity, Trinity, Trinity, by Erika Kobayashi
Tokyo Ueno Station meets Breasts and Eggs, a literary thriller about the intergenerational effects of radiation on the mind, body, and recorded history of three generations of women in Japan.
Nine years after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster, Japan is preparing for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. An unnamed narrator wakes up in her grandmother’s body, unable to recall her past. Across the country, the elderly begin to hear voices emanating from black stones which compel them to behave in strange and unpredictable ways. The voices are a symptom of a disease called “trinity.”
As details about the disease come to light, we encounter a thread of linked histories—the discovery of radiation, the race to develop nuclear weapons in the US and Japan, the subsequent birth of nuclear energy, and the disaster in Fukushima. These threads become intertwined in the lead-up to a terrorist attack at the site of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
A speculative novel unpacking the implications of the past and continued
effects of radiation, Trinity, Trinity, Trinity follows the lives of three generations of women connected by blood, history, and nuclear power as embodied by the relay torch, a symbol of Prometheus’s fire.
"Precious Stones" by Erika Kobayashi, in Elemental: Earth Stories
Animals Brag About Their Bottoms, by Maki Saito
"Pink" by Tomoyuki Hoshino, in The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories
"Red" by Nakamoto Takako & "The Path to Proletarian Realism" by Kurahara Korehito, in For Dignity, Justice, and Revolution: An Anthology of Japanese Proletarian Literature
We, the Children of Cats: Stories and Novellas by Tomoyuki Hoshino
Awards and Recognition
- Runner-up in Asymptote's 2017 Close Approximations Translated Fiction Contest for my translation of "See" by Erika Kobayashi
- Longlisted for 2013 Best Translated Book Award for "We, The Children of Cats: Stories and Novellas by Tomoyuki Hoshino" (PM Press, 2012)
Press and Media Mentions
- Shelf Awareness Q&A: Erika Kobayashi and Brian Bergstrom on Trinity, Trinity, Trinity
- Co-translation with Nishimura Keiko of "The Purehearted Major: On Innocence," by Kotani Mari (Mechademia: Second Arc, Fall 2021)
- Translation for LitHub: "A Tale of Three Diaries: On Destroyed Landscapes and Lost Narratives: Erika Kobayashi Travels from Auschwitz to Fukushima"
- Close Approximations: In Conversation With Fiction Runner-up, Brian Bergstrom
- Translation of "Pink" by Tomoyuki Hoshino, including Translator's Note, for Granta
- Translation for Aperture: Long interview with photographer Kikuji Kawada (2019)
Location
Montréal, Québec, None
Author Contact
Category
Fiction & Literature