Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the boom in literary translation that occurred in the early years of the twentieth century. It compares statistics-based data on translation publications throughout the Meiji period with historical data pertaining to world events to ask about the nature and causes of the boom.

Paper long abstract:

Japan's modern history of literary translation is generally held to have begun in the Meiji period, when the near isolationism of the previous two centuries gave way to an enthusiastic importation of ideas from the expansionist powers of Europe and North America. Moreover, it is commonly known that, while technical, diplomatic, and philosophical translation was undertaken from before the beginning of the Meiji period, literary translation was not undertaken widely until the latter two decades of the nineteenth century. When it did begin, however, the translation of literary works originally written in European languages fostered substantial change in native Japanese literary norms, and continues to play an important role in the Japanese literary system as a whole.

Though literary translation in Japan began in the mid-1870s, it was not until the first decade of the twentieth century that Meiji period literary translation activity peaked. This four year peak period saw the publication of almost half of all the literary translations produced throughout the Meiji period. The methodology employed is a statistical one, which investigates the state of the literary translation from European languages in Japan during this period, asking how large the community of literary translators was, how productive the average translator was, and by inference, whether translation was the main occupation for a majority of the translators. The aim of this paper is to ask what brought about the boom, what characterised it, and who the translators most directly involved were.