Adriana Lisboa, poet and novelist, translates Matsuo Bashō’s travel diary Saga Nikki, inserting it as a paratext of her 2007 novel Rakushisha. The present study examines the role of Lisboa’s translation and depictions of the fictional translator as crucial narrative keys to the structure and plot of Rakushisha. In addition, the functionality of absent characters (including author-poets and translators) that emerge in the form of written text, memory, and imagination prompt an exploration of the definitions of character and genre as well as the visibility of translators in prose and poetry. Examining the underlying, unspoken contracts that occur in translation and all forms of communication reveals some assumptions that readers, writers, translators, and other stakeholders make when participating in these media.
 

Keywords: translation; poetry; Japan; untranslatability; immigration; belonging