MAGGIE HOHLE

I entered Japan in 1985 as a graduate of St. John’s College. I left Japan in 2000 fluent in Japanese, personally acquainted with a grand sampling of the first (post-war) generation of Japanese designers and other creators and a client list including most major international design publications. In my 15 years living both in Tokyo and the countryside north of Kyoto Prefecture, I became familiar with the place of design in Japanese cultural history and the history and language unique to this community. As a partner in translation, expressing as much of this context as possible while further deepening the international presence of Japanese creators has given me continual enjoyment for ten years. The full range of my written work is presented at www.maggietext.com.

YUKIKO NAITO

I majored in English at Nanzan University in the city of Nagoya. I passed Grade 1 of the EIKEN Test in Practical English Proficiency in 1973 and was certified as a national interpreter guide in 1975. I have an abiding interest in Buddhism, whose teaching is ecology itself; and chemical-free, organic agriculture, which is predicated upon a dependence on ecology.
Design, omnipresent, inspires me with its power to aesthetically encourage us to look at things from a new point of view, freeing us to find other horizons and possibilities. My translation work, of books, pamphlets and articles, has spanned these three subjects for 20 years.