In the March 1999 issue of the SWET Newsletter “Translating Popular Fiction,” featured responses by Janet Ashby, Juliet Carpenter, Geraldine Harcourt, Kurita Akiko, Gavin Frew, and Wayne Lammers to an article by Shinoda Setsuko published in the Asahi Shimbun, provided here in paraphrased translation. Shinoda expressed her hope that more popular and best-selling fiction in Japan that reflects the realities of contemporary Japanese culture might be translated and published abroad, expanding the variety of Japanese fiction available in English and helping to address the gap in understanding between Japanese and other peoples. SWET member and publisher Peter Goodman of Stone Bridge Press contributed an American publisher’s opinion in the May 1999 issue. For this Web site re-publishing, we have added cover images of the Japanese novels in translation forthcoming in the new Stone Bridge Fiction series launching Fall 2007. These articles provide good backstory for the recent Chad Post interview in SWET Newsletter #115.