Juliet Winters Carpenter

Juliet Winters Carpenter (May 10, 1948 – May 1, 2026) was an American translator of modern Japanese literature. Her translations of fiction and non-fiction have won many awards.

Carpenter was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1948.^[1] She studied Japanese literature at the University of Michigan and the Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies in Tokyo. After completing her graduate studies in 1973, she returned to Japan in 1975, where she became involved in translation efforts and teaching.

Carpenter was professor emerita at Doshisha Women's College of Liberal Arts in Kyoto and was involved in the Japanese Literature Publishing Project (JLPP), a government-supported project translating and publishing Japanese books overseas.

Carpenter's translation of Kōbō Abe's novel Secret Rendezvous (密会, Mikkai) won the 1980 Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature. Her translation of Minae Mizumura's novel A True Novel (本格小説, Honkaku Shōsetsu) won the same award for 2014-2015 and earned numerous other awards including the 2014 Lewis Galantière Award of the American Translators Association. Once Upon a Time in Japan, a book of folk tales which she co-translated with Roger Pulvers, received the 2015 Gelett Burgess Children's Book Award for Best Multicultural Book.

Carpenter won the 2021-2022 Lindsey and Masao Miyoshi Translation Prize for lifetime achievement as a translator of modern Japanese literature, with reference to her translation of Mizumura Minae's An I-Novel (Columbia University Press, 2021). An I-Novel also won the 2019-20 William F. Sibley Memorial Subvention Award for Japanese Translation.

Her translation of The Great Passage by Shion Miura, an audiobook read by Brian Nishii, won the 2017 Golden Earphones Award.

Carpenter was an enthusiast of traditional Japanese music and taught the koto and shamisen.

Carpenter retired to Whidbey Island in Washington State with her husband Bruce, professor emeritus of Tezukayama University. They had three children. She died on May 1, 2026.^[2]

Carpenter was also the author of the book Seeing Kyoto.

• Televised nostalgia in Japan: Those were the days
• A translator's work from Abe to Zen/Professor continues wide-ranging literary pursuits with epic novel by Ryotaro Shiba
• The Asian Bookshelf by Donald Richie: Blood, sweat and tears of Zen
• Strange Moors: 'A True Novel,' by Minae Mizumura
• Interview with Juliet Carpenter: Translating "The Great Passage" by Eve Kushner
• The Easy Life in Kamusari and Kamusari Tales Told at Night: A Conversation with Translator Juliet Winters Carpenter