This may be slightly unrelated, but since the topic of translations came up I thought I'd mention that the public radio show Radiolab recently did a show on translations -- http://www.radiolab.org/story/translation/ -- that was quite fascinating. As someone who reads a lot of foreign novels (including quite a bit of Kawabata) both the show and John's comments above really educated me more on the difficulties of finding a true meaning (or possibly finding a new meaning as a result).

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I came to go through Kawabata and was introduced to a whole new world.

Hi Inkwolf, see also Understanding, post 35, on culture and etiquette.