On November 11, 2025, the Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture announced winners selected by jury for the 2025-2026 Japan-United States Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature.
Our Professor of Pre-Modern Japanese Literature and Art, Joshua S. Mostow, was awarded the Prize for his book, Hyakunin’shu: Reading the Hundred Poets in Late Edo Japan (University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2024), which includes a translation of an Edo period edition of the Hyakunin isshu.
The Japan-United States Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature was established in 1979, and the award has been administered by the Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture at Columbia University since the Center was founded in 1986. The Prize is awarded annually to outstanding works of translation into English from the Japanese language.
About the book
Hyakunin’shu: Reading the Hundred Poets in Late Edo Japan explores how commoners of the time engaged with one of Japan’s most famous poetry anthologies. By reproducing and translating a popular Ansei-era (1854-1859) illustrated edition, Joshua Mostow shows how commercial publishing transformed the Hyakunin isshu from an elite waka primer into shared cultural knowledge.
About the Japan United States Friendship Commission (JUSFC)
Established as an independent agency by the US Congress in 1975 (P.L. 94-118), the Japan United States Friendship Commission (JUSFC) administers a US government trust fund that originated in connection with the return to the Japanese government of certain US facilities in Okinawa and for postwar American assistance to Japan. Income from the fund is available for the promotion of scholarly, cultural, and public affairs activities between the two countries.
