Introduction

This chapter examines the general shift from old literary traditions to new ones in modern Japan. In their struggle to translate Western works, Japanese translators after the Meiji Restoration of 1868 focused at first only on the plots, because the nature of literariness in the European languages of the source texts was totally different from and irrelevant to written Japanese. The Japanese case illustrates the other extreme of the translator's visibility. In the European literary world since the Romantic movement there has been a strong emphasis on original creativity, translations have been regarded as a secondary literary achievement, and translators have been expected to be invisible. Edward G. Seidensticker's translation is aimed at general public, while Sonja Arntzen's targets academic readers, as evidenced by the fact that it is fully annotated. The early modern experiences in Japan are common in 'peripheral' cultures, and in the present age of globalism translations again have the potential to act as an innovative force.