Thomas Alva Edison is one of the most famous engineers in history, and his biography has been written by numerous authors, including authors in Japan, where Edison has always been popular. The present paper will discuss one of the earliest Edison biographies, a biographical essay published in the journal Review of Reviews in 1893 by the American writer Charles D. Lanier, and its translation by the Japanese engineer Shigeyoshi Kimura, published as a booklet in 1894. The Japanese booklet was annotated by the Chinese classics scholar Tōgō Hosoda. The translation slightly modified the original English article, and the annotation contained a few of the commentator's disagreements with the original author's ideas. Following a brief introduction to the content of Lanier's article, the paper explores these translation modifications and the commentator's disagreements in detail. In particular, it points out that Hosoda was especially attracted to Edison's persistent attitude during his creative activity and that a phrase reflecting this attitude was selected and placed in the front matter of the translated booklet as an iconic inscription.