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UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title The Visible Translator: Language and Identity in Meiji-period Japanese Travel Narratives Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/29r779z9 Author Shaughnessy, Orna Publication Date 2015 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California The Visible Translator: Language and Identity in Meiji-period Japanese Travel Narratives By Orna Elizabeth Shaughnessy A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Japanese Language in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Alan Tansman, chair Associate Professor Dan O’Neill Professor Dorothy Hale Spring 2015 Abstract The Visible Translator: Language and Identity in Meiji-period Japanese Travel Narratives by Orna Elizabeth Shaughnessy Doctor of Philosophy in Japanese Language University of California, Berkeley Professor Alan Tansman, chair In this dissertation I argue that the literary imagination of late nineteenth century Japanese travel narratives fixated on the figure of the translator as a model of success and mastery in the international forum who could bridge linguistic differences with aplomb. The figure of the translator during what I call ‘the moment of the translator’ from roughly the 1850s through the 1870s served a key purpose: he embodied a model of modern Japanese identity that could successfully move through international contexts, on Western terms, by means of his fluency in foreign languages. In chapter 1 I examine the multitude of historical figures who acted as translators in the late nineteenth century to argue that the cumulative force of their public stories created 'the moment of the translator.' In chapter 2 I consider one of the most popular fictional travel narratives to feature a translator figure: Kanagaki Robun's Seiyôdôchû hizakurige. Next, I consider the non-fictional travel writings and primers of Fukuzawa Yukichi to demonstrate how he implicitly models himself as a translator and successful participant in the international forum. I then turn to the travel writings of Nagai Kafû who wrote a generation later, and whose translator figure transforms into the figure of the wandering artist. Finally, I turn to the contemporary author Tawada Yôko to consider the subverted legacies of the translator figure, who comes into view again in Tawada's transnational, multilingual fiction. 1 To my mother, whose inspiring example and dauntless faith in my potential profoundly sustains my work i Table of Contents Chapter 1 Introduction: The Moment of the Translator……………………….…………….............1 Chapter 2 The Triumph of the Translator: Kanagaki Robun’s Model of Mastery………………….14 Chapter 3 The Translator as Expert: Fukuzawa Yukichi's travel narratives and translations……....33 Chapter 4 The Translator as Wandering Artist: Language and Movement in Nagai Kafû’s American Stories…………………….……..59 Coda Subverted Legacies: Tawada Yôko and the Return of the Translator………..…….........76 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………..83 ii Acknowledgements This dissertation is the product of effort, sacrifice and support from many wonderful people and institutions. It is my honor to acknowledge and thank them all here. Thank you to my advisor Alan Tansman, inspiring model of scholar and teacher, who with great humor and unapologetic high standards for both intellectual inquiry and the language it is expressed in, tirelessly pushed for ever greater work from me. Without his guidance this dissertation would never have existed. I deeply appreciate and recognize the work of my teachers at Berkeley: H. Mack Horton and Susan Matisoff, who gave me a foundation in Classical Japanese and a sense of what is possible in the art and craft of translation. Dan O’Neill guided my education through numerous seminars and the final drafting of the dissertation. Dorothy Hale graciously supported my interest in the study of the novel in differing national traditions and provided insightful and substantive feedback in the final stages of the dissertation. Andrew Barshay deepened my understanding of Japanese proletarian literature and guided my studies through qualifying examinations. I must thank those who supported me during my Fulbright term of dissertation research in Tokyo, especially Takagi Gen, Tanikawa Keiichi, and the Research Fellows at the National Institute for Japanese Literature. My understanding and appreciation of the works of Kanagaki Robun hugely benefited from Kobayashi Minoru’s careful tutelage. I am very grateful to the logistical and moral support provided by Tokyo offices of the Japan-U.S. Educational Commission (Fulbright Japan) and its executive director, David Satterwhite. Thank you to Robert Campbell for allowing me to participate in coursework at the University of Tokyo. I thank Paula Varsano, whose generous advocacy and graceful professionalism as Graduate Advisor for the Department of Languages & Literatures allowed me to complete this dissertation. I thank Jan Johnson, Natasha Wild, and the administrative staff of the department of East Asian Languages & Cultures, for their good will and prowess in negotiating the rules and paperwork that attend and shape a graduate student’s career. Thank you to the librarians of Berkeley’s C.V. Starr East Asian Library, especially Ishimatsu Yuki, Kobayashi Tomoko, and Bruce Williams, whose expertise and cordiality and made this superlative library’s treasures more accessible and intelligible to me. I thank my sempai Janice Kanemitsu, an unparalleled model of passionate intellectual engagement, for her mentoring and friendship every step of the way. I am grateful for the friendship of my cohort in the graduate program at Berkeley, especially Zeli Rivas, Miyabi Yamamoto, Hanako Weinberger (née Asakura) and Patrick Noonan, whose camaraderie and intellectual stimulation profoundly enhanced my education. iii Thank you to the Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities for support in the form of a year-long fellowship. I am also grateful for the numerous grants from the Department of East Asian Languages & Cultures over the duration of my graduate studies. I benefited from grants supporting graduate students through the Center for Japanese Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. My community of friends and neighbors in the San Francisco Bay Area, especially Marcia Barahona, Gretchen Carlson and Richard Morgan, have, for this entire process, staunchly supported me in both material and spiritual ways, for which I am profoundly grateful. My deepest thanks go to the members of my family, who have supported me with tireless optimism at every step of my education. Thank you to my husband Komang and daughter Hannah, for your profound generosity and resilience. Thank you to my late father, who nurtured my earliest engagements with literature and believed in the life- altering value of education. I am so grateful to Stephen Og for the material and practical support of my education that came when it counted the most. I appreciate Eric’s calm good cheer throughout this long process. To my mother, whose support is so profound and multi-faceted that I find it hard to enumerate, I dedicate this dissertation. iv Introduction: The Moment of the Translator It is an oft-repeated commonplace that Japan’s Meiji period (1868-1912) was a time of profound change, setting the foundations for Japan’s modernization, from technological innovations to military invasions. What kinds of fantasies does a nation imagine for itself in the face of epochal change? In the case of Japan in the mid- to late- nineteenth century, in which the source and impetus for the change was perceived to lie in “the West” and the foreign, I argue that the literary imagination in travel narratives fixated on figures of success and mastery in the international forum who could bridge linguistic differences with aplomb; in short: the translator. Once ‘the West’ became both the reason for the changes, and the guiding model of the transformations, the Japanese reading public became, for a short duration of time that I call ‘the moment of the translator,’ fixated on the figure of the translator in literature, especially in travel narratives and other literature concerning the world beyond Japan’s shores. The figure of the translator for this moment from roughly the 1850s through the 1870s served a key purpose: he (and it was always a ‘he’) embodied a model of modern Japanese identity that could successfully move through international contexts, on Western terms, by means of his fluency in foreign languages. But what details of representation allow this translator to become a model Japanese identity in the early Meiji literary imagination? As literary scholar Okitsu Kaname argues, the figure of the general expert on foreign subjects, represented in cultural production throughout the nineteenth century, crystalizes into an expert in foreign languages in the early Meiji period: The literary figure of the foreign expert, who looks at marvelous things of the new age while strolling about, is portrayed as a figure of unrestrained freedom against the background of Bunmei Kaika enlightenment mores. With this literary style a confidence can be felt that with just a fluency in foreign languages the contemporary moment and the future glow rose-colored.1 (emphasis added) Okitsu Kaname astutely observes that, among the constellation of attributes of this new literary