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

Lila Matsumoto

Lila Matsumoto was born in Japan and grew up in the US. She has lived in the UK since 2007, and currently teaches poetry at the University of Nottingham. Lila was the editor of the poetry magazine SCREE and currently co-runs FRONT HORSE, a magazine and performance night of poetry, music, and art. “Urn and Drum” is her first full collection of poems.

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.