Katherine Whatley - Writer in Tokyo

Katherine Whatley

I'm a writer in Tokyo, Japan

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I speak English and Japanese

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About me

I am a Tokyo based writer, translator, artist and musician.

I spent much of my childhood in Japan and then went to Columbia University in New York City. My work is deeply informed by Japanese culture-everything from kimono to music to photography to film to architecture.

I work as a freelance writer and translator in Tokyo, Japan. In addition, I am training as a koto musician (13 string Japanese traditional transverse harp).

I am always looking for new opportunities. Please contact me with any and all translation, editing and interpretation projects.

作家、翻訳者、写真家、ミュージシャン。サンフランシスコ生まれ、東京育ち。コロンビア大学で東アジア言語文化と音楽民族学が専攻。

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My Creations

  1. Kiyoshi Koyama: A life lived with jazz

    4 October 2018
    Kiyoshi Koyama: A life lived with jazz

    For full article see: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2018/03/29/music/kiyoshi-koyama-life-lived-jazz/#.WvJPoC-PDqQ

    “I have lived a life alongside jazz,” says Kiyoshi Koyama, jazz critic, journalist and radio host. This is apparent on a recent visit to his home in Chiba Prefecture, where he and his wife live surrounded by walls of neatly organized records, CDs, books and... continue reading (0, 1 image)

  2. A cloven landscape, a cloven tree, a cloven self

    4 October 2018
    A cloven landscape, a cloven tree, a cloven self

    For full article see: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2018/01/04/arts/cloven-landscape-cloven-tree-cloven-self/#.WvJPkC-PDqQ

    On a recent trip to Tohoku, photographer Naoya Hatakeyama took a picture of a tree. It wasn’t a particularly remarkable tree, but it caught his attention all the same.

    In Hatakeyama’s photo the tree stands in the middle distance, right in the center of the... continue reading (0, 1 image)

  3. Living and breathing history, through noh

    4 October 2018
    Living and breathing history, through noh

    For full article see: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2018/03/01/stage/living-breathing-history-noh/#.WvJPmi-PDqQ

    Noh performer Hisa Uzawa has spent her life devoted to an art form that — with its slow and steady movements, sparse staging and ancient chanting — may at first seem staid. In her hands, however, the 650-year-old tradition becomes relentlessly contemporary.

    ​Uzawa was born... continue reading (0, 1 image)

  4. Artist Asako Iwama explores the relationship between food and language

    4 October 2018
    Artist Asako Iwama explores the relationship between food and language

    For full article see: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2018/02/01/arts/artist-asako-iwama-explores-relationship-food-language/#.WvJPli-PDqQ

    Food and the desire to eat has always been mysterious to Asako Iwama. When the artist and cook was a young child, she could not understand why she had to eat. Her earliest memories of food are of her grandmother’s cooking in a strange yet... continue reading (0, 1 image)

  5. Tracing a Giant Step: John Coltrane in Japan

    4 October 2018
    Tracing a Giant Step: John Coltrane in Japan

    http://www.pointofdeparture.org/PoD57/PoD57Coltrane.html

    This article, published in Point of Departure, commemorates the fiftieth anniversary of John Coltrane's historic tour to Japan. Through archival research in Japan and the United States, parsing through published and unpublished materials and through oral histories, I create a rich picture of the tour.

  6. Japan Jazz BBC Documentary

    2 June 2019
    Japan Jazz BBC Documentary

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0003569

    Musician and journalist Katherine Whatley explores the rich and surprising history of jazz in Japan. Surprising because the chaotic individualism of this American art form appears at first to go against the very grain of Japan’s communitarian sprit. More surprising still that, having been banned as ‘enemy music’ during... continue reading (1, 1 image)