ABSTRACT
In this essay, Kimiyo Ogawa explores her experiences teaching Austen to Japanese undergraduate students. She focuses in particular on the use she has made of Nogami Yaeko, author of a Japanese adaptation of Pride and Prejudice and argues that by introducing Nogami, and her mentor and a literary giant, Natsume Sōseki, as among the first readers of Austen’s novels in Japan, she can provide students with a kind of ’scaffolding’ necessary to make Austen’s novels more relevant and attractive to them. Ogawa discusses as well the ways the course design facilitates understanding of issues of gender representation, modernity, and ideas of individualism as central to the Japanese authors as to Austen.
