Dr. Koichi Kuyama was my translation studies teacher. He taught me not only the craft, but also a love of translation: of stepping into an author’s soul and attending to every detail.
It was the kitchen of his tiny, book-filled apartment in Poznań, in 1993, where I learned that "sake" means “alcohol,” not merely "Japanese rice wine." His weekly kanji classes have stayed with me; he showed me the power of examples that students remember for a long time. To this day, I use his approach of weaving lectures together with anecdotes that reinforce the material.
He was an extraordinary and remarkably versatile translator. Thanks to him, Japanese readers came to know classics of Polish literature and film, from Adam Mickiewicz’s Romantic works to science fiction of Stanisław Lem.
An irreplaceable loss...
