Reinvestigating the Original Text of the Translated Household Management Book Kanaikokoroegusa Ichimei-Hokaho (1876): with Beeton’s Every-Day Cookery and Housekeeping Book (1872) as the Source

Abstract

  The study by Kametaka and Inuo has identified the original source for the translation of the home management book Kanaikokoroegusa Ichimei-hokaho (1876) as The Book of Household Management (1861). However, there are many discrepancies between the two. Therefore, I scrutinized both books as well as Beeton’s Every-Day Cookery and Housekeeping Book (1872). The results show that the contents of Kanaikokoroegusa were almost completely consistent with items 1 through 174 of the first half of “Philosophy of Housekeeping” in Beeton’s Every-Day Cookery and Housekeeping Book. Thus, I identified this book as the original source of Kanaikokoroegusa. Additionally, this study established that its translator, Hozumi Seiken, while a pioneer in the translation of works on Western culture and household management techniques at the dawn of the Meiji era, struggled to find appropriate Japanese terminology for the translation.