Rogue Engineer's Diary / やさぐれ日記

■ [The Yakumo Project] The Yakumo Project: Bringing Japanese information to English-speaking world

by Hideo Fukumori

For the last few years, new waves of excellent articles, documents, and softwares are emerging on the web. The problem is, most of them are basically written in Japanese language, and that makes them inaccessible to the English-speaking world.

For the last few months, the English-speaking people started to see these waves, and several of those people began to voice their frustration of not being able to read them in English. Some of their words are harsh, making them sound like words of accusation. But I regard them as proof of the potential value of information written in Japanese language. I see them as cries for help.

It was two years ago when I first recognized this trend, but I postponed taking action, making excuses to myself like "it is not the right time", "I'm not up to the task", "is it really worth the effort?" and so on... Now I know I was wrong. I should not hide any longer. Someone has to introduce this emarging wealth of Japanese information to English-speaking world, and I'm going to give it a try.

And I hope you to join and see what we can do.

I wish to call this effort "The Yakumo Project" after Yakumo Koizumi (Lafcadio Hearn), a Greek-born English writer who came to Japan in late 19th century and made significant contribution in introducing Japanese folk stories to English world through his translation. 

I still don't know where to begin, but one thing is certain; this effort is going to be like a coal fire that may last a few decades, not a firework that draws everyones attention and die down in a few months. The fire may take a while to catch on, but I'll keep trying.