Hiroaki Sato

is a Japanese poet and prolific translator who writes frequently for The Japan Times. He has been called (by Gary Snyder) "perhaps the finest translator of contemporary Japanese poetry into American English". Sato received the Japan–U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature in 1999 for his translation of Breeze Through Bamboo by Ema Saikō (Columbia University Press, 1997) and in 2017 for The Silver Spoon: Memoir of a Boyhood in Japan by Kansuke Naka (Stone Bridge Press, 2015).

Life

The son of a police officer, he was born in Taiwan in 1942. The family fled back to Japan at the end of WWII and encountered a number of hardships, including living in a stable. He was educated at Doshisha University in Kyoto, His first job was at the New York branch of the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO), from April 1969; meanwhile he was translating art books and catalogs anonymously for Weatherhill. The first work to appear under his own name was a small collection of poems by Princess Shikishi. and his translations were soon published by the Chicago Review.

Sato was president of the Haiku Society of America from 1979 to 1981, and honorary curator of the American Haiku Archives in 2006–7. He was a professor of Japanese literature at St. Andrews Presbyterian College in North Carolina from 1985 to 1991, and then director of research and planning at JETRO New York. Since 1998 he has been an adjunct at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He lives in New York City.

In 1982, Sato received the PEN Translation Prize.

Selected works Shikishi. Poems of Princess Shikishi. Translated by Hiroaki Sato. Bluefish, 1973 Sato, Hiroaki. Ten Japanese Poets. Hanover, New Hampshire: Granite, 1973. . Minoru, Yoshika. Lilac Garden. Translated by Hiroaki Sato. Chicago Review, 1975 Takahashi, Mutsuo. Poems of a Penisist. Translated by Hiroaki Sato. Chicago Review, 1975 Miyazawa, Kenji. Spring and Asura. Translated by Hiroaki Sato. Chicago Review, 1975 Takahashi, Mutsuo. Winter Haiku: 25 Haiku by Mutsuo Takahashi. Translated by Hiroaki Sato. Manchester, NH: First Haiku Press, 1980 Takamura, Kōtarō. Chieko and Other Poems of Takamura Kōtarō. Translated by Hiroaki Sato. University of Hawaii, 1980 From the Country of Eight Islands: An Anthology of Japanese Poetry. Edited and translated by Hiroaki Sato and Burton Watson. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1981.. . Winner of the American PEN translation prize in 1983 Sato, Hiroaki. One Hundred Frogs: From Renga to Haiku to English. New York, NY: Weatherhill, 1983.. Yagyu, Munenori. Sword and the Mind. Translated by Hiroaki Sato. Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook Press, 1986 Sato, Hiroaki. Haiku in English: A Poetic Form Expands. Tokyo, Japan: Simul Press, 1987. . Sato, Hiroaki. That First Time: Six Renga on Love, and Other Poems. Laurinburg, NC: St. Andrews Press, 1988. Miyazawa, Kenji. Future of Ice: Poems and Stories of a Japanese Buddhist. Translated by Hiroaki Sato. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1989 Ashbery, John. 波ひとつ (Nami hitotsu). Translation into Japanese by Hiroaki Sato, of A Wave. 書肆山田, 1991 Takahashi, Mutsuo. Sleeping Sinning Falling. Translated by Hiroaki Sato. City Lights Books, 1992 Takamura, Kotaro. A Brief History of Imbecility: Poetry and Prose of Takamura Kotaro. Translated by Hiroaki Sato. University of Hawaii, 1992 Ozaki, Hosai. Right under the big sky, I don't wear a hat: the haiku and prose of Hosai Ozaki. Translated by Hiroaki Sato. Berkeley, CA: Stone Bridge Press, 1993 Shikishi. String of Beads: Complete Poems of Princess Shikishi. Translated by Hiroaki Sato. University of Hawaii Press, 1993 Sato, Hiroaki. One Hundred Frogs. New York, NY: Weatherhill, 1995. . . (Collects one hundred different translations of the same poem) Sato, Hiroaki. Legends of the Samurai. Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook Press, 1995. . Matsuo, Basho. Basho's Narrow road: spring & autumn passages. Translated from the Japanese, with annotations by Hiroaki Sato. Berkeley, CA: Stone Bridge Press, 1996 Saikō, Ema. Breeze through Bamboo: Selected Kanshi of Ema Saiko. Translated from the Japanese by Hiroaki Sato. Columbia University Press, 1997. (Winner of the 1999 Japan‐United States Friendship Commission Japanese Literary Translation Prize) Mishima, Yukio. Silk and Insight. Translated from the Japanese by Hiroaki Sato. Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1998 Hagiwara, Sakutaro. Howling at the Moon and Blue. Translated from the Japanese by Hiroaki Sato. Green Integer, 2001 Taneda, Santoka. Grass and Tree Cairn. Translated by Hiroaki Sato. Winchester, VA: Red Moon Press, 2002 Mishima, Yukio. My Friend Hitler: and Other Plays. Translated by Hiroaki Sato. Columbia University Press, 2002 Yagyu, Munenori. The Sword and the Mind: The Classic Japanese Treatise on Swordsmanship and Tactics. Translated from the Japanese by Hiroaki Sato. Fall River Press, 2004. Sato, Hiroaki. Erotic Haiku. Yohan Shuppan, 2005 Miyazawa, Kenji. Miyazawa Kenji: Selections. Translated from the Japanese by Hiroaki Sato. University of California, 2007 Sato, Hiroaki. Japanese Women Poets: An Anthology. Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 2007.. Inose, Naoki with Hiroaki Sato. Persona: A Biography of Yukio Mishima. Stone Bridge Press, 2012 Sato, Hiroaki. Snow in a Silver Bowl: A Quest for the World of Yugen. Red Moon Press, 2013. Sakutarō Hagiwara. Cat Town. Translated by Hiroaki Sato. New York Review Books, 2014. Kansuke Naka. The Silver Spoon: Memoir of a Boyhood in Japan. Translated by Hiroaki Sato. Stone Bridge Press. 2015 (Winner of the 2017 Japan‐United States Friendship Commission Japanese Literary Translation Prize) Sato, Hiroaki. On Haiku. New Directions Publishing, 2018. Sato, Hiroaki. A Bridge of Words: Views Across America and Japan. Stone Bridge Press, 2022.