Swet Columns

Keene, Seidensticker et al.: Products of War, Commodities of Peace

Reviewed by William Wetherall

Focusing on recently published biographical works by the late Edward G. Seidensticker and Columbia University professor Donald Keene, William Wetherall evokes the personalities and the times of two great promoters of Japanese literature in the postwar era.

Wetherall’s articles on a variety of subjects are posted on the gateway to his websites.

Intrigued... more

Swimming with the Flow

by Jiho Sargent

Jiho Sargent was a technical writer and editor, proofreader, programming expert, and a SWET stalwart for more than two decades. She was also a Buddhist priest who served for a time at Taisoji near Sugamo station. Her health took a turn for the worse in 2006, however, and she decided to return to the United States to live... more

Self-Publishing a Self-Initiated Translation

A professional non-fiction translator for over 40 years, Fred Uleman, in September 2009, self-published Rethinking the Constitution: An Anthology of Japanese Opinion, a translation of Kodansha’s 2004 Nihon no kenpo: Kokumin shuken no ronten. SWET asked Uleman how he came to translate and publish a book he was not paid to do, and what it involved.

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Japan Image Use Conference

by Lynne E. Riggs

On June 23, 2008, the North American Coordinating Council on Japanese Library Resources held a symposium in Tokyo (International House of Japan) entitled “Japanese Images: Using Them to Support Japan Studies Internationally.” Bringing together librarians, publishers, museum staff, editors, Japanese studies professors, and other interested parties, it was a landmark event in developing good practices... more

Subtleties of Scientific Style

Reviewed by Richard Weisburd Review of Matthew Stevens; Thornleigh, NSW, Australia: ScienceScape Editing, 2007. 103 pages. Softcover ISBN0-9578877-2-8. Available online. Softcover US12.00/A$15.00 + postage.

Substantive editing of research papers is a difficult task. The content is complex, technical, and original. The authors are intimately familiar with their own work, but not always aware of the difficulty that readers may have extracting... more

The First Five Pages

by Ginny Tapley The First Five Pages: A Writer’s Guide to Staying Out of the Rejection Pile by Noah Lukeman. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999[K1]. 207 pages.  Hardcover. ISBN-13: 978-0-7432-9093-7; softcover ISBN-10: 978-0-7432-9090-3.[K2] $13.95.

Noah Lukeman’s The First Five Pages is, as the subtitle suggests, aimed at writers trying to get their work published. With the advent... more