Translations of Dickens's Sketches of Young Couples in the Meiji Era

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to provide the results of my research on translations of Charles Dickens's Sketches of Young Couples in the Meiji era. In 1882 (the 15th year of Meiji) ,KASE Tsurutaro translated and published five pieces in Sketches of Young Couples as Seiyofufujijou. This is the very first Japanese translation of Dickens's work. While researching translations of Dickens's work in the Meiji era, I found that there are two more pieces in Sketches of Young Couples translated into Japanese. Both of them were done by a novelist, TOKUDA Shusei in 1896 (the 29th year of Meiji). It has been known that they are translations of Dickens's work, but the originals have not been confirmed. Interestingly, Sketches of Young Couples has been least read and moreover least studied among Dickens's works from the day of its publication to the present.

In this paper, I firstly give general outlines of Sketches of Young Couples itself and how Kase's translation has been assessed by critics. Then I examine Tokuda's translations and Dickens's influence on Tokuda. Finally, by analyzing a trend in translations of Dickens's works in the Meiji era, I consider why Tokuda translated such minor pieces.