Paper short abstract:

Through a textual and paratextual analysis, this paper explores the ‘translator’s voice’ that Wakamatsu Shizuko adopted when, as Mrs. Kashi Iwamoto, she inverse-translated the Japanese classic “Ends not meeting at the last reckoning of the year” (1894) by Ihara Saikaku into English.

Paper long abstract:

Wakamatsu Shizuko (1864-1896), usually associated to her role as a divulgator of children’s literature, was also a writer, a prolific essayist, and a translator who contributed to the ‘genbun itchi’ literary movement in Meiji Japan. Because of her Western-style education, her English was practically native, albeit she never went overseas. This led her to translate several English classics into Japanese such as “Wasuregatami” (1890), Adelaide Anne Procter’s “The Sailor Boy”, or “Shōkōshi” (1890-1892), Frances Hodgson Burnett’s “Little Lord Fauntleroy”. But even though her contributions to ‘genbun itchi’ and her Japanese translations have started to receive a well-deserved attention over the last few years (Yamaguchi 1980, Matsumoto 1999, Copeland 2000, Ozaki 2007, Kohiyama 2020), the same cannot be said about her inverse translations of Japanese classics into English. These translations, alongside English-written essays on various topics ranging from women’s education to introducing the Japanese culture and traditions to Western readers, were published in the English-language periodical ‘The Japan Evangelist’ under her real name, ‘Mrs. Kashi Iwamoto’, and were aimed at foreigners residing in Japan.

In this paper I analyse the translated text and paratexts of “Ends not meeting at the last reckoning of the year”, Wakamatsu Shizuko’s English translation of Ihara Saikaku’s “Ōtsugomori awanu san’yō”, originally published in ‘The Japan Evangelist’ (1894). Since paratexts can be defined as the presenters of the literary work (Genette 1997), translator’s prefaces and footnotes particularly help to extrapolate information on the translation process, as well as on the translation norms or ideological stance of the translators (Dimitriu 2009, Gürçağlar 2013). By looking into the paratexts of this particular work and the reason behind its selection —a short story commending the honour of the samurai—, and by analysing the translation methodology, this paper aims to provide a new lens through which to look at Shizuko’s translational identity, defined by Wilson (2017) as the identity of those translators who have been referred to as migrant, diasporic, transnational and translingual, and compare the translator’s voice of ‘Mrs. Kashi Iwamoto’ against that of ‘Wakamatsu Shizuko’.

Paper short abstract:

Ogawa Mimei (1882-1961) is undoubtedly recognized as the most important founder and writer of children's literature in Japan. The purpose of this paper is to trace a representation of dōshin-shugi in Mimei's children's literature together with his essays.

Paper long abstract:

Ogawa Mimei (1882-1961) is undoubtedly recognized as the most important (together with Hamada Hirosuke and Tsubota Jōji) founder and writer of children's literature in Japan. Called Japanese Hans Christian Andersen, he was an author of over 1200 fairy tales, as well as essays, poetry and short stories of great artistic value. He significantly contributed to the development of the genre in Japan, raising its value and inspiring many other writers. He also pioneered in the dōshin-shugi (child's heart) movement which believed that the heart of children is pure and innocent. Born in Meiji era, he lived through Taishō and Shōwa witnessing momentous and epochal changes in Japanese culture and society which significantly influenced his works. Although later actively involved in the rise of the Japanese proletarian children's literature movement, he was still able to maintain Japanese tradition while infusing his children's stories with Western and modern elements. What is more interesting, in this process he also appealed to return to the children's heart. But it referred not only to the innocence of the children, but the artless, ecstatic enthusiasm of children, to dissolve into true nature. The purpose of this paper is to trace a representation of dōshin-shugi in Mimei's children's literature together with his essays, as well as to conduct a brief analysis of some of his representative works in which Mimei develops dōshin-shugi.

Paper short abstract:

This paper will examine writings by Abe Yoshishige and others to rethink zuihitsu of the time as a hybrid historical product that demonstrates emotional struggles through which they tried to accommodate the legacy of their traditional upbringing while confronting the challenges of the new age.

Paper long abstract:

A member of Sôseki's Thursday Club, Abe Yoshishige (1883-1966) belongs to the last generation of the Meiji/Taisho intellectuals who read Confucian classics as a child, and later received modern Western education in the higher schools and universities. He studied Kantian philosophy at Tokyo Imperial University, also spending some time at Heidelburg University. With a mixed background typical among the intellectuals at the time, he pursued his career as philosopher and educator, and was very much a part of the Taisho kyôyô shugi milieu.

In his essay titled "The Sentiment with Which I Write Zuihitsu," he expresses his frustration that his love of zuihitsu has been interpreted by some critics as a sign of his neglect for his real work, which should be philosophy. And yet he argues that zuihitsu for him is an indispensable part of his intellectual life as it functions as his window onto the social world outside.

Zuihitsu, nikki and even shishôsetsu for many of these Meiji/Taishô intellectuals functioned as an arena to cultivate sensibility by coming to terms with their emotions in everyday life to become "better persons." Their mode of expression is often cognitively mixed in the sense that thought, emotion, affects, bodily responses, ethical reflections and imagination play together, constantly interpenetrating each other. With a focus on the mode of expression, this paper will argue that their literary endeavours represented a way of reconciling contradictory impulses in sensibility, which had been nurtured by widely different currents of Japanese and Western thoughts (Confucian sentiment, Western realism, the spirit of shasei, to mention a few) and examine how they played out in works by Abe and a few other examples such as Shiga Naoya.

This exercise should in turn provide an opportunity to rethink supposedly Japanese genres such as zuihitsu, shaseibun and shishôstsu as hybrid historical products of the time that tell us much about the internal tugs of war through which these authors tried to accommodate the legacy of their traditional upbringing while at the same time confronting the challenges of the new age.

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines how proletarian cultural movements utilized the international language Esperanto through literary and cultural media to give voice to proletarian struggles and to circumvent imperial borders that curtailed communication among proletarians and leftist activists.

Paper long abstract:

Following the colonial expansion across East Asia by the Japanese empire, proletarian cultural movements were confronted with numerous borders that stymied transregional exchange and oppressed oppositional voices. Proletarian cultural movements considered the international auxiliary language Esperanto useful as a proletarian language that was easy to learn and to provide proletarians with the means to communicate beyond ethno-national, linguistic, and geographical borders. Proletarian writers and playwrights, such as Akita Ujaku (1883-1962) who considered the use of Esperanto as a “strike movement of the tongue” (shita no sutoraiki undō), organized language classes and study groups to teach and promote Esperanto among workers and farmers. For the more advanced learners, they created courses on creative writing and translation. A literary and cultural historical analysis of proletarian Esperanto may help us complicate our understanding of inter-imperial social activism beyond party and union politics. This paper considers how Esperanto could accommodate a linguistic space for proletarian voices both in speaking and writing to transverse the human body in a fixed geographical location and to connect with foreign peers for international exchange. My focus is on Esperanto correspondence groups affiliated with proletarian cultural movements, Esperanto teaching by proletarian writers, and international letter writing in Esperanto. Through an examination of the extant Esperanto letters written by proletarian language learners and the distribution networks in imperial Japan, I analyze how proletarian struggles were voiced in letters by colonial subjects, prisoners, and farmers. My study reveals how Esperanto undermined the dominant structures of linguistic power in the Japanese empire and formed aggregates of linguistic solidarity by empowering proletarians to actively participate in exercising international solidarity and connecting local struggles to the worldwide proletariat.