エクソフォニー-母語の外へ出る旅-

by Yōko Tawada

エクソフォニーとは、ドイツ語で母語の外に出た状態一般を指す。自分を包んでいる母語の響きからちょっと外に出てみると、どんな文学世界が展けるのか。ドイツ語と日本語で創作活動を行う著者にとって、言語の越境は文学の本質的主題。その岩盤を穿つ、鋭敏で情趣に富むエッセーはことばの世界の深遠さを照らしだす。(解説=リービ英雄)

Genres: Essays, Nonfiction, Japan, Japanese Literature, Language, Linguistics, 21st Century

240 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published August 21, 2003

About the author

Yōko Tawada (多和田葉子 Tawada Yōko, born March 23, 1960) is a Japanese writer currently living in Berlin, Germany. She writes in both Japanese and German.

Tawada was born in Tokyo, received her undergraduate education at Waseda University in 1982 with a major in Russian literature, then studied at Hamburg University where she received a master's degree in contemporary German literature. She received her doctorate in German literature at the University of Zurich. In 1987 she published Nur da wo du bist da ist nichts—Anata no iru tokoro dake nani mo nai (A Void Only Where You Are), a collection of poems in a German and Japanese bilingual edition.

Tawada's Missing Heels received the Gunzo Prize for New Writers in 1991, and The Bridegroom Was a Dog received the Akutagawa Prize in 1993. In 1999 she became writer-in-residence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for four months. Her Suspect on the Night Train won the Tanizaki Prize and Ito Sei Literary Prize in 2003.

Tawada received the Adelbert von Chamisso Prize in 1996, a German award to foreign writers in recognition of their contribution to German culture, and the Goethe Medal in 2005.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Sharon Orlopp · Rating 4 out of 5]

Exophony: Voyages Outside the Mother Tongue is a fascinating book. Author Yoko Tawada famously writes in both German and Japanese. This is her first essay collection that has been translated into English.

Tawada's Preface captured my heart and imagination. She describes becoming a fish and swimming around all the oceans of the world to feel out the linguistic textures of each place she traveled. In the first part of the book, each chapter is named after a city she has traveled to and typically been a featured speaker. The second part of the book is focused on her adventures in German.

An exophonic writer is someone who exists and writes outside of their mother tongue. At many of the literature conferences Tawada attended, she often received questions about what language she dreams in, what language(s) she should be writing, and whether she viewed herself as German or Japanese. Several of the chapters discuss the potential loss of minor languages as well as technology terms, like download or CD, that aren't translated into different languages.

Some of the memorable passages I enjoyed include:

* All creative language is chosen.

* We swept the eraser shavings of history off the table and into the trash.

* In German, schrei is the word for scream and schreiben means to write. The act of screaming is inseparable from the act of writing. They are bound together by a person's lived experiences.

* Inside every person there is a mixture of culture and languages.

* When read aloud, poetry becomes a form of incantation, prayer, conversation, performance, speech, song.

* Be attuned to the musicality of language.

I learned many new vocabulary words including exophonic, animistic, palimpsest, and peripatetics.

This is a terrific book for literature and language lovers.

[emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘—one day, he got into an argument with someone and realised he didn’t understand everything that was being said. Of course, standards for “understanding” and “not understanding” can vary depending on the person. Whereas an average person might think they have “completely understood” something, a writer might have a tendency to overly scrutinise a situation and exaggerate the parts they don’t understand.’

‘Some say that karada comes from kara, which means empty, because the body is an empty vessel. But plenty of people in other countries share that view of the body too. They believe that if the body is an empty vessel, is well managed and healthy, then it won’t get in the way of spiritual activities. At the same time, if the body is just an empty vessel, then nothing can come out of it either. The saying “A sound body implies a sound mind” also makes it seem as though the body is a mere container for the mind.’

‘I consider myself quite open to adopting elements of other cultures, but it doesn’t work that way with language. It takes a lot of effort to be able to speak a new language, let alone write in it. In order to internalise a language to the point where you can write a novel, it’s not enough to store new vocabulary words away like crates in a warehouse—you have to continuously connect them to the ones you already know. And those connections aren’t just made on a one-to-one basis either.

Sometimes the introduction of one new word to your vocabulary can rearrange your entire organism, which consumes an enormous amount of energy. Besides, I’m not interested in studying lots of languages. To me, it’s the space between languages that’s most important, more than the languages themselves. Maybe what I really want is not to be a writer of this or that language in particular, but to fall into the poetic ravine between them.’

‘It was a gift to be able to meet so many Chinese writers for the first time, as well as Japanese writers whom I’d previously known through their work alone. But what I remember most is my encounter with the Chinese language itself, and the way it changed how I thought about the relationship between Chinese and Japanese. It was stimulating for me to think about these two languages together, since I’d spent so much of my life thinking about the relationship of Japanese to European languages. Chinese seemed so close to Japanese and yet so distant at the same time. It was full of things I didn’t understand, and at the same time, things that felt uncannily close.’

‘I’m sure I’m not the only Japanese person who has a bias against simplified characters—But when I came back from Beijing and read Toshio Takashima’s Chinese Characters and Japanese People, I realised that the characters I had grown up learning in Japan were themselves simplified versions of more complicated ones. They had been hastily created at a moment when the Japanese government was considering abolishing Kanji altogether—a tremendous contradiction for anyone who knew the older versions of the characters. As I read on, I began to feel depressed. I’d secretly hoped to escape the world of distorted Katakana loanwords and immerse myself in the beautiful world of Kanji—only to discover that these Kanji were themselves simplified and distorted versions of Chinese.

The more I thought about it, the more the Japanese language in which I write and think every day began to seem like some fake thing bought on the black market. It was flimsy (perapera) and tattered (boroboro)—.’

‘What’s worse, though, is that I don’t even know enough to know just how broken and degraded the current Kanji system is. Until recently, I really believed that the Japanese characters I’d grown up learning were the “correct” version, and that simplified Chinese characters were the product of a political failure. As a result, I’d never even tried to learn them, assuming it would be pointless. But when I looked at a Chinese-Japanese dictionary, I discovered that the differences between simplified Chinese characters and Japanese characters could be summed up in two pages—With very little effort, I could have learned a writing system used by a quarter of the world’s population. I began to feel resentful of the school I had gone to, which boasted about making its students into “cosmopolitan citizens” while not even bothering to teach us simplified Chinese.

But I was partially to blame too. After all, I could just as easily have learned it on my own. The whole thing made me realise how biased my own education had been. It felt hypocritical of me to pity my colleagues who grew up in the former Eastern Bloc, when I had grown up in an education system totally unaware of its prejudices.’

‘Sometimes when I look at Chinese, I’m overcome by an odd “lag,” like I should understand it but I don’t. It almost feels like I’m dreaming. At a bookstore in Beijing, I bought myself a small dictionary and learned that the expression in Chinese for being dazzled by something is 眼花繚乱 (yǎn huā liáo luàn) while to faint is 昏過去 (hūn guò qù). It makes sense—to faint means that your past (過去) goes dark (昏). This is already poetry. On a whim I began to write down other interesting words. When my usual vocabulary is broken apart, and reconstituted, something new flickers forth. It feels like a flash in the dark, or a chain that had been wrapped around my brain snapping.’

‘The realm of Japanese Kanji is an island of dreams. It’s also a mountain of trash, but it is rich, and if you sift through it you’ll find all sorts of things. You will probably find what you need to survive if you look hard enough. So I have decided to stop being angry and become a resident of the dream island that is the Japanese language, working steadily on like a mouse.’

‘I felt a genuine sense of warmth from my interlocutors. We debated with each other, had dinner together, walked to the conference room together, and waited for the bus together. I was moved by the simple fact of our hearts and minds and bodies being there, passing time together in this way. I even felt sad when it came time to leave, something I usually never feel when I travel somewhere for work. Seoul was the only exception.’

‘She rattled off a list of European names, including Dostoyevsky and Balzac. The student raised their hand again, looking puzzled. “You weren’t influenced by any Japanese authors?” This time it was Park Wan-suh’s turn to look surprised. “Didn’t you just ask me which foreign authors I’ve been influenced by? People of my generation never considered Japanese literature foreign because we were forced to read in Japanese. We weren’t allowed to read in Korean. I read Dostoyevsky and Balzac and all the other European writers in Japanese.”
Suddenly, a dark shadow fell over the word “exophony.” I realized how it sounded for me, a Japanese person, to be harping on about the joys of venturing outside one’s mother tongue—particularly here in Korea, where Japan had forced the Korean people into an exophonic condition against their will. People have no right to proselytise about the joys of exophony if they have never been forced to speak in a language not their own.’

‘I felt torn. On the one hand, I don’t believe in linguistic or cultural purity. That would be delusional. On the other hand, I do think the Japanese language has too many loanwords. I don’t know if taking a laissez-faire approach to language is always wise. After all, loanwords don’t just randomly enter a language; someone, somewhere consciously decides to add them. If there were a movement to regulate the amount of loanwords coming into Japanese every year, would I be for or against it? France now regulates the official number of English loanwords that can be used in French. In comparison, it sometimes feels like every other word in Japanese is a loanword. It reminds me of a cramped, one-bedroom apartment overflowing with random junk because its occupant keeps going on impulsive shopping sprees. Isn’t it better not to buy things we don’t need?’

‘If Japan hadn’t committed war crimes against Korea—or had at least taken responsibility for them—perhaps linguistic exchange would feel more possible. As it is, however, writing about Korea is difficult. I’ve found I can write more easily about a place that doesn’t have as much to do with Japan. That is probably why I was finally able to start writing this book only after I’d gone to Senegal. I could be more irresponsible when writing about Senegal. But with Korea, I feel responsible—to the point that whatever I write about it feels like self-deception. This isn’t just about language. If someone asked me my impressions of Korea, I would honestly say that I felt a sense of warmth and intellectual curiosity from the people there.’

‘—there is rampant prejudice against immigrants of Asian descent in Japan. Japanese people will claim that they came here “illegally,” that they steal or have ties to the mafia. But this idealising and demonising are two sides of the same medal—which is highly inconvenient to the winner—By describing other Asian people as “latecomers to civilisation who still possess the warmth we lost long ago,” they reassure themselves that they are cold, intellectual, civilised—unlike those “other” Asian people who are the opposite. In other words, rather than acknowledging the historical reality of their own colonial invasions, destruction, and murder, by labeling other Asian people as “warm” and “compassionate,” Japanese people can thereby suppress the consciousness and memory of their own crimes.’

‘I began to feel nauseated. I suddenly wanted to cry. I had finally made it home, only for this to happen. Was this just a continuation of losing myself in French? I realised later that I have never listened to a language I didn’t understand for as long as I did then—Some might argue that if I’m going to spend so many hours listening to a language I don’t know, I may as well study it. But there’s something priceless about that state of unknowingness. I’m sure eventually I will study it, but I want to savor this suspended state of unknowingness for a while. How much creative stimulation can we draw from the state of not understanding at all or from the state of still understanding only a little?’

‘Maybe what I am really searching for is a language that has been freed of meaning altogether. Perhaps the reason why I ventured outside of my mother tongue to begin with, and why I keep seeking a world where multiple cultures overlap, is because I am searching for that state just before individual languages are dismantled—freed from their meanings and finally annihilated.’

‘Ben Okri said that he couldn’t count the number of times people had asked him: “Isn’t it impossible to depict the real Africa in English? Shouldn’t you be writing in your local language instead?” I agreed that that was a strange question.

English is a language that constantly absorbs different elements into itself, and besides, there are many different Englishes. The whole premise of the question suggests that English can only describe things that happen in England. You can’t decide in advance what particular language is suited to describing—people simply look at a developing country and immediately think there is some “objective” reality there to be described is absurd. The words we use and the things we describe have infinite faces. And of course, there are many faces that have yet to be discovered.’

“But I sensed that the question directed at Ben Okri, which includes a tacit criticism of African writers who write in English, also implies something else: that he should be “saving” the minor languages on the verge of extinction. In other words, the writer is made to bear the role of an ambulance, rushing to rescue endangered languages. Languages disappearing or being forgotten is certainly not a new phenomenon, but only in the last century or so has there been a concerted effort to put them on life support and try to save them.’

‘Poets are often seen as an important vehicle for protecting these minor languages. You cannot really say that a language is “living” if no poetry is written in it. The fewer number of speakers there are of a given language, the greater the proportion of poets.’

‘Perhaps venturing outside your mother tongue means surrendering yourself to a different kind of music.’

‘Perhaps at its core, language is merely a potent drug.’

[Karolina]

Fajne, zwłaszcza pierwsza połowa z podróżami do różnych miast w tle.

[Heli · Rating 4 out of 5]

Še boljše bi se mela med branjem, če bi znala nemško :/

[Carolyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Możecie się tylko domyślać, jak ciekawe jest to spojrzenie na język, jeśli osoba, która poszła na wojnę ze swoim promotorem, żeby nie pisać magisterki z językoznawstwa, zostawia 4 gwiazdki

[Revell Cozzi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I LOVED the first part of this book. Definitely a niche subject material but also definitely a niche I am interested in. The author talks a lot about writing and existing outside of her “mother tongue” - pouring in a lot of interesting historical, cultural, and linguistic context from different places around the world. Really glad it randomly popped up on my Libby and I’m glad I took my time with it!

[mo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very enjoyable read from someone who very clearly loves language and writing. Made me want to try and dip my toe back into more scientific (not the right word) linguistic research.

[Jeffrey Green · Rating 2 out of 5]

An Israeli friend of mine, who shares a lot of interests with me, though we are totally different in most respects, lent me this book, saying that it wasn't as good as it could have been, and I agree. Tawada writes fiction in her native Japanese and in the German she learned and mastered after moving to Germany and earning a graduate degree in German literature. Her book is about the benefit of living outside the place where you acquired your mother tongue. Japan, in her case, the United States, in mine.
The book appeared in Japanese in 2003 and was recently translated into English by Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda. Tawada's message is summed up in the following sentences on p. 98: "Believing in the naturalness of your mother tongue shows a lack of serious engagement with language and belies the entire premise of modern literature. That is why I believe that existing outside of one's mother tongue is not exceptional but simply an extreme version of the normal state of things."
This is rather typical of Tawada's arrogant way of making categorical statements without explaining what she means. Obviously she considers her own engagement with language serious, as is borne out by her career, but what, indeed, is "the entire premise of modern literature"?
The short sections of the book are named after the places where the author was invited to attend workshops or teach, which strikes me as shameless self-promotion: look how important I am, I am invited everywhere! I wouldn't say that anything else she writes goes much beyond the passage that I quoted. The last quarter of the book deals with the differences between German and Japanese, a topic that cannot be expected to interest the average English reader very much.
Unfortunately whoever did the copyreading for this book was derelict in their duty (I use "their" because, throughout the book, even when the gender of the person in question is known and clear, the translator chose to use "they" rather than "he" or "she"), as, for example, on p. 14 "predicted" appears instead of "predicated."
One of the strangest statements in the book appears on p. 116: "I have no particular feelings about Germany." Why, then, live there and write in German?

[Katherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Yoko Tawada's work so much. There's this phenomenal lightness to it, this *choice* to float from place to place without nostalgia or hand-wringing (were it that I could be so cool), this insistence on living in the shining and unanswerable rather than trying to write past it, this great generosity and joy and *trust* in that generosity and joy that shapes her narratives. To live in the chasm between languages and looking up at the cliff walls and seeing something interesting with every sweep of the gaze. In all of her work she is so insistent on the idea of a community in constant motion, through chance meetings (including chance intersections of thought), and I find it so beautiful. Isn't that the dream? Whether such a cosmopolitan dream is at all possible anymore is a different story, but it is good to have dreams nonetheless.

This book, despite being by necessity full of non-answers (to unanswerable questions of/about language) and hanging threads & essays I'll return to more often than others, feels like a writer's companion, a way into how she thinks and approaches her writing (and all the coincidences and chance happenings that play into it), and it reads like she's excitedly dragging you through the languages she loves and the gaps between them like a child in a museum. And I'd like to try some of her writing exercises! And pick German and Japanese back up again! And live with fewer attachments to the language I was born into, such that I get to play with others, and trust that I will meet kind strangers in the world, and learn to be just as generous in return.

[andré crombie · Rating 4 out of 5]

When a single note of music is played, it doesn’t occupy some space that preceded it, but creates the space through its emergence. Similarly, when a thought comes into your mind, it creates a new space in the world. It’s not a matter of first creating a container and then filling it; rather, when you create a word, it brings a space into being. I wish I could get this idea across to those who are all too eager to build museums, concert halls, and literary centers, but remain indifferent to what is inside of them, thinking that they have created culture simply by building a container for it.

[jeonghyun · Rating 5 out of 5]

loved how she talks about flowing between two languages and her perspective on correct/incorrect translations - of course i loved her antinostalgic viewpoint that also acknowledges the social contexts that influence languages and its users

may we all live fully in our exophony!

그가 이중언어구사자로서, 둘 중 하나가 아닌, 늘 그 둘 사이를 유영하는 현실에 대해 이야기한 점이 공감이 많이 갔다 - 번역을 해봤으면서도 다른 이의 번역을 쉽게 지적했던 과거도 돌아보게 된다 - 언어의 맞는 해석이란 무엇일까? 언어가 각자의 관점을 반영하는 것이라면 우린 결국 번역자의 눈을 통해 원문을 읽는 것일테니..

우리 모두가 각자의 언어화음 속에 온전히 존재할 수 있기를
그리고 늘 언어에 집착하던 내가 정신차려보니 무려 칠백개의 언어가 존재한다는 뉴욕에서 이 글을 읽고 있다는 것도 웃기다

[Maria Jose Lourido Moreno · Rating 4 out of 5]

I want to live in her brain please. Also, what a joy to read as a person who speaks neither Japanese nor German and doesn’t even know how to say hello in either of them. Really really lovely.

[William Carron · Rating 4 out of 5]

A brilliant set of essays; if you have ever tried to translate anything or just written in another language then I wholeheartedly recommend it.

[Chloé Pélata · Rating 1 out of 5]

Truly did not enjoy her one bit which is rlly embarrassing for both me and my dissertation👧🏻 BUT I DID MY BEST : i was gonna just give up but then downloaded the audiobook version to force myself to listen to it in the car. But wanted to kms throughout and was so mad to listen to this and not sexion dassault. Sorry not sorry and I did rlly wanna like it tbh but landed flat ➖

[Simge · Rating 5 out of 5]

I could love this book for teaching me the word 'exophony' if not for anything else. But thankfully, Yuko Tawada's essays did not lack merit. On the contrary, this is probably the most delightful book I've read recently, one that has tickled my brain cells and made me giggle (as only a linguist could giggle, that is). Those who do not love language as much as I do - not only as an instrument of expression but as an object of inquiry and experimentation itself - may disagree.

But for those who like to play with language, to inhale it; and who can appreciate it as a living entity, will also appreciate Tawada's intuitive linguistic sensitivity. Are poets natural linguists? I am starting to think, perhaps they are. Writing poetry forces you to think about language in a way that ordinary language use doesn't. You end up paying attention to each word as a building block of a texture, you have to consider not only each word's denotation but also their connotations and emotional undertones, as well as their sounds and rhythms and the feelings evoked by the pure phonetics. Now, add to that the fact of being bilingual or multilingual... Being multilingual is another exercise in learning to be intentional about language and noticing subtleties that so-called 'native speakers' often miss. And sometimes, whether you like it or not, learning another language means going back to your mother tongue at every step and questioning the unquestioned assumptions you'd had in your first language. Learning the blueprint of the second language shows you the artifice of the construction of your first, which you took for granted.

As another 'exophonous' person (someone like Tawada, who happens to exist 'outside her mother tongue'), I can relate to her journey. I have inhabited languages other than my own before - first German, then English. When Tawada talks about her experiences of being immersed in German and learning its quirks, I could relate to what she was saying on a visceral level. (And seeing all those German words was like taking a nice trip down the memory line. I do not remember when I last saw the word mondsüchtig in German, but it was good to see it again.)

Overall, the way Tawada thinks about language and literature resonated with me a lot. She is not trained as a linguist, as she acknowledges, but she surprisingly has the right intuition about linguistic concepts, the way the mental lexicon is organized, the way translation works, and so on. Perhaps for that reason, it was very pleasurable for me to read her essays and to travel along with her on her train of thought. (She would have liked this expression and the imagery it evokes, I think.) It felt like I met a kindred spirit.

[Debjani Ghosh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Exophony: Voyages Outside the Mother Tongue by Yoko Tawada is a series of sharp, incisive essays that explores the phenomenon of “existing outside of one’s mother tongue”. Dear reader, this statement shouldn’t intimidate you, rather it should invite you to read this beautiful collection of essays that interrogates what it means to have multiple languages co-exist in your brain. Did this line get your attention? Good! Let’s carry on.

Tawada originally wrote this book in 2003 but it has been translated to English in 2025 by Lisa Hoffman-Kuroda. Kuroda has done an impeccable job since Tawada writes in both Japanese and German and has used references of both languages in her essays. As such, Kuroda has done a fine job of capturing the essence of all these references in English.

Tawada discusses a lot of different Japanese and German words which intrigued her. She comments upon their origins, and the various ways she has found their usage fascinating in daily life, during her travels, or her interactions with people from diverse countries. Her commentary on how multilingualism can shape better individuals struck a chord with me since I am also a multilinguist.

The way she explains how an multilinguist behaves and talks differently in different languages found resonance in me. Her thoughts on enforcing people to speak only the language of the conqueror or the country in which one is immigrating are illuminating and invites discussion instead of brooking no dissent.

I could keep on talking about this essay collection but it will not do justice to its brilliance. You have to read it to appreciate it.

My only gripe is it needs to be taken slow, one essay at a time but this is because I primarily read fiction. Reading such good non-fiction made my brain go haywire, lol.
Highly recommended to people who are curious about words, translations, and languages.

Thanks to Hachett India for sending a review copy my way. It doesn't affect my opinion on the book.

[Chitrranshi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yōko Tawada’s Exophony: Voyages Outside the Mother Tongue, translated by Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda, is not just a book about language—it’s a book that unsettles how we think about language altogether. Tawada, who writes in both Japanese and German, takes the idea of “exophony”—living and writing outside one’s mother tongue—and turns it into a way of rethinking identity, culture, and creativity. What makes the collection unique is her ability to weave sharp linguistic insights with personal stories, all while refusing to treat the mother tongue as a fixed or natural home. She pushes us to see the space between languages not as a gap, but as a fertile ground for invention.

This book stands out because it doesn’t romanticize multilingualism or gloss over its difficulties. Tawada confronts both the joys and the ethical shadows of exophony: from the creative spark of not fully understanding a language, to the colonial histories that force people into linguistic displacement. Her essays carry a rare mix of wit, vulnerability, and sharp critique. At times she dismantles the primacy of English, at other times she looks critically at her own Japanese, exposing the fragility of systems we often assume to be stable. What results is a portrait of language as alive, volatile, and never complete.

Readers should pick up Exophony if they are curious about how language shapes thought and identity. It’s not a textbook on linguistics—it’s more like a writer’s companion that opens your eyes to the creative and political dimensions of words. While some might find Tawada’s bold claims or sudden historical detours challenging, the book rewards anyone willing to follow her across linguistic and cultural borders. It’s a reminder that language is never just a tool; it is an environment we live in, one that constantly rearranges us.

[Heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this series of essays about language (and, more specifically, about speaking/writing in a language other than one's first language) to be really pleasing even though I speak neither Japanese nor German, which are two of the languages that come up most. (Tawada was born in Japan and has lived in Germany since 1980.) Tawada's style is smart and playful, and while this book was originally published in the early 2000s, it still feels relevant. Tawada argues that when you speak in a language that isn't your mother tongue, you perceive it and use it differently, and that this can open up literary possibility: writers in this situation can "uncover some latent potential in the language" that might otherwise be untapped. For example, she says: "many similarities between words are invisible to those who reside inside the language," and these different associations can lead to interesting results.

I really liked the essay about Heinrich von Kleist and the first Japanese translation of his work (which also talks about fiction written in Japanese by that Japanese translator), which includes this: "There is no objectively correct length for a sentence. The length of a sentence is one of its modes of expression." I also really liked the essay where Tawada talks about teaching a creative writing class and how her goal was to teach her students "how to become more sensitive to language, shifting the way they look at it ever so slightly," and the specific exercises she used to try to to this. (She talks about having her German-speaking students write about a single Kanji, and about playing tapes in Japanese for them and having them "create a translation," and about having her students write about the landscape as seen from a train window—all of which sound like very fun writing exercises.)

[Alex Meves · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good.

A lot of really thoughtful observations that come from discussions on German and Japanese. I am learning more and more that translations can never capture the exact feelings or even meaning of the original. It only amplifies the talent of translators to me since they have an impossible task to begin with.

The format of the book is also great. It's a list of short essays rooted in a specific city - Berlin, Paris, Sophia. But the author's opinions change through the collection of essays. For example, they talk about their compulsion to write in German after living in Germany a few years. But later acknowledge the horrible crime of forcing people to abandon their native language, one that the author's homeland of Japan committed against Korea not so long ago. Not all exophony is joyful or free.

The translator, Lisa Haufmann-Kuroda, also deserves a lot of praise. The book is mostly a discussion on language observations from Japanese and German, making this a difficult translation, I'm sure.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Even if you never set foot outside your mother tongue, it is still possible to create multiple language within it-so that concepts such as "inside" and "outside" became irrelevant altogether” (p. 32)

“…art must be broken artistically. Some people might think that wordplay is just a way to kill time. I think it contains an expressive potential that the oppressed can grasp and wield for their own purposes”(p. 61)

“The specific angle from which one regards history, the sensory systems that capture magical things, all of this enters into the language of literature” (p. 77)

“It's not a matter of first creating a container and then
filling it; rather, when you create a word, it brings a space into being. I wish I could get this idea across to those who are all too eager to build museums, concert halls, and literary centers, but remain indifferent to what is inside of them, thinking that they have created culture simply by building a container for it” (p. 125)

[isaac dwyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful little collection of essays that helps put to words the contradictions that arise once one begins to push on the “mother tongue” concept—something that, as a polyglot, I find hard to explain to others that don’t see themselves as represented, or represented in “artifice” in languages other than “their own”. Lisa Hoffman-Kuroda’s English-language translation makes Tawada’s playfulness charming and lucid, effectively glossing the meanings that could otherwise dissipate through the cracks of these essays that expressly address the spaces between German and Japanese.

[Martha · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was so excited for this book, as I like this author and think there should be more books on this topic. The book started off so strong, too. But then…she lost me. And I was kind of concerned about the part where she says so many words that have come from English to Japanese have remained basically the same instead of the Japanese inventing their own words for those things. And while that certainly has happened and continues to happen, the specific words she references…are from Portuguese and Dutch. So…yeah.

[Jack Wagner]

great stuff, softly political in the right way. i love ppl stuck in language ... ndp could have had someone who knows german look over the translation a little better though... despite that, of course im so happy to read more from tawada, especially in this form ... travelogue, linglog... really confirms a lot of ideas i had about her relationship to language from her novels and poetry. whimsy at its finest.

[Jared Joseph · Rating 4 out of 5]

We cannot travel without carrying the baggage of mistranslation. However, a ‘mistranslation’ and a ‘correct translation’ are not opposites, like a lie and a truth, but are rather both ‘translatings,’ journeys – simply different shades of gray[…]In some cases, the person who points out an error may be right; but in many cases, what at first appears to be a mistranslation is simply a ‘detour’ that only an experienced translator could have made.

[Lehan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some beautiful and astute observations about language and transgressing linguistics boundaries. However, sporadic and unexpected bursts of Japanese imperialist superiority and racism really threw me off. I didn’t realise until the end that this was originally written in Japanese, so it adds another layer to think about the English translation of Japanese discourse on writing in German.

[Daisy]

At first, I wasn't sure if I would like this book. Initially, it gave me the air of privileged transplants who distance themselves from the broader category of immigrants. With that said, I do think she acknowledges some of the limitations of her perspective while adding some nuance to the ways that language is expansive and transgressive... how it can cross borders, even within itself.

[Ahmad · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful inspiring essays on language, writing, translation, and growing up between languages. The first half talks about writing outside of the mother tongue, and many examples from the author‘s experiences being in contact with many writers in different cultures and contexts. The second half talks more about translation and languages, mainly the ones the author writes in, Japanese and German.

[Oliver · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tawada’s essays on the "poetic ravine" between languages are compelling. She explores how writing outside one's native language forces a different kind of attention to structure and meaning. It’s a thoughtful, personal meditation that manages to be thought-provoking without overplaying the linguistic relativity angle.

[Iris · Rating 3 out of 5]

i think u'll get the most out of it if u're fluent in both JPese and german, tawada's main languages.

the "loss" in translation, the "purity" of an author's original thought... i think this is an argument for those who like the sound of their own voice.

[Mai Nguyen · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books I've read..a collection of essays about Tawada's reflections and musings of her mother tongue - Japanese and her secondary language - German. She draws on social issues and the influence of colonialism on her writing and usage of the spoken word.