Remembering Kyoko Selden

For this volume honoring her memory and providing a glimpse into her extensive accomplishments, it is my honor to offer words of tribute for Kyoko Selden, my colleague of over two decades at Cornell University. By the time this special issue goes to press, it will have been two years since Kyoko’s untimely passing on January 20, 2013. Our shock over losing her so abruptly at that time, however, was tempered by a different kind of surprise. With the parameters of her life suddenly starkly fixed, we for the first time took stock of Kyoko’s creative oeuvre in its entirety. Calligraphy, paintings, poetry, diaries, manuscripts for translations long since published as books, as well as for ambitious translations still underway, appeared from bookshelves, closets, and file boxes of her home. It was as if, against the backdrop of that muted January landscape, when we could no longer hear Kyoko’s gentle, mischievous voice nor see her bundled in the winter coat that was twice her size, the outlines of her accomplishments emerged the more powerfully.

I have heard that in a poem produced some years ago for a family contest, Kyoko expressed astonishment that she had ended up living so long in Ithaca. Indeed, it was in Ithaca that she raised her family, and it was Cornell that was her professional base. While here, Kyoko was continuously involved in publication projects that spanned what emerged as her four great areas of interest: literature and poetry of all periods, but especially by women; writings by atomic bomb survivors, writings by Ainu, and most recently writings from Okinawa. In addition to works she published discretely in journal issues, exhibition catalogues, and anthologies, Kyoko was also author, translator, or editor (the latter most often with friend and colleague, Mizuta Noriko, as well as with her husband, Mark) of six books. An unfinished, annotated translation of the medieval Taiheiki: The Chronicle of Great Peace was also found among her files.

If to a broader world of readers Kyoko Selden was most prominently known as a translator of works by distinguished Japanese authors, and at Cornell as a revered teacher of language, in retrospect it is clear that she was first and foremost a scholar. Looking back, it now seems that teaching, translation, and scholarship were indistinguishable for Kyoko. Of course, we often hear that research and teaching should enrich each other. But Kyoko’s spirit could never be captured by such a cliché. Rather, we might say that a fierce intellectual curiosity and passion for expressive media, especially language, music, and the graphic arts, simply compelled Kyoko to explore the materials she taught with such intensity and in such detail.

It is true that Kyoko took up in the classroom texts that were relevant to her translation projects. But the reverse was also the case. For she just as often guided other readers and translators, whether students, fellow faculty, or colleagues and friends elsewhere, through the linguistic intricacies of the texts they were working on, relishing the work as if it were her own. Her contributions to doctoral dissertations written at Cornell, for example, were immense, and will be lasting. As one former student recalled of the T. A. room near her office: “Three other students were gathered there, bent over texts as I was about to be. Someone asked me what I was working on, and I said it was an independent study with Selden-sensei. One after the next, each graduate student revealed what he was working on—kuzushiji, modern poetry, Buddhist texts in kanbun, Meiji political tracts—all for independent studies with her.”¹ New requests for help seemed only to reveal greater depths of Kyoko’s knowledge, although she was also often learning as she taught. Her fascination with the rhythms, scripts, puns, and dialects she found in whatever she was reading, and her drive for precision, were legendary.

Kyoko prepared her teaching materials with a kind of artistry, always mindful of how a printed text could evoke rich sensuous associations. While working on the translation of Harukor, she brought to the classroom recordings of Ainu story telling...