Live Radio
Shuntaro Tanikawaphoto credit: Wikipedia
The man who translated the Peanuts comic strip into Japanese has passed away at the age of 92.
Shuntaro Tanikawa was a celebrated poet in Japan, and in the late 1960s, as Western pop culture began to take hold in his country, Tanikawa was hired to translate the comic strip.
“His translation has become the gold standard. You know, it was nuanced. And it gave a helpful clarity for Japanese readers to understand the strip even better," said Benjamin L. Clark, curator of the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa.
The simple drawing style of Charles M. Schulz resonates with Japanese aesthetics. The contribution of Tanikawa’s translation and understanding of the philosophy of the Peanuts characters helped cement its popularity for Japanese fans.
Clark says Tanikawa understood the strip intrinsically.
“He always had such a wonderful grasp of the humor and that’s not always easy to translate cross-culturally," Clark said.
The Schulz Museum has welcomed Japanese guests for many years, and in 2016, it opened a companion museum in Japan called the Snoopy Museum Tokyo.
In a 2016 conversation with Jean Schulz, Tanikawa talked about the synergy of the "poet-cartoonist" relationship.
He said via translation: “I had the impression that he was like a philosopher. I think Snoopy is a dog sometimes becoming really close to how humans feel."
Tanikawa published more than 60 collections of poetry and wrote the lyrics for the popular anime Astro Boy. In 2008, he was nominated for the Hans Christian Andersen Award for his contributions to children's literature.
Tanikawa died on November 13th in Tokyo.
