I remember being startled when I read Wayne Lammers' translation for the first time. That was when, back in 1985, I was reading for review the two-volume "Showa Anthology," a collection of 25 writers, each represented by a single entry, mostly translated by different hands. Lammers had translated excerpts from Shono Junzo's "Seibutsu" (Still Life), and his rendition didn't read like a translation at all. If you ignored the names and such, that is.
I had the same impression reading "Evening Clouds," Lammers' translation of Shono's "Yube no Kumo," so this time I decided to compare it with the original.
An early chapter, "End and Beginning," opens with the narrator overhearing his wife helping one of their sons, Shojiro, do his summer-vacation science assignment. Like "Still Life," published in 1960, "Evening Clouds," published in 1965, is a series of vignettes of domestic life -- the daily goings-on of a family made up of father, mother, daughter and two sons. In reality, of course, the family is Shono's, though the family name is changed to Oura.
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