Japanese - Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation Translation Prize

Japanese – Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation Translation Prize

The Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation (GBSF) Translation Prize is an annual award for translations into English of full-length Japanese-language works of literary merit and general interest. The winner is awarded £3,000 and a runner-up is awarded £1,000.

Generously supported by the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation, the prize will be awarded for the first time in February 2024.

The Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation Prize is now open for submissions. Please enter below.
Deadline for entries: 31 March 2026

An annual prize for translations into English of full length Japanese works of literary merit and general interest. The winner is awarded £3,000 and the runner-up is awarded £1,000.

The Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation Translation Prize was established in 2023 to celebrate new translations into English of full-length Japanese works of literary merit and general interest (fiction, non-fiction, and poetry). It is generously sponsored by the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation and administered by the Society of Authors.

Entry Deadline: Tuesday 31 March 2026

Entry criteria

Entries must be translations from Japanese into English
The translation must have been first published in the UK (or widely available for distribution in the UK) between 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026
Submissions must not contain AI generated works
Maximum two entries per imprint, publishers are invited to submit 1 additional call-in title.

Conditions of entry

The decision of the judges is final and they reserve the right not to award the prize if, in their opinion, no works entered reach a sufficiently high standard. Judges may call in books if they so wish.

Current employees (or anyone directly connected with the administration of the Society of Authors’ grants and prizes) or members of the SoA Management Committee may not apply for any of the grants and prizes administered by the Society of Authors.

In order to support the prize, we request that publishers put the award logo or “2026 Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation Prize Winner” or “Shortlisted for the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation Prize 2026”, on the cover of subsequent editions of winning/shortlisted books.

How to Enter

Submissions must be made by the publisher.

Please upload a digital copy of the text in both languages to this application or send the files to prizes@societyofauthors.org.

Once this form is completed please send four physical copies of the translation and three physical copies of the Japanese text clearly labelled with the English title (all non-returnable) to:

Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation Prize
Prizes Department
Society of Authors
24 Bedford Row
London
WC1R 4EH

Couriers should be advised to use the Theobalds Road entrance.

The prize will be celebrated at the annual Translation Prizes ceremony in 2027. For any queries, please email prizes@societyofauthors.org.

Person submitting name *

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Last

Person submitting job title *

Submissions must be made by the print publisher

Person submitting email *

English title *

Japanese title *

Translator name *

First

Last

Co-translator name(s)

(if applicable)

Publisher *

Publication date *

The translation must have been first published in the UK (or widely distributed in the UK) between 1 April 2025 and 31 March 2026

Author name *

First

Last

Japanese publisher *

Japanese publication date *

Is this is a call-in title? *

Publishers are invited to submit 1 additional call-in title. There is no need to send copies of the book to our office if you are submitting a call-in title, unless requested by us.

Call-in justification

Please submit up to 250 words on why this book should be considered by the judges in addition to your other submissions.

Translation PDF upload

Drag & Drop Files, Choose Files to Upload

Maximum two entries per imprint

Japanese PDF upload

Drag & Drop Files, Choose Files to Upload

Translator biography *

Please provide a short bio. This may typically include recent publications, the name, date, and details of previous prizes won, education, training, and career background, and pronouns. If there are multiple translators, please include all bios in this field.

Declaration *

I agree

I agree to abide by the conditions of entry. I confirm that the translator and translation meet the criteria for entry as detailed above.

GDPR *

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By ticking the below you are confirming that you have permission to share all the above information with the Society of Authors team and sponsorship partners. We may invite you to take part in PR activities surrounding the prize but you are under no obligation to do so and will always contact you to ask your permission before giving your contact details to our media partners. To read our full privacy policy please visit our website: societyofauthors.org/Legal-Privacy/Privacy-Statement

Where did you hear about this prize? *

The 2025 Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation Translation Prize Winner

Ginny Tapley Takemori for a translation of Mornings With My Cat Mii by Mayumi Inaba (Harvill Secker, Vintage, Penguin Random House)

Photography (c) Natalie Thorpe

There are cat books, and then there are real cats; when a book is more like a cat than it is like a book about cats, that to me is the mystery of reading. Through this translation Ginny Tapley Takemori has given us a true introduction to Inaba, a writer whose work represented a range of endeavour and contained much of life.

Asa Yoneda, 2025 judge

The 2025 Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation Translation Prize Runner Up

Bryan Karetnyk for a translation of The Little Sparrow Murders by Seishi Yokomizo (Pushkin Vertigo)

Photography (c) Natalie Thorpe

The Little Sparrow Murders is an unputdownable book. The English translation is a testimony to Bryan Karetynk’s artistry that allows us to become totally immersed in the complex plot and idiosyncratic characters of this murder mystery. The work is also a fascinating social-historical record of the geography, local culture, and customs of an area of Japan (Okayama Prefecture) which may not be well known to audiences outside of Japan.

Lila Matsumoto, 2025 judge

The 2025 Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation Translation Prize Shortlist

Polly Barton for a translation of Hunchback by Saou Ichikawa (Viking, Penguin Random House)

Bryan Karetnyk for a translation of The Little Sparrow Murders by Seishi Yokomizo (Pushkin Press)

Stephen Snyder for a translation of Mina’s Matchbox by Yoko Ogawa (Harvill Secker, Vintage, Penguin Random House)

Ginny Tapley Takemori for a translation of Mornings With My Cat Mii by Mayumi Inaba (Harvill Secker, Vintage, Penguin Random House)

“Reading the nominations side by side reaffirmed the multiplicity of voices to be found in Japanese literature, and the promise that translation carries to allow those voices to travel. Each work evidently carried different challenges for the translator, whether in terms of the use of regional vernaculars and more experimental prose in the original, or the complexity of the narrative being told.”

— Dr Victoria Young, 2025 Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation Prize judge

If you are interested in any of the books here please visit: Bookshop.org. A percentage of all book sales will be donated to the SoA Access Fund.

With thanks, the judges for the 2025 Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation Translation Prize are:

Lila Matsumoto

Lila Matsumoto is a writer whose publications include two poetry collections, Two Twin Pipes Sprout Water (Prototype, 2021), which was shortlisted for the Forward Poetry Prize and recommended by the Poetry Book Society, and Urn & Drum (Shearsman, 2018), and and a creative-critical book on cross-disciplinary art practice, The Very Nature of Materiality is an Entanglement (In Other Words, 2024). Her work has been widely published in pamphlets and anthologies, and her radio essay ‘Horn Dance’ featured on BBC Radio 3. A new book, Talk a Blue Streak, is forthcoming from Monitor Books in Spring 2026. Lila was born in Japan and grew up in the US. She has lived in the UK since 2007, and teaches Creative Writing at the University of Nottingham.

Asa Yoneda

Asa Yoneda’s work includes translations from Japanese of women and men from the contemporary to the early 20th century, and has been nominated for the PEN Translation Prize and the Otherwise Prize, among others. She teaches literary translation at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Born in Osaka, she has lived in Tokyo, Southern California, and the south of England, most recently Bristol. Her English language translation of Under the Eye of the Big Bird by Hiromi Kawakami is shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2025.

Dr Victoria Young

Dr Victoria Young has a BA in Japanese Studies from the University of Cambridge (Trinity Hall) and an MA in Japanese Cultural Studies from Birkbeck College. She spent three and a half years at Waseda University in Tokyo as a research student in the then Institute for Ryukyuan and Okinawan Studies. She was awarded her Ph.D by the University of Leeds in 2016. Her thesis focused on works of literature by three writers: Sakiyama Tami, Yi Yang-ji, and Tawada Yōko. Most often associated with the categories of Okinawan, resident Korean (zainichi), and ‘transborder’ literature respectively, her research traced the multiple and intriguing ways in which these works of fiction reinscribe, transcend, and challenge the margins and borders of Japanese literature. She teaches at the University of Cambridge.

2024 (presented 2025)

Winner:

Masaya Saito for a translation of The Kobe Hotel: Memoirs by Sanki Saitō (Isobar Press)

Runner-up:

David Boyd for a translation of The Factory by Hiroko Oyamada (Granta Publications)

Shortlisted:

Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda and Allison Markin Powell for a translation of Kappa by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa (New Directions)
Brian Bergstrom for a translation of Slow Down: How Degrowth Communism Can Save the Earth by Kōhei Saitō (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, Orion Publishing Group Ltd)
Alison Watts for a translation of What You Are Looking For Is in the Library by Michiko Aoyama (Doubleday, Penguin Random House)
Kendall Heitzman for a translation of Nails and Eyes by Kaori Fujino (Pushkin Press)

2023 (presented 2024)

Winner:

Alison Watts for a translation of The Boy and the Dog by Seishu Hase (Scribner, Simon and Schuster)

Runners-up:

David Boyd for a translation of Weasels in the Attic by Hiroko Oyamada (Granta)
Sam Bett and David Boyd for a translation of All The Lovers In The Night by Mieko Kawakami (Picador, Pan Macmillan)

Shortlisted:

Sam Bett for a translation of The Flowers of Buffoonery by Osamu Dazai (New Directions)
Margaret Mitsutani for a translation of Scattered All Over the Earth by Yoko Tawada (Granta)
Alison Watts for a translation of Fish Swimming in Dappled Sunlight by Riku Onda (Bitter Lemon Press)

The Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation

The Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation has developed mutual understanding and co-operation between the UK and Japan for over 40 years. It supports initiatives and grassroots activity across hundreds of projects in the arts, sport, education, science, social issues, medicine and other fields, providing over £1m in grant funding every year.

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