New Books in East Asian Studies Ted Goossen on translating Hiromi Kawakami’s “Third Love”
Apr 10, 2026
Ted Goossen, translator and editor known for bringing Japanese writers like Hiromi Kawakami and Haruki Murakami to English readers, discusses his decades in Japan and the craft of translation. He compares translating Murakami and Kawakami, unpacks The Third Love’s time-shifting ties to Edo and Heian eras, and explores changing roles of women, historical language for love, and literary traditions.
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Learning Japanese By Total Immersion
- Ted Goossen learned Japanese by immersion in 1968 with a homestay in a farm village where no one spoke English.
- He became fluent by mimicking daily life, playing on a Waseda basketball team, and living in non-English households in Tokyo.
Third Love Uses History To Reframe Modern Marriage
- Hiromi Kawakami's The Third Love links modern married women's struggles to Edo and Heian-era female lives to show alternative models of agency.
- Kawakami uses historical time-travel scenes to argue that past arrangements eased the weight of modern infidelity and narrow monogamous norms.
Language Shapes How Love Is Understood
- The novel interrogates Japanese words for love across eras, showing how language shaped experience and why Kawakami kept original terms like ai and koi in translation.
- Goossen argues certain Japanese love terms emerged late and carried Buddhist or pragmatic connotations rather than Western romantic meaning.
