From Rashomon to A Wild Sheep Chase: Japanese Novels in Ukrainian Translation

In 1971, the Kyiv publisher Dnipro released a collection of Akutagawa Ryūnosuke’s short stories, “Rashomon and Other Stories” (Расьомон та інші новелі). According to Harvard University Library’s catalog, it ran 245 pages, and the translators were Ivan Dziub and Hennadii Turkov. The catalog’s statement of responsibility says it was “translated from Japanese.”

When, and by whose hand, has Japanese literature come into Ukrainian? What follows draws on the Encyclopedia of Modern Ukraine (ЄСУ) of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, the Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (IEU) at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS), Harvard University Library’s catalog, and materials from the Japan Foundation (as of September 2026). Translation in the other direction, of Ukrainian literature into Japanese, is covered in our article on where to start reading Ukrainian literature.

A Timeline of Japanese Literature in Ukrainian

Kharkiv in the 1920s

According to IEU’s entry “Japan” (written by Arkadii Zhukovsky, reprinted from the 1988 print edition), Japanese language and literature were taught at a university in Kharkiv in the 1920s, and the All-Ukrainian Association of Orientalists, founded in Kharkiv in 1926, had a Japanese section. Its head was Fedir Pushchenko. Japanese studies and translations appeared in the association’s bulletin and in the journal Skhidnyi Svit (“The Eastern World,” 1927–31).

According to ЄСУ, Pushchenko was born in 1879 in Chuhuiv, in today’s Kharkiv Oblast, and learned Japanese as a prisoner of war during the Russo-Japanese War. He later graduated from the Japanese department of the School of Oriental Languages in Paris in 1907, and taught language in Tokyo in 1908–09. From the 1920s he taught languages at schools in Kharkiv and also worked as a translator for Ukraine’s state publishing house.

Did Pushchenko’s 1926 Japanese Textbook Become an Actual Book?

The two encyclopedias describe Pushchenko’s 1926 Japanese-language textbook differently. IEU writes that the Kharkiv university “published” his Japanese grammar in 1926. ЄСУ describes the same 1926 work, “Japanese: A Theoretical and Practical Course” (Японська мова: Теоретично-практичний курс), as a “handwritten textbook.” Whether it was actually a printed book is not settled in this article.

Around the same time, Oleksandr Kremena (1903–1938), who studied Oriental languages in Kharkiv, published “Lyric Poetry of Feudal-Era Japan” in 1931. According to ЄСУ, it was a volume containing his own introduction and Ukrainian translations of classical Japanese poetry, part of which was later included in the 1961 “Anthology of Eastern Literature” (Kharkiv). IEU describes the 1931 book as an anthology translating 26 classical Japanese poems, with an introduction by Kremena.

Old Spelling “Япанська,” Modern Spelling “Японська”

The title of Kremena’s 1931 book is given by ЄСУ as «Япанська лірика февдальної доби». In today’s Ukrainian, “Japanese” would be written «японська» and “feudal” «феодальна», so the spelling in the title reflects the usage of its time. Searching library catalogs for old books requires using the spelling of the period.

Work Cut Short in the 1930s

According to ЄСУ, Pushchenko was arrested in December 1933 and, in 1934, sentenced to five years’ deprivation of liberty on a charge of espionage for Japan. He was transferred again to Kyiv for interrogation in early 1937, and nothing further is known of him after that. Kremena was arrested in December 1937, sentenced to death by shooting, died in February 1938, and was rehabilitated in 1960. Repression of this era is touched on in our article on the “Executed Renaissance.”

Translated Directly from Japanese, or Through Another Language?

IEU also lists as 1930s translations the works of Tokunaga Sunao and Kobayashi Takiji’s “The Crab Cannery Ship” (1934), and notes that the émigré Ihor Shankovskyi translated a hundred court poems from 13th-century Japan into Ukrainian. However, IEU’s account does not make clear whether these were translated directly from Japanese or through another language, such as Russian.

Some translations from the 1960s onward are clearly stated to have been made from Japanese. ЄСУ separately lists Dziub’s translations, discussed in the next section, as being “from Japanese,” and Harvard University Library’s catalog likewise records the 1971 “Rashomon and Other Stories” as “translated from Japanese.”

Which Was the “First” Ukrainian Translation?

The earliest entry in this article’s timeline is Lototskyi’s 1926 “Japanese Folk Tales,” cited by IEU. But ЄСУ’s entry on Lototskyi does not mention this book, and it is unclear what language it was translated from. Because we have not checked whether an earlier translation exists, this article does not use the phrase “first Ukrainian translation.”

Ivan Dziub, Physicist and Translator

According to ЄСУ, Ivan Dziub (Іван Дзюб) was a physicist born in 1934 in a village in Lviv Oblast who, alongside his work at institutions such as the Institute of Theoretical Physics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, translated literature from Spanish, Italian, and Japanese. He taught Japanese at Kyiv University from 1990 to 1992. In 2006 he received Japan’s Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette for his contribution to introducing Japanese culture to Ukraine (ЄСУ gives the Ukrainian name of the order as “Order of the Rising Sun, gold rays with a rosette”).

ЄСУ lists the following as his main translations made “from Japanese.”

ЄСУ also lists a short story by Ōе Kenzaburō (1967), a work by Saotome Katsumoto (1978), and “Japanese Folk Tales” (1986) among his other translations.

From the Dictionary and Research Side: Ivan Bondarenko

Dictionaries have also been made as a bridge between Japanese and Ukrainian. According to IEU, a Ukrainian-Japanese dictionary, a joint effort by local Ukrainians and a Japanese linguist, was published in Harbin, in northeastern China, in 1944.

After independence, the linguist Ivan Bondarenko (Іван Бондаренко) made a dictionary. According to ЄСУ, Bondarenko was born in 1955 in a town in Chernihiv Oblast, learned Japanese at a language school in Nara, taught Russian at Tenri University from 1990, and has been a professor at Kyiv University since 2003. He co-edited the “Ukrainian-Japanese Dictionary” (Kyiv, 1997) and, for learning kanji, the “Ukrainian-Japanese, Japanese-Ukrainian Learner’s Dictionary” (1998). According to Japan Foundation materials, he received Japan’s Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Rays in November 2012 as head of the Japanese-language department at Kyiv University.

Since 2022

The Japan Foundation’s “Country/Region Information” for Ukraine (FY2025) states that more bookstores now sell Japanese books translated into Ukrainian, and that access to information about Japan has improved, particularly in Kyiv. Broader trends in Ukrainian publishing since 2022 are introduced in our article on Ukraine’s publishing statistics.