Publishing: Introduction

I ran a commercial translation and production company called Intercom Ltd. for several decades, at one time with offices in Fukuoka, Nagoya and Tokyo and employing about a dozen people plus innumerable freelancers. After doing that for so many years I began to grow bored translating essentially the same thing again and again, and decided to do what I’d always wanted to do: publish Japanese literature in translation.

As the years passed the company published dozens of titles translated from Japanese, along with books written in or translated to Japanese, under the Kurodahan Press imprint. Through various friendships I expanded into other fields, launching the Cadmus Press imprint for European literature in English, the Celaeno Press imprint for original horror in English, and the Trident Press imprint for a Japanese-language horror magazine with both original and translated content.

Only a few of these titles ever showed a profit, and the publishing business as a whole never made enough profit to pay my salary. It did, however, keep me sane in spite of commercial translation.