ABSTRACT
Natsume Sōseki's 1891 English translation of Hōjōki , produced under his professor James Main Dixon, illuminates Japan's negotiation of asymmetrical global power during the Meiji era. By appropriating Wordsworth, Shakespeare, and Goldsmith, Sōseki framed Chōmei's medieval text through familiar Western categories, projecting Japanese culture while resisting Orientalist hierarchies. His strategy secularised and reframed a Buddhist classic as a Romantic work of nature, a move that paradoxically advanced both recognition and distortion. Pradhan situates Sōseki's translation within the global circulation of ideas, showing how unequal world orders shaped subjectivity, cultural production, and the contested claims of Japanese exceptionalism.
