translated by Daniel Joseph

“Since you asked: I am the great god Hitokotonushi of Kazuraki, known as Kotosaka no Kami, the WordRender, he who can render anything, be it felicitous or ill-omened, with but a single word. Nice to meet you.”
 
The God of the Word is a witty and wry retelling of the Kojiki (‘Record of Ancient Matters’), completed in 712 CE, which is considered the oldest extant Japanese text. It is a myth-history documenting (read: legitimising) the divine lineage of the emperors of the Yamato court, including the Wakatakeru no Mikoto of our text (supposedly the real historical figure the rest of the 14 confabulations were arranged to legitimise). This lively and hilarious translation is guaranteed to make you smile, while also gesturing towards the serious and relevant consideration of who gets to tell the tall tales on which we build our own narratives.
 
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Daniel Joseph is a translator, editor, and anthologist of Japanese fiction. He holds an MA in Medieval Japanese Literature from Harvard University, and has published translations of works by an eclectic assortment of Japanese writers and musicians including Kou Machida (Inpatient Press), Izumi Suzuki (Verso Books), and Kazuki Tomokawa (Blank Forms Editions). Shorter translations and essays have appeared in Granta, Epiphany, and ArtReview, among others. He is senior editor at Kodansha USA in New York, and is compiling and editing the forthcoming Penguin Book of Japanese Science Fiction for Penguin Classics in the UK.