Historical English Studies in Japan
Online ISSN : 1883-9282
Print ISSN : 0386-9490
ISSN-L : 0386-9490
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Displaying 1-7 of 7 articles from this issue
  • With particular focus on reviews and publication records
    Shoji KATOH
    2007 Volume 2008 Issue 40 Pages 1-22
    Published: 2007
    Released on J-STAGE: September 16, 2009
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Henry Dyer, who worked as a teacher in Japan under the employment of the Ministry of Public Works in the Meiji era, was a prolific writer. To the extent of my knowledge he published 42 books and booklets, and 70 articles and editorials in magazines and newspapers. The subjects he dealt with can be categorized into the following : educational reform, social reform, research on Japan, engineering education, and academic research on engineering. Dai Nippon (1904) is seen as his most prominent example of research on Japan.
    Dai Nippon is a massive work, consisting of 20 chapters and over 450 pages, and covers a truly broad range of topics. It attempts to analyze the history, current stage, and factors behind the success of the modernization of Japan, and puts special emphasis on the role played by educational policies and the educational system as factors behind Japan's successful modernization. Dyer makes particular note of the fact that the government decided on policies and distributed financial resources with emphasis on scientific and technological education. It is worthy of note that, in this regard, he makes comparisons with his motherland Great Britain, where industrialization progressed along a more natural course, and takes notice of Japan's national education system, asserting that Japan's experience could 'afford lessons to Britain.'
    When it was first published, Dai Nippon was welcomed with great interest. One thousand copies of initial print were published on October 4th, 1904, but since they were soon sold out, an additional 250 copies were put out in 1905, the following year. Ninety-eight copies were sold that year, but sales subsequently declined. This means that a total of 1250 copies were printed (1258 copies, to be precise), 1235 of which were sold by 1917.
    Second, there were a number of reviews and introductory reviews of the book which appeared in British, American and Japanese newspapers and magazines, which to my humble knowledge number about 20. These included major papers, such as Manchester Guardian and Daily Telegraph, and specialized or general-interest magazines like Nature and The Athenaeum. In Japan, a long review appeared in The Japan Weekly Mail, an announcement of the book's publishing was run in the Yomiuri Shinbun, and an introductory review was featured in the Journal of Institution of Engineers.
    Third, the 1905 edition of The Cumulative Book Review Digest, released soon after Dai Nippon, was quick to run five reviews. The first review to appear in Britain was in the pages of the December 1st, 1904 edition of Nature, soon after Dai Nippon was put out in Britain. It is worth noting that the announcement of its publication appeared before that in Japan in the November 13th, 1904 edition of the Yomiuri Shinbun.
    These reviews and introductory reviews of Dai Nippon are characterized as follows. (1) One review says that Dai Nippon is 'a treatise of so comprehen sive and illuminating a character' as to be 'an authoritative account of the evolution and present state of development of Japan.' (2) More than a few praise the descriptions in the book for being detailed, accurate, and backed up by source materials. (3) One reviewer remarks on 'the merits of Principal Henry Dyer's new book on Japan, ' saying it is 'Philosophic in conception, scientific in method, minute and reliable in its information, [Dai Nippon] combines many excellence seldom united.'
    (4) As interest in Japan rose in the wake of the First Sino-Japanese War and Russo-Japanese War, and as more academic books on Japan were published in English, Dai Nippon was selected among the 'Notable Books of the Day, Useful Books on Japan.'
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  • Tatsunori TAKENAKA
    2007 Volume 2008 Issue 40 Pages 23-36
    Published: 2007
    Released on J-STAGE: January 25, 2010
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    During the mid-Meiji era a handy dictionary of some three thousand English idioms was published. It was compiled by James Main Dixon, who was then teaching English literature and philology at the Imperial University, Tokyo. Dixon had found that Japanese students had difficulty understanding English idioms since he had started teaching them at the Imperial College of Engineering. He advised his students to read English novels and mark idiomatic expressions, which he collected and compiled to produce the dictionary. His dictionary gave information on the levels of usage of each idiom as well as citations from literary works and journals, and was thus welcomed by the people learning English.
    This paper investigated several issues related to the publication of the dictionary, i.e., the year of the publication of its first edition and the possibility of the contribution of Masaki Tachibana, the sole first graduate from the Department of English Literature, Imperial University. As for the first point, the year was determined to be 1888, based on the colophon of the first edition and Dixon's autobiography; while the second point, i.e., Tachibana's possible contribution to the dictionary, was proven not to have been the case.
    The paper also surveyed the historical and lexicographical value of the dictionary quoting short reviews by Dixon's contemporaries and referring to the data of the publications of its British editions and a bilingual Chinese edition.
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  • Chisato ISHIHARA
    2007 Volume 2008 Issue 40 Pages 37-53
    Published: 2007
    Released on J-STAGE: September 16, 2009
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    An original of Igirisubunten, the first English grammar reprinted in Japan in script in 1857 directly from a grammar written in English, and of another Igirisubunten, which was printed in type first in 1861 and went through many editions, was found to be in the possession of the British Library. The original book was brought to Japan by John Manjiro in 1851, when he returned to closed Japan at the risk of his life. It was known to be “THE ELEMENTARY CATECHISMS. ENGLISH GRAMMAR. LONDON : GROOMBRIDGE & SONS, PATERSOSTER ROW, 1850” as printed in each title page of most of the Japanese editions. However, there have been no reports on other bibliographical information or the place where such a book is being kept.
    The book was found to be No. 5 of the 12 volumes in a series of THE ELEMENTARY CATECHISMS FOR HOME AND SCHOOL. It is 13.3 × 8.8 cm in size, which is smaller than any of the Japanese editions which had the nickname for its smallness and thinness. On the whole, the 9 different Japanese editions appear to be fairly faithful reprints of the original. The absence of the titles of “Lesson 44” and “Lesson 45” in the text, which is present in all of the Japanese editions, was found to be that of the original. The series were prepared by the editors of The Family Economist (1848- 1860); a penny monthly magazine devoted to the moral, physical, and domestic improvement of the industrial classes. They aimed to publish a series of Catechisms “with completeness, precision, and simplicity at an exceedingly low price of 4 pence each.”
    In the course of the search for an original, a copy of Igirisubunten in the possession of the Newberry Library, Chicago, happened to be found. It has a dark brown cover to which a title slip is attached in the center. This is the fifth copy identified, and the first found abroad. The four copies in Japan consist of one copy just like this and three copies with a yellowish cover to which a title slip is attached in the upper right hand corner. Their contents are identical.
    I am grateful to Dr. Avery A. Sandberg for locating the copy of Igirisubunten at the Newberry Library and for his critical reading of the English. I would like to thank librarians at various libraries, especially Katie McMahon and Will Hansen at the Newberry Library, and Hiroshi Matsumoto, ex-librarian at Waseda University Library. I thank Hiromi Fukasawa for her assistance including some important findings; and Yutaka Ishihara for his assistance and for reading this manuscript. This article is dedicated to the memory of my husband.
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  • Haruko IWAKAMI
    2007 Volume 2008 Issue 40 Pages 55-68
    Published: 2007
    Released on J-STAGE: May 07, 2010
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Frederick Victor Dickins (1838-1915) is one of the early visitors to Japan during the last days of the Tokugawa regime. Unlike Ernest Satow or William Aston who came over to Japan as government officials, Dickins landed in Yokohama as an assistant surgeon on HMS Euryalus in 1863. He remained there until 1866 and during the time he became much impressed with Japan and made such remarkable progress in the Japanese language as to translate Hyakunin Isshu into English.
    Dickins had been a close friend to Satow and contributed to his A Handbook for Travellers in Central and Northern Japan (1881). Their friendship which appears to have started in the 1860s in Japan continued until Dickins' death in 1915. He also became acquainted with Kumagusu Minakata, a learned folklorist, who resided in London during the 1890s. He most likely assisted Dickins with translating work including Hojoki. Their contact continued even after Kumagusu went back to Japan in 1900.
    The purpose of this paper is to evaluate Dickins as one of the Japanologists by tracing his early days in Yokohama. I focused on this period because his deep interest in Japan was fostered then.
    First I tried identifying the temple where Dickins frequented for language teachers and informants. Evidently, this temple is the one mentioned in A Diplomat in Japan (1921) by Satow and Memories by Lord Rededale (1915) by Mitford. Dickins wrote to Satow that 'The old priest there in the sixties was a great chum of mine & many, many delightful hours I spent with him'. Secondly I analyzed two of his articles entitled 'Hints to Students of the Japanese Language' which Dickins wrote after learning Japanese in 13 months and 'The Temples of Kamakura near Yokohama in Japan' written after about two years in Yokohama. Both articles show Dickins' wide range of interest in the Japanese language, literature, history and culture. The final discussion is on the significance of the translation of Hyakunin Isshu, the first translation ever made from Japanese literature into English.
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  • Takahiko HORI
    2007 Volume 2008 Issue 40 Pages 69-85
    Published: 2007
    Released on J-STAGE: September 16, 2009
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    At the beginning of 2007, a miraculous find was made at a book market for secondhandbook sellers. Junichi Nagumo, owner of an antiquarian bookstore, discovered part of the draft of the first published English-Japanese dictionary in Japan. This volume, entitled “A Pocket Dictionary of English and Japanese Language (sic.)”, was first published 145 years ago. Also found by Mr. Nagumo of Taskasaki City, Gunma Prefecture, was a part of the proof-ready manuscript of the second edition.
    The manuscripts appear to be authentic and include the following :
    1. Twenty-one draft sheets of the first edition, published in November of 1862. The sheets are handwritten, with corrections made in vermilion ink.
    2. A proof-ready manuscript of 124 pages to be appended to the first edition. These additions were to be used in a second edition, published in January of 1866.
    The purpose of this paper is to discuss these newly-unearthed manuscripts as well to take a philosophical look at the role of dictionaries in general during the 19th century in Japanese history. This was a time when Japan was just beginning to open its doors to more foreign countries.
    A modernization process could be found through these newly-found manuscripts : i.e., not only the Japanese language itself, but also the whole experience of the opening of our country.
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  • Akira MIYOSHI
    2007 Volume 2008 Issue 40 Pages 87-103
    Published: 2007
    Released on J-STAGE: September 16, 2009
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    At the beginning of 2007, Mr. Junichi Nagumo, owner of an antiquarian bookstore in Taskasaki City, Gunma Prefecture, discovered a part of the draft of the first published English-Japanese dictionary entitled “The Pocket Dictionary of English and Japanese Language (sic.)”, that was published in 1862, and a part of the proof-ready manuscript of the second edition that was done in 1866.
    Hitherto the first English-Japanese Dictionary was considered to be based on Picard's Pocket Dictionary of English-Dutch Languages of the second edition published in 1857, but, an examination of the recently found manuscripts makes clear that the translation works started with Picard's Dictionary - First Edition of 1843 and switched to that of the second edition of 1857 during a late stage of translation.
    For more than 250 years, Japan was closed to any foreign countries except Holland and China. Once the door opened, new ideas and sciences of the western world flooded into Japan. As a result, a modernization process occurred in the Japanese language. Translators needed to cope with these new ideas. The newly-found manuscripts demonstrate how Japanese words had to be laboriously corrected by several editing steps.
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  • Tomo-o ENDO
    2007 Volume 2008 Issue 40 Pages 105-128
    Published: 2007
    Released on J-STAGE: September 16, 2009
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
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