ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses Wakamatsu Shizuko's Japanese translation of Frances Hodgson Burnett's wildly popular novel Little Lord Fauntleroy. Shizuko and Burnett, two women living contemporaneously in different societies, were both deeply invested in similar conceptions of motherhood. How Shizuko enacted her particular brand of feminism through her translation strategy is best analyzed from the perspectives of both content and style. The chapter draws further connections between gender and translation strategy by discussing Shizuko's use of genbun itchi (vernacular) style to render Burnett's novel into Japanese. This style, an attempt to produce a modern idiom that more closely approximated everyday speech, was in mid-Meiji a newcomer to the writer's repertoire. The chapter realizes that the Marquis of Dorinkoto is an impressive social position. Clearly the didactic value of Shizuko's text is of a different order than the moralizing provided by fairytales; furthermore, the lessons it seeks to teach are gendered ones.
