Asa Yoneda is a literary translator who works from Japanese into English. She was born in Osaka, studied language, literature and translation at Oxford and SOAS, and lives in Bristol. She also teaches literary translation at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and is a judge for the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation Translation Prize for Japanese Literature. On WebToTell she appears as the translator of Under the Eye of the Big Bird, not as its author.
Her stated preference is for experimental writing and contemporary women's writing, and her list bears that out. She has translated Yukiko Motoya's surreal story collection, published as The Lonesome Bodybuilder in the US and Picnic in the Storm in the UK, Rin Usami's Idol, Burning, and several books by Banana Yoshimoto, including The Premonition and Moshi Moshi. She has also written for Words Without Borders about translating Natsuko Kuroda's autobiographical prose.
The recognition came in 2025, when her version of Under the Eye of the Big Bird was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize. The prize rewards author and translator together, so Kawakami and Yoneda shared the shortlist. Her work has also been nominated for the PEN Translation Prize and the Otherwise Prize.
Start with Under the Eye of the Big Bird. It is set in a far future where humans are close to extinction, living in small tribes under the watch of figures called the Mothers, and it moves through linked stories rather than a single plot. If you want something shorter and closer to the present day, try Idol, Burning, a 144-page novel about a fan's all-consuming devotion to a pop idol.
