scholarly journals Tsubouchi Shōyō and the Beauty of Shakespeare Translation in 1900s Japan

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (28) ◽  
pp. 69-85
Author(s):  
Daniel Gallimore
Keyword(s):  
Small Group ◽  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Japanese Literature ◽  
Modern Japanese Literature ◽  
History Of ◽  
Stage Performance ◽  
Tsubouchi Shoyo

In a recent study of Shakespeare translation in Japan, the translator and editor Ōba Kenji (14) expresses his preference for the early against the later translations of Tsubouchi Shōyō (1859-1935), a small group of basically experimental translations for stage performance published between the years 1906 and 1913; after 1913, Shōyō set about translating the rest of the plays, which he completed in 1927. Given Shōyō’s position as the pioneer of Shakespeare translation, not to mention a dominant figure in the history of modern Japanese literature, Ōba’s professional view offers insights into Shōyō’s development that invite detailed analysis and comparison with his rhetorical theories. This article attempts to identify what Shōyō may have meant by translating Shakespeare into elegant or “beautiful” Japanese with reference to excerpts from two of his translations from the 1900s.

The Museum of Primitive Art, 1940–1982

Entitled ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 41-69
Author(s):  
Jennifer C. Lena
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Small Group ◽  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Metropolitan Museum ◽  
Ideal Case ◽  
Metropolitan Museum Of Art ◽  
Art Collection ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Creation

This chapter discusses the creation of the Museum of Primitive Art (MPA). The history of Michael C. Rockefeller's primitive art collection provides an ideal case study of the process of artistic legitimation. Through a detailed analysis of the complete organizational archive—including memos, publications, journals, and administrative paperwork—one can observe this process in detail. The small group of MPA administrators fought to promote artistic interpretations of the objects in the collection against the established view that they were anthropological curiosities. However, these objects were removed from their sites of production and early circulation and left in the care of American curators and tastemakers to make of them what they will; in Rockefeller's case, he leveraged them to produce capital he used in a struggle with other collectors and museum administrators. What he did not do is redistribute those resources toward living artists or register much hesitation about moving those objects to New York. Nor did he have to acknowledge the labor done by earlier advocates of these arts in black internationalist movements. Nevertheless, Rockefeller's triumph was the eventual inclusion of his collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met), as the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing.

Literature, Japanese philosophy in modern

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Anderer
Keyword(s):  
Japanese Literature ◽  
The Self ◽  
Confucian Ethics ◽  
Western Philosophy ◽  
Literary Aesthetics ◽  
Modern Japanese Literature ◽  
Buddhist Practice ◽  
History Of ◽  
Academic Philosophy ◽  
And Function

Since the last quarter of the nineteenth century, virtually all major lines of Western thought and the works of both major and minor Western philosophers have been explored and used by Japanese writers in an effort to forge a modern Japanese literature. The history of translation alone reveals a concern to bring over synoptic summaries of Western philosophy, as well as the primary works of specific thinkers. Academic philosophy as a discipline of advanced study was established in the 1880s, the decade which corresponds to the beginnings of widespread literary reform and the often-cited creation of the first modern Japanese novel, Futabatei’s Ukigumo (Floating Cloud) in 1889. However, Japanese novelists, dramatists, poets and critics did not assimilate philosophical influences naïvely or passively, nor was Japanese literature made over in the shape of specific Western ideas regarding the nature and function of the self, society or literary aesthetics. Indeed, the avid translation and discussion of Western ideas frequently provoked a nativist reaction or modification. The revival of traditional tropes, the language of Confucian ethics, Buddhist practice and Shintō legends), itself often reflects the pervasive presence of Western ideas on the modern literary scene.

Toward a Reexamination of the Economic History of Tokugawa Japan, 1600–1867

1973 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 509-546 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kozo Yamamura
Keyword(s):  
Small Group ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Japanese Literature ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Methodological Framework ◽  
History Of ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
The Cost

Increasing our knowledge of Tokugawa economic history is important for a better understanding of the causes of the rapid Japanese industrialization which followed, but as yet no attempt has been made to provide a theoretical framework with which to analyze the Tokugawa economy. The cost of neglecting to work out a new economic history of Tokugawa Japan is high. Many Western historians, economic as well as others, continue to make use of findings and interpretations provided by Japanese economic historians, most of whom are Marxist in their ideological and methodological orientations. Presented with the force of ideological conviction and repeated in book after book, the Marxist view of Tokugawa economic history is so deeply rooted in Japanese literature that it can claim many followers who make use of its interpretations and views without suspecting the ideological and methodological framework upon which they rest. Another increasingly serious cost is that many of the research findings contributed recently by a few Western scholars and a small group of Japanese economic historians continue to remain disjointed findings in search of an analytical framework which can accommodate them into a meaningful whole.

The Buddha of the North: Swedenborg and Transpacific Zen

2010 ◽  
Vol 14 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 1-33
Author(s):  
Devin Zuber
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
North America ◽  
William Blake ◽  
Japanese Literature ◽  
Modern Japanese Literature ◽  
The North ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Emanuel Swedenborg ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Buddha

AbstractThe Scandinavian scientist-mystic Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) has had a curious relationship to the history of how Western literature has responded to Buddhism. Since Honoré de Balzac’s claim in the 1830s that Swedenborg was “a Buddha of the north,” Swedenborg’s mystical teachings have been consistently aligned with Buddhism by authors on both sides of the pacific, from D. T. Suzuki to Philangi Dasa, the publisher of the first Buddhist journal in North America. This essay explores the different historical frames that allowed for this steady correlation, and argues that the rhetorical and aesthetic trope of “Swedenborg as Buddha” became a point of cultural translation, especially between Japanese Zen and twentieth-century Modernism. Swedenborg’s figuration in the earlier work of Ralph Waldo Emerson and William Blake, moreover, might begin to account for the peculiar ways those two Romantics have particularly affected modern Japanese literature. The transpacific flow of these ideas ultimately complicates the Orientalist critique that has read Western aesthetic contact with Buddhism as one of hegemonic misappropriation.

scholarly journals A személynevek Anonymus Gesta Hungarorumának angol és román fordításaiban

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
pp. 47-65
Author(s):  
Gyopárka F. Bátori
Keyword(s):  
Data Collection ◽  
Small Group ◽  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Early History ◽  
Comprehensive Understanding ◽  
Valuable Source ◽  
Personal Names ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Europe

The Gesta Hungarorum is a valuable source of the early history of Europe and Hungary. As a result, several translations in addition to the Hungarian have been published: Romanian, German, Slovak, Polish, Catalan, English, Russian, etc. While some questions regarding the translation of the personal names used by Anonymous are predictable, a comprehensive understanding can only be reached through a complete comparison of all data. Thus, data collection is the first step of research. The current study examines the use of personal names in the English and Romanian translations. Aspects connected to translation are systematised based on the various levels of their context. A detailed analysis of the data brings new aspects to the fore that highlight questions connected not only to the text of the Gesta itself but translation in general. Thus this study is useful not only to a small group of scholars but any who face challenges in the translation of names.

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