Adaptions of Western Literature in Meiji Japan

J. Miller

dic 2001 · Springer

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This book examines three examples of late nineteenth-century Japanese adaptations of Western literature: a biography of U.S. Grant recasting him as a Japanese warrior, a Victorian novel reset as oral performance, and an American melodrama redone as a serialized novel promoting the reform of Japanese theater. Written from a comparative perspective, it argues that adaptation (hon'an) was a valid form of contemporary Japanese translation that fostered creative appropriation across many genres and among a diverse group of writers and artists. In addition, it invites readers to reconsider adaptation in the context of translation theory.

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J. SCOTT MILLER received his Ph.D. in East Asian Studies from Princeton University, focusing on Japanese and Comparative Literature, and is currently professor and associate dean of honors at Brigham Young University and editor of the Bulletin of the International Comparative Literature Association. In addition to publishing on the connections between oral and written narrative in Meiji Japan, he has discovered, remastered and produced a compact disc containing the earliest commercial recordings of Japanese speech and music (the famed Kawakami Troupe), recorded originally at the 1900 Paris Exposition.