Je recopie l’information suivante depuis le site internet de la Japan Foundation (en grasses, la raison pour laquelle je mentionne cet honneur ici):
Frederik L. Schodt is a writer and translator and best known as a pioneer of manga and translation for four decades.As a college student in Japan in 1970, he started to develop an enthusiasm for Japanese graphic narratives, or “story-manga,” and in 1977~8 with some friends he translated part of Tezuka Osamu’s Phoenix. While this effort did not lead to an actual publication, it was the beginning of a 12-year relationship with the inexhaustible manga author. Eventually, in 1983, Tezuka contributed a foreword to Schodt’s first monograph Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics.
At that time “story-manga” was already flourishing in Japan, but readers abroad could not yet access these graphic narratives without being in command of the Japanese language. Against this backdrop, Schodt provided not only a rich seam of information in Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics, but also almost one hundred pages of translated manga. This attitude—to not just teach people about an unknown culture, but share the experience of this culture with them—has been characteristic of Schodt’s whole career well into the 21st century and its internet-based participatory culture. Within this new environment, Schodt continues to build bridges between those who do and do not read manga, and further between those who do and do not appreciate classic manga narratives like Tezuka’s.
While highly acknowledged worldwide for his promotion of manga, Schodt has also drawn attention with his books to other forms of marginalized art. These include a book on a Japanese acrobatic troupe formed by an American acrobat in 1867 (Professor Risley and the Imperial Japanese Troupe, published in 2012). He also translated a manga work created in San Francisco in 1931 (by Henry Yoshitaka Kiyama, published in English in 1998 as The Four Immigrants Manga), that depicts the lives of four young Japanese men in the United States between 1904 and 1924. It recently attracted attention again and has been made into a popular musical.
It is precisely Schodt’s commitment to intercultural as multilateral exchange that deserves an accolade. We accordingly present him with the Japan Foundation Award and look forward to his future successes.
(Je rappelle le compte-rendu que j’ai écrit : Alexis D’Hautcourt, Le Professeur Risley et les premiers acrobates japonais en France : Compte-rendu de Frederik L. Schodt, Professor Risley and the Imperial Japanese Troupe. How and American Acrobat Introduced Circus to Japan – and Japan to the West (Berkeley, 2012). Journal of Inquiry and Research, Kansai Gaidai University, 2013, 98, pp.89-95. <hal-01276896>)