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The act of choosing the language(s) with which one expresses oneself, or the decision of crossing a boundary of languages, would be deeply related to one's identity. If we see this in the context of literature in Japan, Japanese authors started writing in other languages (e.g. Kyoko Mori, Yoko Tawada) in 1990s. Around the same time, non-Japanese writers such as Levy Hideo and Arthur Binard started publishing works written in Japanese.

While this "crossing the boundary of Japanese language" to both directions has been taking place, we could also find some authors that chose not to choose one language, but decided to mix several. It is hybrid literature in which the authors use more than one language within the same text, often without translation, such as in cases of Shishosetsu From Left to Right by Minae Mizumura (1995), or Chorus of Mushrooms (1994) by Hiromi Goto. They both mix English and Japanese languages in the texts, though the former was published in Japan, and the latter in Canada.  This type of work is unique since what it is transmitting, which could be a gap between two languages or cultures, or a disturbing sensation of not being able to understand whole of the text, refuses translation, at least into the "second" languages used in these novels. It might also suggest what these authors felt "not translatable" for either linguistic or cultural distance (or both). 

In the current study, the language and cultural “hybridity” of the above mentioned works of Minamura and Goto will be analysed, partly in relation with the concept of the translatability in translation studies.