The Japanese Shakespeare: Language and Context in the Translations of Tsubouchi Shōyō

Offering the first book-length study in English on Tsubouchi and Shakespeare, Gallimore offers an overview of the theory and practice of Tsubouchi’s Shakespeare translation and argues for Tsubouchi’s place as ’the Japanese Shakespeare’.

Shakespeare translation is one of the achievements of modern Japanese culture, and no one is more associated with that achievement than the writer and scholar Tsubouchi Shōyō (1859-1935). This book looks at how Tsubouchi received Shakespeare in the context of his native literature and his strategies for bridging the gaps between Shakespeare’s rhetoric and his developing language. Offering a significant contribution to the field of global Shakespeare and literary translation, Gallimore explores dominant stylistic features of the early twentieth-century Shakespeare translations of Tsubouchi and analyses the translations within larger linguistic, historical and cultural traditions in local Japanese, universal Chinese, and spiritual Western elements.

This book will appeal to any student, researcher or scholar of literary translation, particularly those interested in the complexities of Shakespeare in translation and Japanese language, culture and society.

Daniel Gallimore is currently a Professor in the School of Humanities at Kwansei Gakuin University, Japan. He completed his DPhil in Oriental Studies at Oxford University, UK.