LOST IN TRANSLATION: Non-Linear Literary, Cultural, Temporal, Political, and Cosmological Transformations – the Anglo-Japanese Productions of Minakata Kumagusu by Frederick Alan Little A Dissertation submitted to the Graduate School-Newark Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Division of Global Affairs written under the direction of Associate Professor Eva Giloi and approved by _________________________________ _________________________________ _________________________________ _________________________________ Newark, New Jersey May, 2012 ©2011 Frederick Alan Little ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION LOST IN TRANSLATION: Non-Linear Literary, Cultural, Temporal, Political, and Cosmological Transformations – the Anglo-Japanese Productions of Minakata Kumagusu by Frederick Alan Little Dissertation Director: Associate Professor Eva Giloi Naturalist, translator, littérateur, and political activist, Minakata Kumagusu, in his many endeavors, offers an intriguing series of parallelisms with patterns of non-linear development and network relationships found in the field of study that was his primary focus: botany, more specifically mycology. In contrast to models of cultural and political development imported from the West during the Meiji Restoration and extended during the Showa and Taisho eras, and the strong orientation toward centralized vertical hierarchy that in Japanese culture and governance of that period, Minakata offers an understanding in terms of dispersed non-linear networks. As botanist, folklorist, and environmental activist, Minakata refused engagement with academic and governmental institutions, conducting his life and work in the remote Kii Peninsuala. In doing so, he engaged with a variety of significant horizontal networks: elite aristocratic networks, demotic press networks, ascent pan-Asian political networks, domestic folkloric and literary networks, and international intellectual networks. He argued forcefully against the monocultural tendencies of that period, providing an example of the ways in which understandings of ecological and physical cultures and the corollary social, intellectual, and spiritual cultures arising from that base validate cultural and political counter-narratives that might otherwise be seen as subversive and alien by centralized institutions and those beholden to those institutions. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Though it has felt at many times like a very solitary pursuit, the truth remains that without the kindness and support of many other people, I would not even have approached completion. First and foremost, I must thank my parents, who made every effort to insure that I grew up surrounded by books, trees, and high expectations. For the gesture of kindness to a small boy that seeded my interest in Japan, my father’s colleague, Jun Okasaki. As my instructors in Columbia’s Department of East Asian Languages and Culture later taught me, “On no shiso wa, yama mo takai, umi mo fukui.” I hope that this in some ways repays his kindness and their efforts. There are a host of Americans without whose prior study in traditional Japanese arts and their commitment to sharing the fruits of that study, this project would not have been possible in its present form; among them, Stanley Pranin, the late Terry Dobson, Mary Heiny, Christine Jordan, Rev. Eko Noble, Ellis Amdur, Meik Skoss, Diane Skoss, and Tobin Threadgill. While all errors of commission and omission are, of course, mine, each has made a signal contribution of one kind or another, for which I am grateful. Of course, I must thank my Committee Chair, Dr. Eva Giloi, and the readers, Dr. Maurie Cohen, Dr. Yale Ferguson, and Richard Langhorne. The consistent and firm support I have been given in this undertaking — and other matters — by Dean Urs Gauchat of the NJIT College of Architecture & Design has been of incalculable benefit, as has the grace and forbearance of my colleagues John Cays, Sasha Corchado, and the late Elly Matzko. To Dr. Karen Franck: for her good humor and the provision of a refuge in which a number of these chapters were completed, thank you. And lest I forget, thanks to my colleague Michele Collins for years of light but certain insistence that I finish. Most particularly, I must thank my wife, Annie Gerard and my son and daughter, Perri and Cory Gerard-Little for the many assistances they gave me of which I am aware, as well as countless others that they provided without pointing them out to me over these many years of labor. Thank you all. (Composed on the auspicious morning of the Full Moon, 11-11-11) iii TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Table Titles — v List of Illustrations — vi General Introduction — 1 Biographical Introduction — 18 1: Literary Translation (Collaboration with F.V. Dickins: ) — 41 2: Cultural & Temporal Translation (Articles in NATURE and NOTES & QUERIES: “The Constellations of the Far East,” “The Mandrake,” “The Tale of the Wandering Jew,” “Whittington’s Cat,” & “Gerbert’s Escape”) — 82 3: Cosmological & Epistemological Translation (Encounter & Correspondence with Toki Hōryū: Fushigi & Yariate) —113 4: Political Translation (Sun Yat-Sen and Pan-Asianism in London; The Anti-Shrine Consolidation Movement and Practical Ecology in Tanabe) — 160 5: Conceptual Translation (Yanagita Kunio & Folklore Studies; Iwata Jun’ichi & Queer Studies) — 187 Conclusions — 232 Bibliography — 242 Appendix I — Chronology of the Life of Minakata Kumagusu —267 Appendix II — Full Text of Hōjōki — 299 Appendix III — Full Text of Entries in NATURE — 319 Appendix IV — Full Text of Entries in NOTES & QUERIES (1899-1916) — 373 Appendix V — Select Japanese-English Glossary — 502 Appendix VI — Illustrations — 514 Curriculum Vitae — 516 iv LIST OF TABLES Table of Meetings Between Minakata & Sun Yat-sen — 167 Table of Events in the Life of Minakata Kumagusu — 267 v LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Illustration 1 — Minakata Kumagusu, circa 1891 — 504 Illustration 2 — Minakata Kumagusu and Jiang Shengzong, circa 1892 — 505 Illustration 3— Sir Augustus Wollaston Franks — 506 Illustration 4 — Buddhist Monk’s Robe — 507 Illustration 5 — Frederick Victor Dickins — 507 Illustration 6 — The Wandering Jew, by Gustave Doré — 508 Illustration 7 — Monks in procession on Mount Kōya — 509 Illustration 8 — Senior ordinants in procession at Mount Kōya. — 509 Illustration 9 — Japanese delegation 1893 World Parliament of Religions — 510 Illustration 10 — Minakata’s 1893 Diagram of mono, kokoro, and koto. —511 Illustration 11 —Tsurumi: relationships between cause and effect — 512 Illustration 12 —Minakata Mandala — 513 Illustration 13 — Kongokai Mandala — 514 Illustration 14 — Taizokai Mandala — 515 vi 1 INTRODUCTION: The Question of Minakata Kumagusu The life of Minakata Kumagusu is remarkable in many of its particulars, both biographical and intellectual. Indeed, his efforts in a broad array of fields—as a pioneer in the field of Japanese mycology, as a literary translator of several key works of medieval Japanese literature, as an early contributor to the British tradition of global comparative folklore studies, as a folklore collector and critical thinker who played a key role in the formation of an endogenous Japanese tradition of folklore studies known as minzokugaku, as a theoretician and activist who is rightly regarded as the Father of Japanese ecology, and as an epistemological thinker who successfully fused Esoteric Buddhist cosmology and Western empirical inquiry—are so considerable and varied that numerous scholars in a wide range of fields have, in recent years, touched on one or another aspect of his life and work. In an era when many of these emergent disciplines were first embarking on their own courses of historical development, he actively explored them all and left footprints that point to lines of inquiry which remain not only relevant, but as prescient as they were in his own time. While a number of aspects of his work have been taken up and examined for discipline-specific purposes by contemporary scholars, it is also the case that nothing like a complete portrait of his body of work is available in English. The noted British folklorist Carmen Blacker, looking at his contributions to her field has called him “Japan’s Neglected Genius.” Historian and historiographer Gerald Figal has examined – at some length -- his role in the modernization of Japan and the development of a domestic tradition in the social sciences, particularly psychology. Bernard Faure, William 2 Sibley, Gregory Pflugfelder, and Alan Christy have all dealt with his work as a sexologist and pioneer of the Japanese branches of what are now called Gender Studies and Queer Studies and applied them to topics ranging from the treatment of sexuality within Buddhism to the study of rural development and modernization in Japan. John Driscoll, drawing on elements of that same body of work, along with some of Minakata’s early contributions to the field of abnormal psychology, has opened a window into the sexual politics of Japanese Imperialism and the commodification of desire in the Japanese Empire during the first half of the twentieth-century. Julia Adeney-Thomas, Brij Tankha and Kato Sadomichi have all produced valuable works examining his contributions to the construction of “Nature” as a category of thought and study, the introduction of “ecology” to Japan, and early Japanese environmental activism, respectively. J.Y Wong has documented his pivotal role as the conduit through which