ABSTRACT
The main focus of this essay is Wakamatsu Shizuko’s Japanese translation of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s wildly popular novel Little Lord Fauntleroy (1886, hereafter Fauntleroy). Shizuko (1864-96) and Burnett (1849-1924), two women living contemporaneously in different societies, were both deeply invested in similar conceptions of motherhood. When they put pen (or brush) to paper, whether as author or translator, they were both publicizing their perspective on children as well as targeting new groups of readers. Fauntleroy put Burnett on the map as a writer for women and children, and Shizuko’s translation of Burnett’s text, Shōkōshi (The Little Lord, 1890), did the same for her. Through her choice of text and her translation strategy, it is clear that Shizuko is addressing fellow Japanese mothers, using the print medium to advocate what she saw as the novel’s more modern, even enlightened, way of thinking about children. The maternal viewpoint Shizuko adopts had never been seen in Japanese media before, and she uses this gendered narrative position to introduce a view of childhood new to Meiji Japan (1868-1912).
