On Thursday, May 15, 2025, the 54th public lecture titled “The Future of Central Eurasia and Japan” was held. We invited Assistant Professor Sotome Hayate from the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Tsukuba to give a lecture titled “Can This Work Be Read in Translation? Or Not? ―A History of Georgian Literature and Its Japanese Translations.”
Mr. Sotome specializes in Georgian literature and has conducted research on two writers and poets from the late 19th century, using critical theories such as postcolonialism and ecocriticism.
In this lecture, he carefully traced the historical development of Georgian literature from ancient times to the present, and also explained which authors’ works from each era were translated into Japanese, when, and by whom.
Georgian literary history begins with hagiographies written in the ancient period (around 480 AD). Although The Martyrdom of Shushanik, considered the oldest Georgian literary text, has not yet been translated into Japanese, Mr. Sotome noted that it is surprisingly comprehensible even to modern Georgian readers. He speculated that this is because the Georgian language has not undergone as drastic linguistic changes as Japanese. Later, during the medieval period, the Georgian literary masterpiece The Knight in the Panther’s Skin was produced. Although the Japanese translation of this work was made via a Russian translation, it became the first piece of Georgian literature to be translated into Japanese. According to Mr. Sotome, this translation adopts a word-for-word style in an effort to convey the meaning of the original text as faithfully as possible, despite the constraints of indirect translation. In his lecture, Dr. Sotome also gave a detailed explanation of how Georgian literature developed through modern movements such as Romanticism, Realism, and Modernism, and eventually transitioned from Soviet literature to post-Soviet literature. He further explained the history of Japanese translations of literary works from each of these periods.
The literature of Georgia had long been introduced to Japan through indirect translations from Russian. However, in 2004, Mr. Kojima Yasuhiro accomplished the first direct translation from Georgian into Japanese. This achievement came against the backdrop of the turmoil in the 1990s, after which studying abroad finally became possible in the 2000s. Furthermore, since the latter half of the 2010s, the number of Georgian literary works translated into Japanese has increased. He explained these developments in relation to the historical events of the time.
At the end of the lecture, Mr. Sotome introduced several post-Soviet literary works and essays that he himself is considering translating in the future and shared his outlook going forward.
After the lecture, a Q&A session was held, in which topics such as major themes in contemporary Georgian literature, freedom of expression, and the challenges of translating certain expressions and elements were discussed. There were also comments about children’s literature, which was not touched upon during the lecture, reflecting the audience’s strong interest in Georgian literature.
