Tove Jansson Here I Come
Professor of Philosophy , University of the Sacred Heart   Mayumi Tomihara

It is now over twenty years since I first came across the works of Tove Jansson in a Stockholm bookshop, read them avidly, and was inspired to study Swed- ish. An amalgam of various accidents catapulted me into the world of Tove Jansson, the multifaceted quality of whose variegated style cast such a spell over me that I ended up rendering into Japanese her novels for adults for the first time.
I am not sure whether it is a good thing for a translator to be able to meet the author of the books she is translating. It seems rather foolish to point out some crux of the text and ask for the correct meaning. Even more tasteless is any attempt to wrest from the author an explanation of her own work, or so it seems to me. In a short story called “Meeting the Author,” “Ms Jansson” tells the Japanese girl Tamiko that “one ought to meet the author in the books she has written.” True, the creative trajectory of the author may be traced within each page and each line of each book. Now that Tove Jansson has passed away, for me, this is an insight that remains unshaken.
Tove Jansson is a lone island floating far offshore. No lighthouse sheds its beams to seafarers, no handhold may be found in the rough rocks washed by wild waves. It is no easy task to approach this island. When I visited her Helsinki studio once or twice a year, I took pains to preserve a pleasurable distance. I did not record her voice or take pictures. I did not even take notes. Instead, we would chat about this and that, and about nothing in particular. I would relish the few precious hours in which we shared the same space. I could never accustom myself to how her mood could change capriciously, or how her expressive features could register both ingenuousness and irony in quick succession. At times I would be astonished, at other times disheartened, but many a time I would find comfort in all this.
Every year, from autumn to the following spring, Tove would live in her Helsinki studio. The arched window of her top-floor studio offered a good view of the harbour in which grand ocean liners cast anchor. A very different view would meet her eyes on Klovharu Island, where she would live during spring and summer. There the only passers-by would be humble sardine boats. It was a long-cherished wish of mine to visit the island some time. I hoped to find something there.
One September day more than a decade ago, the opportunity finally came. I boarded a a friend’ s cruiser in Helsinki harbour, braved the bitter wind and seasickness for several hours, and almost fainting, reached a nearby island where I stepped onto a small boat in order to land on Klovharu Island. But when we were almost there, an exquisitely timed storm sprung up. Waves bigger than human size crashed in, until the island, in fact no more than a large rock, was completely submerged. We had to turn back.
Thus, my hope of landing on Klovharu Island was dashed at the last minute. Yet it may be a blessing in disguise. Although I have seen Tove in her studio, I seem to be always denied a view of Tove on her island. Tove Jansson herself remains an island, smiling and aloof. And that is as it should be. I will be forever en route to Tove Jansson.

Translated by Mami Adachi (Professor of English, University of the Sacred Heart)