Exophony - Tawada Yoko

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Exophony

by
Tawada Yoko

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

Title:	Exophony
Author:	Tawada Yoko
Genre:	Non-fiction
Written:	2003 (Eng. 2025)
Length:	168 pages
Original in:	Japanese
Availability:	Exophony - US
	Exophony - UK
	Exophony - Canada

	from: Bookshop.org (US)

Voyages Outside the Mother Tongue
Japanese title: エクソフォニー
Translated by Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda

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Our Assessment:

B+ : far-ranging and nicely thought-provoking

See our review for fuller assessment.

Review Summaries
Source	Rating	Date	Reviewer
Publishers Weekly	.	11/4/2025	.

From the Reviews:

"Playful and erudite, these essays offer valuable insights into Tawada’s own writing and her readings of classic world literature. This leaves readers with a lot to ponder." - Publishers Weekly

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

       Japanese-born author Tawada Yoko famously writes in both Japanese and German, a rare example of the truly bilingual writer. (While there are many writers who have switched languages, and quite a few who write in two languages but tend towards writing fiction in one and non-fiction in the other, Tawada has been strikingly successful (and productive) in writing in both languages, both fiction and non (with some poetry thrown in for good measure).)
       In Exophony Tawada explores the many facets of writing in different languages, based on her own experiences but also looking beyond these. The collection is divided into two parts. The first is titled: 'Voyages Outside the Mother Tongue', with each of the twenty pieces tied to some locale, from Dakar to Gainesville (Tawada has gotten around, a lot), and considers questions of language and of writing more generally. The second part focuses much more closely on the German language, the ten pieces there examples of her: 'Adventures in German'.
       The pieces aren't full-fledged essay, but rather like short riffs on different facets of the subject(s), informed by her varied experiences and encounters. In the pieces in the first part, she is generally somewhere 'away': at conferences, symposia, giving lectures in some foreign environment, often also in a country where the language is not one she writes in, or sometimes even one she knows. Often, she is in the company of writers from a variety of other countries; unsurprisingly, language is practically always an issue.
       The question of identity -- national and linguistic -- comes up, Tawada noting that there are surprisingly few exophonic German authors, despite many who live, for a time (like Thomas Mann) or completely (like W.G.Sebald) abroad, while many writers from other countries who live in Germany have taken to writing in German. As to identity, she is baffled when asked whether she writes: "as a German or a Japanese person", as she does not see identity tied to place in that way. (Meanwhile, she amusingly notes that: "Americans have never asked me whether I consider myself German or Japanese. Instead they ask why I don't write in English".)
       A recurring complain is about the widespread use of loan words in Japanese, with Tawada noting how much (slightly adapted) English has crept into modern Japanese usage, and she wonders: "if taking a laissez-faire approach to language is always wise". (I'm amused by the use of 'laissez-faire' here .....) She notes that even the use of some Latin lettering is now often found in Japanese texts (rather than a phonetic rendering in katakana), with words like 'CD' or 'T-shirt' -- and:

When my friends look at the books I've written in Japanese, it bothers me that these are the words that stand out to them, because they are the only words they can read. That's why I decided that none of my characters will ever wear T-shirts or listen to CDs anymore. It's actually quite inconvenient. The other option, of course, would be to double down and use even more English words, so that pointless words like T-shirt and CD won't stand out as much.

She's also fascinated by the connections between the Chinese and Japanese writing-systems -- at one point noting:

I'd secretly hoped to escape the world of distorted Katakana loan words and immerse myself in the beautiful world of Kanji -- only to discover that Kanji were themselves simplified and distorted versions of Chinese. The more I thought about it, the more the Japanese language in which I write and think in every day began to seem like some fake thing bought on the black market.

But it's also these connections and difference between languages that particularly fascinate her, as is also very clear in the second part of the book, when she discusses German language and usage, resorting constantly also to comparisons with the Japanese. Translation comes up repeatedly -- but Tawada perhaps puts it most succinctly early on, when she admits:

I'm not interested in studying lots of languages. To me, more than the languages themselves, it's the space between languages that's most important. Maybe what I really want is not to be a writer of this or that language in particular, but to fall into the poetic ravine between them.

This comes across well in this little volume, the real-life experiences, encounters, and observations exploring the many different facets of these spaces. Admirably, too, Tawada remains open to the new, constantly pushing boundaries and exploring possibilities. (So also, presumably one more reason she has not turned to writing in English is that she finds: "It would be extremely boring if the world were to be completely overtaken by English, that shallow business language that can be understood anywhere".) As she mentions incidentally, too, she feels: "There's really no point in writing normal novels", and this sense of looking to go beyond the simple, 'normal' is found throughout here.
Though with a definite Japanese-and-German Schwerpunkt, Tawada brings in discussion of many other languages in as well, making for a far-ranging tour and exploration. The short pieces, tied to specific experiences, especially in the first part of the book, are engaging and often thought-provoking riffs. It all makes for a quite fascinating and entertaining collection.

- M.A.Orthofer, 5 June 2025

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Links:

Exophony:

New Directions publicity page
Dialogue publicity page
Iwanami Shoten publicity page

Reviews:

Tawada Yoko:

Official site
Profile from Asahi Shimbun

Other books by Tawada Yoko under review:

Other books of interest under review:

See Index of Japanese literature
See Index of Literary Essays
See Index of books dealing with Translation

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About the Author:

Tawada Yoko (多和田葉子) was born in Tokyo in 1960 and moved to Germany when she was 22. She writes in both Japanese and German.

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