Pt. 3:
Translations of Kanadehon
Chushingura (Starr
Reference Room)
43. The First Translation of Kanadehon Chushingura
The
earliest complete translation of Kanadehon Chūshingura into a foreign
language was this Chinese work
in three volumes. The 1815 version shown here is the earliest of
several
editions published in Japan, but according to the
preface, the
first edition was published in China in 1794, although no copy
has ever
been discovered. The preface also suggests that the translator, whose
pen name
was Chen Hongmeng,
worked not from a Japanese original but from an inferior version
composed in
Japanese-style Chinese (kanbun).
At any rate, the work was presumably first issued somewhere in China and then made its way to Japan, where it was published
in Edo twenty years later. At
least three
later editions followed in Japan, in 1820, 1825, and an
undated work
that is probably from the Meiji period.
The
translation covers ten acts of Kanadehon Chushingura, omitting Act
VIII, the michiyuki travel
scene. It
appears to be an embellishment as much as a translation, adding poems
in
Chinese that were not in the original. The text is provided with
punctuation
marks for Japanese readers.
Chen Hongmeng 鴻濛陳, trans.
Zhong chen ku 忠臣庫
(Chūshingura)
3
vols. Edo: Kanseido, 1815.
Starr
East
Asian Library,
Gift
of
Donald Keene
44. French and Italian Translations
The
earliest French translation of Kanadehon Chūshingura seems to have
been a secondary translation of
1886 by Albert DousdebPs from Dickins’ Chiushingura of 1875 (see case on
opposite side). Then in 1918, a
good-quality French
translation was produced by the Japanese scholar Shinobu
Junpei (1871-1962),
entitled Tchushin-goura, ou “Le tresor
des vassaux fideles”. This was superceded in 1981 by the work on
display here,
including
translations of both Kanadehon Chûshingura
and two important other works related to the Chûshingura
tradition, and translated by two leading contemporary French scholars
of
Japanese literature.
In
Italian, the translation here by Mario Marega,
with
an exquisitely decorated cover, was published in 1948.
Above:
Rene Sieffert
and Michel Wassermann, trans.
Le Mythe des quarante-sept
ronin; Kenko-Hoshi
monomi-guruma
par Chikamatsu Monzaemon;
Goban Taiheiki
par Chrikamatsu Monzaemon;
Le tresor des vassaux
fideles par Takeda Izumo; Fantomes a Yotsuya
par Tsuruya Namboku
Paris : Publications Orientalistes
de France, 1981.
Right:
Mario Marega,
trans.
Il Ciuscingura,
La vendetta dei 47 ronin
Bari: G. Laterza
& Figli, 1948.
45. The Introduction of the 47 Ronin
to the West
The
earliest introduction of the story of the AkÇ Incident to the West
seems to have
been a brief but largely accurate account by Isaac Titsingh (1740-1812), head of the Dutch
trading station in Nagasaki in the early 1780s; it appeared in his
posthumous Illustrations
of Japan (London, 1822). The story was next told by the English
diplomat
Rutherford Alcock in Capital
of the Tycoon (London, 1863), where
it was treated purely as legend, with no mention of any proper names or
even of
the bakufu. The truly influential account,
however,
was that of A. B. Mitford, who recounted
the story as
the first of his Tales of Old Japan,
drawing on what seems to have been a current oral storytelling (kôdan) version in Japan. It was
also later issued separately as a small pamphlet, as seen in the 1892
edition
from Jiujiya.
Also influential,
particularly for the influence that it had in molding Theodore
Roosevelt’s
admiration of the Japanese samurai spirit, was a translation (in fact,
more of
a rewriting in English) of a late Edo collection of popular tales of
the Gishi entitled Iroha bunko (A
Library of the Kana, 1836-41) by Tamenaga Shunsui.
Above
and
left:
A. B. Mitford
(Lord Redesdale) (1837-1916)
“The
Forty-Seven Rônins”
In Tales of Old Japan
First
edition: London & New York: Macmillan and Co., 1871. On display: above,
1894
edition; below,
Single-volume
pamphlet, Tokyo: Jiujiya, 1892.
Right top and bottom:
Tamenaga Shunsui
為永春水 (1818-1886)
The Loyal Ronins:
An Historical Romance
Translation
of Iroha bunko
いろは文庫,
by Shiuichiro
Saito (1855-?)
and Edward Greey (1835-1888)
New York: Putnam, 1880.
46. English Translations of Kanadehon Chushingura
The
complete text of the joruri puppet play Kanadehon Chūshingura, the core text of the
theatrical tradition of the story of the 47 RÇnin, has been translated
three times
into English. Frederick Dickins’
translation was
first published in Yokohama in 1875 in an exquisite
edition with
woodblock illustrations and went through numerous editions after that
in Japan, London, and New York; displayed here is an
1885 Yokohama edition. Dickins
took numerous liberties with the text, altering and expurgating it. Jukichi Inouye’s translation, which appeared in
a small
edition in 1894 and then in the revised edition of 1910 on display
here, was a
great improvement, if still tamed of all erotic references. It also
included
woodblock illustrations. Donald Keene’s translation of 1971 remains
today the
authoritative English version and is widely used as a classroom text.
Above:
Frederick Victor Dickins
(1838-1915), trans.
Chiushingura,
or, The
Loyal League:
A Japanese
Romance
Yokohama:
Z. P. Maruya,
1885
Right, in the center:
Jukichi Inouye, trans.
Chushingura,
or The
Treasury of Loyal
Retainers
Above: revised 1937 edition
Below: First ed., Tokyo: Nakanishi-ya,
1910
Far right:
Donald Keene, trans.
Chushingura: The
Treasury of Loyal
Retainers
New York
& London: Columbia Univ. Press, 1971
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