ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the dual background of the Shakespeare translations of Tsubouchi Shōyō in the late Edo culture that framed his values and the era of modernisation to which his translations contributed. Influenced by a Western-style liberal education, the young Shōyō was critical of both his native drama and Edo novelists such as Takizawa Bakin for their didacticism and lack of realism, but because the theory of “hidden ideals” (botsurisō) he espoused in the 1890s (which was based on his reading of Macbeth) tended to favour Shōyō’s individual response in favour of whatever could be known about Shakespeare’s intentions, his writings on Shakespeare (notably the prefaces to his translations) make frequent comparisons with his native culture; for example, the bunraku plays of Chikamatsu Monzaemon. Shōyō’s realism was equally influenced by his reading of late nineteenth-century Shakespeare critics such as Edward Dowden and Richard G. Moulton; a knowledge of the Shakespeare editions he consulted is also revealing. The chapter ends with a brief appraisal of Shōyō’s translating style in the context of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century language reform (genbun itchi).
