In July 2025, Japanese author Akira Otani made literary history by becoming the first from her country to win the Crime Writers’ Association’s Dagger Award for translated crime fiction. Her novel The Night of Baba Yaga was praised for its sharp portrayal of violence, gender, and power. And yet, despite the significance of this achievement, major UK media outlets remained silent. Why was this milestone left unspoken?
Some years ago, I was part of a consulting team tasked with supporting the public communications of a mayor in a mid-sized Japanese city.
Our mission was to maximize his media exposure and raise awareness of the city’s policies, both domestically and internationally. We drafted press releases, coordinated media appearances, arranged overseas visits, and even accompanied him on international trips. We tracked developments in cities like London, Paris, and Singapore, analyzing their media strategies and advising on how our city might position itself in global discourse.
And yet, one persistent frustration among the municipal staff was how rarely international media picked up stories about their city’s initiatives.
I once asked my supervisor, who had previously worked as a newspaper journalist, why it was so difficult to get international media to cover our mayor. He replied:
“Do you care who the mayor of some small town in rural England is? You probably don’t even know the town’s name, let alone the mayor’s. It’s the same with Japan. Why would international media care about the head of a city they’ve never heard of? That’s just how it is.”
It sounded cold, but it made sense. And when I saw the news that Akira Otani had won the Dagger Award in the UK, I found myself thinking of that moment.
Akira Otani has become the first Japanese author to win a Dagger Award from the Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) in the UK. Her novel, The Night of Baba Yaga, is a sharp yet quiet crime story that explores violence, solidarity, gender, and power.
And yet, this remarkable achievement has gone largely unreported in the British press. There’s no mention in The Guardian. Nothing from the BBC. While Japanese media have covered the story extensively, in the UK, it has passed almost entirely in silence. That silence gave me pause.
Of course, editorial decisions are shaped by many factors: audience interest, cultural proximity, brand recognition, and institutional priorities. As my former supervisor once said, it’s not surprising that international media don’t pay attention to what seems peripheral to their readers.
Akira Otani is not Haruki Murakami or Mieko Kawakami. She is not a “branded” Japanese author in the global literary market. And so her voice, however powerful, often passes quietly. Unspoken, unacknowledged.
But just because something goes unspoken doesn’t mean it lacks meaning. In fact, there may be value precisely in what is left unsaid.
Translation, as a literary act, has long been positioned at the margins. A shadow of the original, a supporting line rather than the main stroke. In the world of literary awards, translated works are often placed in separate categories. The Booker Prize has its International division; the Dagger Awards have a category for crime fiction in translation. This reflects a structural assumption: that translated works must be marked as “not original” in order to be evaluated.
This isn’t necessarily a slight. It can also be seen as a gesture of respect for the labor of crossing linguistic and cultural boundaries. But it does mean that translated works are often placed outside the “mainstream” of literary recognition.
And yet, perhaps that structural distance gives translation its own kind of power.
There are voices that can only reach us through translation. Otani’s storytelling is amplified through her collaboration with her translator. When that voice is recognized across borders, it becomes more than just a literary award. It becomes a quiet act of resonance.
So how should we receive a triumph that went unspoken? Perhaps speaking of it, quietly and deliberately, is itself a form of response.
