ABSTRACT
According to literary scholar Mizuta Noriko, the translator assumes her authorial power “as a transmitter, a transvestite, a trans/gender/lator who blurs the boundaries between self and other and transgresses into different cultures and across gender distinctions” (2006: 164). In the case of Japan, for more than a century translation has been central to collective efforts by modern women to explain and, to varying degrees, to liberate female gender and sexuality from restrictive norms. While the work of some of the earliest women translators such as Senuma Kayo, Koganei Kimiko, and Wakamatsu Shizuko may not be regarded as overtly feminist, other women were actively deploying translation and translated texts in order to resist or subvert attempts to control female sexual and gender expression. Prominent among feminist translation activities in the 1910s were members of the “Bluestocking Society” (Seitōsha) and their journal, Seitō (Bluestocking). As evidenced by both original translations and critical writing found in the pages of Seitō, these Japanese bluestockings looked toward the writings of figures such as Swedish feminist Ellen Key and British sexologist Havelock Ellis to help elucidate certain desires for social and sexual autonomy – and sometimes for each other. They also turned a critical eye to many of the same literary texts that drew the attention of the (male) Japanese literati of the time, including works by Anton Chekhov, Henrik Ibsen, and Edgar Allan Poe – authors who have continued to resonate with both women and girl readers and writers many decades later.
