JATBOOK Webinar: Translating The Traveling Tree by Michio Hoshino

Michio Hoshino (1952–1996) was a Japanese photographer and essayist who took Alaska as his lifelong subject. His photographs appeared in magazines such as National Geographic and Audobon, in addition to many prominent Japanese publications, to which he also frequently contributed essays. The Traveling Tree is a bestselling collection of some of his finest writing. The book was published at the peak of Hoshino’s artistic prowess, only two years before his career was tragically cut short at the age of 43 by a fatal bear attack while on a photoshoot in the Kamchatka Peninsula. It is, moreover, the first of Hoshino’s essay collections to be translated into the English language.

In this talk, novelist Eli K.P. William will describe how he ushered The Traveling Tree to publication, including his process of discovering, pitching, and ultimately translating the book. The presentation will be followed by a reading and Q&A.

Date & Time: June 13 (Sat.), 2026 15:00-16:30 JST (90 min.)
Speaker: Eli K.P. William (イーライ・K・P・ウィリアム), Book translator/author)
Moderator: Ko Iwata (岩田 香)

Type: Zoom webinar, recording available (until the end of July)
We will send you the Zoom link to your registered email address no later than the day before the session.

JAT member: Free
Non-member: 2,000 yen
Student: 500 yen (Please upload your student ID)

No refund is issued once payment is completed.
Recording available until the end of July
Archive available for JAT members
Register by: June 12, 2026 (Fri.) 24:00 JST

Organized by: Japan Association of Translators (JAT) JATBOOK
Contact: JATBOOK [email protected]

[Pre-seminar survey]
We would like to make this session as interactive as possible and will take questions as time permits. Please share your questions for the speaker using the link below.
Survey closes: June 12, 2026 (Fri.), at 24:00 JST
https://forms.gle/82UisX7q6Tuk9UVHA

[Profile]
Eli K.P. William (イーライ・K・P・ウィリアム)
Eli K.P. William has spent his entire adult life in Japan making a career out of story and language. He is the author of The Jubilee Cycle trilogy (Skyhorse Publishing), set in a dystopian future Tokyo. He translates Japanese literature, including the Yomiuri Prize winning novel A Man (Crossing 2020) by Keiichiro Hirano and the bestselling essay collection The Traveling Tree (Hachette 2025) by Michio Hoshino. In recent years, he also writes professionally in Japanese, serving as a bilingual story consultant for a major Tokyo-based video game development studio and contributing short stories to such publications as SF Prologue Wave and the 2025 Hayakawa anthology Fear and SF (kyōfu to SF). His translations, essays, and short stories have appeared in Aeon, Granta, The Southern Review, Monkey, The Japan Times, Kyoto Journal, Writer’s Digest, Subaru, and elsewhere. Born and raised in Toronto, he visited Tokyo for the first time as a university student and decided to move there upon graduation. After ten years in the thick of the metropolis, he now lives in the green hills of Shonan with his wife and daughter. His current projects include editing the world’s first English language anthology of pre-WWII Japanese sci-fi for MIT Press and writing a near future novella set in Izu. To learn more, visit https://elikpwilliam.com or join his newsletter Almost Real at elikpwilliam.substack.com

Moderator
Ko Iwata（岩田 香）
Ko Iwata has been a J2E translator for many years. Also teaching translation at a major translation and interpreting school. Studied at Simul Academy. Her field varies but currently she works in the aviation industry editing promotional copies.

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