Juliet Winters Carpenter

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Nara Walks

Juliet Winters Carpenter (born 1948) is an American translator of modern Japanese literature. Born in the American Midwest, she studied Japanese literature at the University of Michigan and the Inter-University Centre for Japanese Language Studies in Tokyo. After completing her graduate studies in 1973, she returned to Japan, where she became involved in translation efforts.

Carpenter is a devotee of traditional Japanese music and is a licensed instructor of the koto and shamisen. She teaches at Doshisha Women's College of Liberal Arts in Kyoto and is a member of the Japanese Literature Publishing Project (JLPP), a government-supported project translating and publishing Japanese books overseas.

Carpenter's current project is the translation of Shiba Ryotaro's "Clouds Above the Hill," an epic novel about the Russo-Japanese war, considered a classic in Japan. This project has generated attention from around the world, including an article in the Economist. The first volume is due to be published December 2013, the second a year later.

Carpenter currently lives in Imadegawa, Kyoto. Her husband, Bruce Edwin Carpenter, is professor emeritus of Tezukayama University. She has three children: Matthew Edwin Carpenter, a graduate student at Monterey Institute of International Studies; Graham Winters Carpenter, a translator and interpreter in Tokyo; and Mark Bruce Carpenter, an English teacher in Kyoto.

Carpenter's translation of Abe Kobo's novel Mikkai or "Secret Rendezvous" won the 1980 Japan-United States Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature.