Historical English Studies in Japan
Online ISSN : 1883-9282
Print ISSN : 0386-9490
ISSN-L : 0386-9490
Volume 1992, Issue 24
Displaying 1-9 of 9 articles from this issue
  • An examination of “Seitai Kaishinron”
    Shigekazu Tamashita
    1992 Volume 1992 Issue 24 Pages 1-13
    Published: October 01, 1991
    Released on J-STAGE: March 25, 2010
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Though Ernest Francisco Fenollosa is very famous as a scholar of Japanese traditional art, his activities as a professor of Tokyo University are not widely known. He came to Japan in 1878, and taught philosophy, politics and political economy at Tokyo University for eight years. Some of the content of his lectures can be known by the notes of his students, and also his speeches on religion and social evolution are remarkable as the materials of his thought during his early years in Japan. This article trys to examine his speech “Seitai Kaishinron” (Theory of Social Evolution) which was translated into Japanese in 1880.
    This speech was based on Herbert Spencer's theory of social evolution. Fenollosa's analysis of the process of social evolution from primitive to civilized stages of society adapted Spencer's fundamental law of evolution; from the incoherent homogeneity to the coherent heterogeneity. He analysed the transition from primitive to centralized militant societies by the law of natural selection, and this speech reminds us of the theory of evolution which Spencer described in his “Principles of Sociology. ”Though Fenollosa limited the scope of this speech to the first stage of social evolution, namely a transition from the primitive to the militant type of societies, he looked forward to the next free democratic society based on individuality. Fenollosa should be estimated as one of the pioneers of Japanese social sciences.
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  • Hatsue Kawamura
    1992 Volume 1992 Issue 24 Pages 15-31
    Published: October 01, 1991
    Released on J-STAGE: February 22, 2010
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    In Japanese Poetry: The Uta (1919) Arthur Waley says, “It is chiefly through translations of another anthology, the Hyakunin-Isshu, that Japanese poetry is known to English readers. This collection of a ‘Hundred Poems by a Hundred Poets’ was made in c. 1235 A. D. ”This shows that the HyakuninIs'shu was already known to English readers in 1919.
    Earlier, in 1866, F. V. Dickins rendered it into English, the HYAK NIN IS'SHIU, JAPANESE LYRICAL ODES. Frederick Victor Dickins (1823-1915) was a medical officer in the British Navy and was stationed in Yokohama from 1861 to 1866. He learned the Japanese language of his personal interest. Returning to England, he published the HYAK NIN IS'SHIU.
    “... whatever their intrinsic value may be, they (Hyakunin-Isshu) are extremely popular with the Japanese, and on that account, rather than for any literary merit they may possess, have I ventured to offer this English version of them to the public”, says F. V. Dickins in the preface to the HYAK NIN IS'SHU. These lines show his unfavorable view about the Odes. English Japanologists, like Chamberlain, Aston and Waley as well as Dickins, did not think highly of the Hyakunin-Isshu. Dickins introduced the poems to English readers because of their popularity among the Japanese.
    From 1866 on F. V. Dickins' translation was printed four times in Japan. Since F. V. Dickins, the Hyakunin-Isshu has had seven translators: C. MacCauley, W. N. Porter, H. Saito, K. Yasuda, H. Honda, H. Miyata and Tom Galt. F. V. Dickins was the starting runner and the first pioneer in the translation of the Hyakunin-Isshu and Japanese poetry.
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  • Toshiaki Takahashi
    1992 Volume 1992 Issue 24 Pages 33-42
    Published: October 01, 1991
    Released on J-STAGE: February 22, 2010
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    In the early days of his English study, Keiu Nakamura, in need of a dictionary, made for himself an extract of Morrison's English-Chinese Dictionary, then procured the English-Japanese dictionary published by the Government. Neither seems to have satisfied his need, and he again copied the whole of the English-Chinese dictionary which he borrowed from Yasuyoshi Katsu. The dictionary is identified in the present paper as Medhurst's English and Chinese Dictionary.
    However, Lobscheid's English and Chinese Dictionary which was published later must have proved more useful at the time of his translating such books as On Liberty by Mill, with richer contents and distinctive similarities with the Medhurst Dictionary in the style of compilation.
    While searching for good dictionaries, Keiu was engaged in compiling one himself. A confucianist and a student of English, he was in the right position to supervise the compilation of a new English-Chinese-Japanese Dictionary which was a translation version of the Lobscheid Dictionary.
    With this, his search came to a conclusion. Such English-Chinese dictionaries as well as English-Chinese-Japanese dictionaries, however, were monuments of a trasitional period, and were to be replaced by English-Japanese dictionaries.
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  • Yoshio Nishioka
    1992 Volume 1992 Issue 24 Pages 43-54
    Published: October 01, 1991
    Released on J-STAGE: February 22, 2010
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    When G. F. Verbeck came over to Nagasaki in 1859, Junjiro Hosokawa had returned home after four years' study at Nagasaki from 1854 through 1857.
    But Hosokawa is sometimes reported to have been taught by Verbeck. I don't think that Hosokawa was a regular student of Verbeck at Nagasaki, but according to my investigation they may have got acquainted with each other introduced by Junsetsu Kasado in 1865, when Hosokawa visited Nagasaki for a short time.
    Junsetsu Kasado was a herb doctor with whom Hosokawa had been boarding during his study period, and he was in good terms with Verbeck and other missionaries through books written in Chinese and was supposed to have taught Japanese to them.
    In 1869 Verbeck went up to Tokyo and was employed by the government. He taught at Kaiseigakko, predecessor of the present Tokyo University, and also worked at various Government offices translating foreign documents and giving advice to Japanese officers.
    Hosokawa and Verbeck were often in the same office. They translated and published books such as “Kaiin Hitsudoku” (Procedures of meetings), “The Parliament of Germany”, and “Legal Maxims”.
    When Hosokawa was a member of the committee for compiling the manuscript of constitution at Genro-in, Verbeck was also an advisor for the committee. They were co-workers in various important jobs of the government at the early Meiji period. But further investigation is to be expected as they did not make their diary or memoirs public.
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  • Their Literary Intercourse and Its Meaning
    ISAO SATO
    1992 Volume 1992 Issue 24 Pages 55-71
    Published: October 01, 1991
    Released on J-STAGE: February 22, 2010
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    My object in writing this paper is to disclose the process of the literary intercourse between Shoyo and Yakumo chiefly by Shoyo's diary, the letters which had passed between Shoyo and Yakumo and some pieces of writing in the then Yomiuri newspaper and discuss what meaning their literary intercourse may have today in the era of the international cultural exchange.
    Yakumo was given the professorship in English literature at Tokyo Imperial University in September, 1896. He, however, was forced to resign his post against his will and left the university in the end of March, 1903, because of the new policy adopted by the university.
    In 1904 Yakumo accepted a call to the professorial chair of English literture at Waseda University. According to Shoyo's diary, Shoyo first met Yakumo on 9th of March, 1904. After that Shoyo and Yakumo cultivated a close acquaintance with each other rapidly. Shoyo earnestly wished Yakumo to translate some pieces of the Japan's Kabuki dramas into English and introduce them into the Western countries.
    When Yakumo sent his letter to Shoyo asking him what of the Japan's plays he should translate into English, Shoyo advised Yakumo to translate Chikamatsu's Shinju Ten no Amijima, or The Loue Suicide at Amijima into English by writing Yakumo a long letter in English and by visiting him with Prof. Shiozawa of Waseda University as interpreter for Shoyo in the early evening of July 6th besides. On the other hand, Shoyo learned Yakumo's own view of translating Shakespeare from someone who, I should say, was one of the students whom Yakumo taught at Tokyo Imperial University that the works of Shakespeare should be translated into ordinary speech of Japanese language. After Yakumo's death, Shoyo succeeded in translating Hamlet into colloquial style.
    Yakumo died feeling in his mind the problem of translating Shinju Ten no Arnijima into English on 26th of September, 1904. Shoyo and his wife are said to have been the first callers for condolences on the day of Yakumo's death. Shoyo deeply grieved over Yakumo's sudden and early death to know that his plan was left unfinished by his death. Probably Shoyo thought, it seems to me, that we, the Japanese, lost our best interpreter of the classical Kabuki dramas to the West in the death of Koizumi Yakumo.
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  • Eiichi Yamashita
    1992 Volume 1992 Issue 24 Pages 73-85
    Published: October 01, 1991
    Released on J-STAGE: February 22, 2010
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    In the summer, 1989 the writer had the first chance to touch the copies of the McGuffey's Eclectic Readers in the Special Collections of Ohio University, in Athens, Ohio. William Holmes McGuffey, author of the Readers, was president of the University (1839-43) and pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in the town.
    The first editions of the Readers 1-VI were issued through 1836-57 in Cincinnati, Ohio and after that they were revised and spread mainly in Middie America over two generations. The total of the copies amounted to 122, 000, 000. The popularity was due to McGuffey's first intention of teaching young learners moral values in the Bible as much as literary stories.
    The writer's question is why McGuffey's Primer and Readers were little known in early Meiji period, though they were said to have made the American mind. It was partly because Fukuzawa Yukichi, whose school was very influencial, took Wilson's Primer and Readers and other readers home with him from America, but not McGuffey's ones, and also partly because he regarded Reading as a means of understanding other English books such as science and history, not as for knowing moral background of European civilization.
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  • [in Japanese]
    1992 Volume 1992 Issue 24 Pages 87-100
    Published: October 01, 1991
    Released on J-STAGE: February 22, 2010
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
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  • [in Japanese]
    1992 Volume 1992 Issue 24 Pages 101-105
    Published: October 01, 1991
    Released on J-STAGE: February 22, 2010
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    At Shimamatsu, William Smith Clark parted from his students of Sapporo Agricultural College, saying “Boys be ambitious”. Now a tall monument was built there to memorize him. Now that I live in Hiroshima, I would like you to visit this memorable place, and at the same time I would like totell you that the original message is“Boys be ambitious like this old man. ”
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  • Kenji Sonoda
    1992 Volume 1992 Issue 24 Pages 107-113
    Published: October 01, 1991
    Released on J-STAGE: February 22, 2010
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    While he was being confined in the prison“Daihi-an”in Nagasaki, Ranald MacDonald jotted down the names of the fourteen interpreters on a sheet of Japanese paper. He also wrote down on the other side of the same sheet of paper the names of“oyakunin”, or the soldiers who guarded the prison where he was confiend. The existence of such kind of paper on which the names of the guards are written has been well-known in Japan, but I am afraid each name of the guards has not been known in our country so far. The Japanese paper in question is now at the Provincial Archives of British Columbia, Victoria, Canada, and it is my aim to clarify here the names of those guards, though it is a little difficult to decipher in places what MacDonald wrote since he wrote in such a peculiar longhand of his own.
    MacDonald's listing of the soldiers at“Daihi-an”includes twenty-eight names, among which one, the name of the twenty-eighth soldier, is totally unrecognizable. Ehara Matagero, the first of the listing, is the very captain whose“head was chopped off”because he brought five women including his wife and daughter into the prison so that they could see MacDonald. He is also the guard for whom MacDonald feels very sorry when he hears that“his head was chopped off”. And one can also see from the paper that the name of the captain's wife is Yanagawa. MacDonald learned Japanese words and colloquial expressions more from these guards than from the interpreters. And the fact that MacDonald wrote the names of as many as twenty-eight guards testifies of course that he was on a very friendly terms with them.
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