Gathering for Tea in Modern Japan: Class, Culture and Consumption in the Meiji Period by Taka Oshikiri

This article takes a closer look at the “newspaper funerals” held in 1882 in the city of Kōchi, protesting government censorship. The funerals were an early example of newspaper editors’ awareness of their medium as a tool to energize and steer a movement toward specific political aims, as well as an instrument to gain a foothold within the newly emerging “public sphere” in modern Japan.

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A Genealogy of Literal Translation in Modern Japan

TTR traduction terminologie rédaction ◽

10.7202/044781ar ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 22 (1) ◽

pp. 29-55 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Akira Mizuno

Keyword(s):

Information Structure ◽

Significant Contribution ◽

Japanese Language ◽

Source Text ◽

Dominant Position ◽

Meiji Period ◽

Literal Translation ◽

Translation Strategy ◽

Modern Japan

In modern Japan, especially in the Meiji period (1868-1912), translations occupied a dominant position in the literary polysystem. This paper claims that, since the Meiji period, “competing translational norms” have existed in the Japanese literary polysystem, which is to say that “literal” (adequate) and “free” (acceptable) translations have existed in parallel, vying for superior status. Moreover, this paper traces the literalist tradition in modern Japan. Though “literal” translation has been widely criticized, the styles and expressions it created have made a significant contribution to the founding and development of the modern Japanese language and its literature. Among the arguments in favor of literal translation, Iwano Homei’s literal translation strategy—the so-called “straight translation”—had different features than the others, and thus the potential to produce translations that maintain the cohesion, coherence, information structure and illocutionary effects of the source text.

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Peasant Revolts as Anti-Authoritarian Archetypes for Radical Buddhism in Modern Japan

Journal of Religion in Japan ◽

10.1163/22118349-00501002 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 5 (1) ◽

pp. 3-21

Author(s):

James Mark Shields

Keyword(s):

Twentieth Century ◽

Early Modern ◽

East Asian ◽

Early Modern Period ◽

Significant Component ◽

Meiji Period ◽

Modern Period ◽

Early Twentieth Century ◽

Modern Japan ◽

Popular Contention

The late Meiji period (1868–1912) witnessed the birth of various forms of “progressive” and “radical” Buddhism both within and beyond traditional Japanese Buddhist institutions. This paper examines several historical precedents for “Buddhist revolution” in East Asian—and particularly Japanese—peasant rebellions of the early modern period. I argue that these rebellions, or at least the received narratives of such, provided significant “root paradigms” for the thought and practice of early Buddhist socialists and radical Buddhists of early twentieth century Japan. Even if these narratives ended in “failure”—as, indeed, they often did—they can be understood as examples of what James White calls “expressionistic action,” in which figures act out of interests or on the basis of principle without concern for “success.” Although White argues that: “Such expressionistic action was not a significant component of popular contention in Tokugawa Japan”—that does not mean that the received tales were not interpreted in such a fashion by later Meiji, Taishō and Shōwa-era sympathizers.

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