The First Japanese Tlanslation of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations

Abstract

The first Japanese translation of the whole work of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations was done by two young Japanese editor-writers in 1888, twenty years after the Meiji Restoration. Since then five other complete translations have appeared in succession. My attempt is to show, by comparing the six translations with each other as to diction, clearness, conciseness and sentence structure, that the first one by Ishikawa and Saga is, though written about 100 years ago and generally considered an unsatisfactory one today, more readable than its successors.