Factbook

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Literary History

The first Western commercial fiction was translated into Japanese in 1879

[UPDATED: 2-19-2018]

It took 32 years, from the first publication of a work of Japanese fiction in a European language until an important Western work of fiction was published in Japanese translation, in 1879.

The first “important” title, according to the scholar Donald Keane was the novel Ernest Maltravers (1837) by Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873), the bestselling British author who is famous for having coined phrases such as; “the great unwashed,” “it was a dark and stormy night” and “the pen is mightier than the sword”.

The novel, translated by Junichiro Niwa, a former Edinburgh University law student, was published in Japanese under the title Karyū shunwa (A Spring Tale of Blossoms and Willows), and sold extremely well. A Japanese translation of a Jules Verne novel, by Chunosuke Kawashima was also published that year in Japan.

The first Western commercial fiction was translated into Japanese in 1879 Posted January 3rd, 2018 by Richard Nathan

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Factbook

The first Western commercial fiction was translated into Japanese in 1879

New international standards for measuring time, weights and measures encouraged some to call for Japan to adopt a Westernised writing system abandoning traditional alphabets[UPDATED: 7-7-2023]

In 1841 Shakespeare’s name appeared in print in Japan in Japanese for the first time[UPDATED: 6-14-2023]

Japan experts, Japanologists, commentators, as well as visitors to Japan, have been deriding each other’s ‘Knowledge’ of the nation for over a century[UPDATED: 5-10-2023]

By 1905 Japanese people were already buying the ‘Encyclopedia Britannica’ on subscription and their prompt payment was used to highlight the trustworthiness of the nation[UPDATED: 4-3-2023]

By the early 1900s so many books had been published ‘Explaining Japan’ that one author felt compelled to write a book summarising them[UPDATED: 3-22-2023]

In the 1870s Japanese bookshops already sold Western books targeting Japan’s growing student population[UPDATED: 3-1-2023]

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