ABSTRACT

The role of translation in the formation of modern Japanese identities has become one of the most exciting new fields of inquiry in Japanese studies. This book marks the first attempt to establish the contours of this new field, bringing together seminal works of Japanese scholarship and criticism with cutting-edge English-language scholarship. Collectively, the contributors to this book address two critical questions: 1) how does the conception of modern Japan as a culture of translation affect our understanding of Japanese modernity and its relation to the East/West divide? and 2) how does the example of a distinctly East Asian tradition of translation affect our understanding of translation itself? The chapter engage a wide array of disciplines, perspectives, and topics from politics to culture, the written language to visual culture, scientific discourse to children's literature and the Japanese conception of a national literature.Translation in Modern Japan will be of huge interest to a diverse readership in both Japanese studies and translation studies as well as students and scholars of the theory and practice of Japanese literary translation, traditional and modern Japanese history and culture, and Japanese women‘s studies.

chapter |12 pages

Introduction

Modern Japan and the trialectics of translation

part I|2 pages

Critical Japanese sources

chapter 2|29 pages

Selections by Yanabu Akira

chapter 3|29 pages

From iro (eros) to ai=love

The case of Tsubouchi Shōyō

part II|2 pages

English-language scholarship

chapter 5|16 pages

Hokusai’s geometry

chapter 6|24 pages

Sound, scripts, and styles

Kanbun kundokutai and the national language reforms of 1880s Japan

chapter 7|21 pages

Monstrous language

The translation of hygienic discourse in Izumi Kyōka’s The Holy Man of Mount Kōya

chapter 8|27 pages

Brave dogs and little lords

Thoughts on translation, gender, and the debate on childhood in mid-Meiji

chapter 10|20 pages

Making Genji ours

Translation, world literature, and Masamune Hakuchō’s discovery of The Tale of Genji

chapter |17 pages

Annotated bibliography

Translation, world literature, and Masamune Hakuchō’s discovery of The Tale of Genji