From "Par Avion" to "Air Mail"

Thoughts on The Fall of Language in the Age of English

Did you know? For most of the 20th century, those little blue stickers on envelopes proudly read “Par Avion” ( French for “ By Air”) were used worldwide. It wasn’t until the 1980s that “Air Mail” finally made its appearance on international post.

Photo is taken by Wendy

Featured Title: The Fall of Language in the Age of English by Minae Mizumura, translated from Japanese by Mari Yoshihara and Juliet Winters.

Originally published in Japanese in 2008 and later translated into English with a much softer touch on the title. This nonfiction book is a hybrid book - part literary criticism, part cultural essay, part personal reflection.

Mizumura makes a powerful argument: the global dominance of English is threatening the vitality and literary future of other notional languages - especially those with smaller speaker populations. She presents this not just as a linguistic phenomenon, but as cultural and civilizational one.

The book opens with Mizumura’s experience at the Iowa City International Writing Program, a moment that sets the tone: surrounded by writers from diverse linguistic backgrounds, she reflects on what it means to write in one’s mother tongue while English looms over all. One standout moment is her encounter with Chinese author Yu Hua (famed for To Live), whom she fondly yet cheekily calls a “country dude.” These kinds of candid snapshots give the book its warmth—despite its serious themes.

Mizumura’s central argument builds on a tripartite model of language: local, national, and universal. While national languages like Japanese once held the power to produce rich literary canons and sustain shared cultural memory, the rise of English (especially in the digital age) has shifted the balance. In Japan, she notes, younger readers often can’t even access classic Japanese literature without translation or modernization—language decay made visible in real time.

More provocatively, Mizumura speaks with raw honesty about her deep discomfort with English, a language she never fully accepted despite being educated in the United States. As she shared more extensively in her semi-autobiographical novel An I-Novel, her move to America as a child initiated a personal identity crisis: she stopped being “Japanese” and was labeled simply “Asian”—a homogenizing label that disturbed her sense of cultural specificity. In Fall of Language, this discomfort becomes a larger meditation on how global English flattens difference and perpetuates subtle cultural colonization.

Mizumura’s perspective is sharp, sometimes unflinching. She doesn’t pretend that Japanese is free from hierarchy or elitism—in fact, she confronts it head-on, including the uncomfortable superiority many Japanese people feel toward other Asian communities. And yet, her argument isn’t to glorify the past—it’s to warn us: when literature loses its linguistic grounding, something essential is at stake. Identity, memory, and imagination begin to slip away.

This June, we traveled to the Beijing International Book Fair, where we learned a startling fact: each year, only 3–4% of titles published in English are translated from other languages. In contrast, 30% of books published in China are translations. The imbalance is staggering. It reminded me again how urgent it is to promote translated literature, to read across borders—however imperfectly. Language is power. And even when that power is uneven, the act of translation makes room for something else: understanding.

It’s heartening to see more efforts being made—like the Booker International Prize spotlighting translated works—but it’s not enough. As a reader and as part of a bookshop that believes deeply in multilingual storytelling, I see Mizumura’s book as a call. That why we are making space for literature not just in English, but into English—because that is how stories survive.

This book is for writers, translators, or editors working between languages; for an academic or student exploring postcolonialism, literary globalization, or translation theory. Also for those who are interested in the politics of language and literature.

Available now in our shop in both English and Japanese.