A Translingual Voice in Japanese Literature: A Conversation between Li Kotomi and Elaine Wong

Li Kotomi learned Japanese as a teenager in Taiwan. She is a prolific author writing in Japanese and has received several literary awards in Japan, including an Akutagawa Prize in 2021. Li translates her own works into Mandarin Chinese, her first language. Her novels and short stories often depict experiences of crossing between Japanese and Chinese, such as how a character’s encounter with a new language shapes or even determines her understanding of a new country. In this interview, Li talks about the influences of language and linguistic differences on her creative writing, her learning of Japanese, her thoughts about Japanese and Chinese, self-translation, and linguistic identity. She also discusses, from a queer perspective, her way of innovating Japanese literature by incorporating original Chinese classical poems into contemporary Japanese fiction, and how this act of innovation subverts heteronormativity in Chinese and Japanese literatures for different reasons.