{"title":"In Translation","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eFirst and rare Japanese translations of Western authors\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"lewis-main-street-japanese-1931","title":"Main Street: A novel. ルイス・シンクレーア 「本町通り」メーン・ストリート: 長篇小說","description":"\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cspan lang=\"EN-US\"\u003e東京\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan lang=\"EN-US\"\u003e [Tokyo], \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan lang=\"EN-US\"\u003e新潮社\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan lang=\"EN-US\"\u003e, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan lang=\"EN-US\"\u003e昭和\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan lang=\"EN-US\"\u003e6 [1931]. \u003cmeta charset=\"UTF-8\"\u003e\n\u003cspan\u003eTranslated from the English by Maedakō Hiroichirō, with his preface\u003c\/span\u003e (前田河広一郎).\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan lang=\"EN-US\"\u003e8vo. [3], 1-16, 691, [5] pp. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan lang=\"EN-US\"\u003eLewis's first book to appear in Japan, and the only edition of this translation. Designed by an unrecorded artist — a notable instance of deluxe publishing at the height of Japan's early-1930s economic crisis.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cspan lang=\"EN-US\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eMain Street\u003c\/em\u003e (1920), an American classic by \u003cstrong\u003eSinclair Lewis \u003c\/strong\u003e(1885–1951), became the author's first book to appear in Japanese — published the year after Lewis was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, the first American writer to receive that honor. Until then Lewis had remained little known among Japanese readers, even though a 1923 silent film adaptation of \u003cem\u003eMain Street\u003c\/em\u003e had been screened in Japan; it was the Nobel award that prompted this first Japanese translation.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan lang=\"RU\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cspan lang=\"EN-US\"\u003eThat is why \u003cstrong\u003eMaedakō Hiroichirō \u003c\/strong\u003e(\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan lang=\"EN-US\"\u003e前田河広一郎\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan lang=\"EN-US\"\u003e; 1888–1957) — a well-known Japanese novelist and this book's translator — felt obliged to introduce the writer to his compatriots: his preface sets out Lewis's biography and career and offers a critique of his work (\u003cem\u003eMain Street \u003c\/em\u003eand \u003cem\u003eElmer Gantry\u003c\/em\u003e). As one of the leading figures of the Japanese proletarian-literature movement, however, Maedakō criticizes Lewis sharply. He faults him for being a sharp, honest observer of American bourgeois life who never crosses into genuine class struggle: his satire exposes hypocrisy and provincialism, but stops at reformist, petty-bourgeois critique rather than confronting the roots of capitalism. In short, Maedakō judges him a gifted realist, but politically no more than a social-democratic \"\u003cem\u003efellow traveler\u003c\/em\u003e,\" not a proletarian writer.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan lang=\"RU\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cspan lang=\"EN-US\"\u003eIt is also worth noting the translator's own story. Maedakō studied under Tokutomi Roka, a well-known Japanese writer and philosopher, and in 1907, with Roka's support, went to the United States. Over the following thirteen years there he drifted through a series of jobs — dishwasher, door-to-door salesman, gardener, reporter for a Japanese-language newspaper, among others — and during this period published short stories in English. He returned to Japan in 1920 and became a well-known proletarian writer. However, as the crackdown on the left intensified from the late 1920s onward — culminating, most notoriously, in the 1933 arrest and beating to death of Kobayashi Takiji by the special political police — Maedakō, too, effectively disappeared from the literary scene. This book can thus be counted among the last imprints of Japan's proletarian-literature movement before the country's politics turned decisively militarist.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch4\u003eBinding \u0026amp; condition\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cspan lang=\"EN-US\"\u003eOriginal yellow cloth, stamped in colors, with pictorial slipcase featuring a portrait of Sinclair Lewis. Without dust jacket, as issued. Good: slipcase rubbed, with small losses and tears, owner’s mark in red pencil to top, minor soiling to cloth.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Syrovatskaya Books \u0026 Curiosities","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":59063983407452,"sku":"SYR-014","price":420.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1048\/0654\/7804\/files\/DSC00204.jpg?v=1789037893"},{"product_id":"orwell-1984-japanese-1950","title":"Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984). ジョージ・オーウェル　一九八四年","description":"\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cspan lang=\"EN-US\"\u003e\u003cem\u003e東京\u003cspan lang=\"RU\"\u003e [\u003c\/span\u003eTokyo\u003cspan lang=\"RU\"\u003e],\u003c\/span\u003e文藝春秋新社\u003cspan lang=\"RU\"\u003e, \u003c\/span\u003e昭和\u003cspan lang=\"RU\"\u003e25\u003c\/span\u003e年\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan lang=\"RU\"\u003e\u003cem\u003e [1950].\u003c\/em\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eTranslated from the English by Yoshida Ken'ichi (\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan lang=\"EN-US\"\u003e吉田健一\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan lang=\"EN-US\"\u003e) and Tatsunokuchi Naotarō (\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan lang=\"EN-US\"\u003e龍口直太郎\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan lang=\"EN-US\"\u003e), with the translators' introduction, including the appendix, \"The Principles of Newspeak\". \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan lang=\"EN-US\"\u003e12mo, [2], 386, [2] pp.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cspan lang=\"EN-US\"\u003eFirst complete Japanese translation (first edition, first printing). First complete translation into an East Asian language, and one of the earliest translations of the novel into any language.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cspan lang=\"EN-US\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eNineteen Eighty-Four \u003c\/em\u003efirst appeared in Japanese in November 1949, in abridged form, in the Japanese edition of \u003cem\u003eReader's Digest\u003c\/em\u003e (\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan lang=\"EN-US\"\u003eリーダーズダイジェスト\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan lang=\"EN-US\"\u003e), in its regular section \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan lang=\"EN-US\"\u003e新刊書の要約\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan lang=\"EN-US\"\u003e(\"Condensations of New Books\"). The American magazine had been published in Japanese since June 1946, during the Allied occupation. Five months later, on 20 April 1950, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan lang=\"EN-US\"\u003e文藝春秋新社\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan lang=\"EN-US\"\u003e (Bungei Shunju Shinsha) published the first complete Japanese translation, by Yoshida Ken'ichi and Tatsunokuchi Naotaro. The translation was reissued only once, in 1958. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan lang=\"RU\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cspan lang=\"EN-US\"\u003eThe book opens with the translators' introduction, in which Orwell and the novel are presented to a Japanese readership. The translators dwell on totalitarian political control — with no reference, of course, to Japan's own recent militarism — and close on individual freedom, asking whether the Japanese fail to feel the question acutely because they do not yet know the value of freedom of thought and feeling. \u003cspan\u003eThe choice of Orwell was in a sense reciprocal\u003c\/span\u003e: during the war, working for the BBC's Eastern Service, he had written a great deal about Japan and occupied China, and dated the beginning of the Second World War not to 1939 but to the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cspan lang=\"EN-US\"\u003eEspecially interesting is the figure of \u003cstrong\u003eYoshida Ken'ichi \u003c\/strong\u003e(1912–1977), writer and literary critic, and the eldest son of Yoshida Shigeru, who was Japan's prime minister when this translation appeared. As a diplomat's son he spent much of his childhood in France, Britain and China, and studied English literature at King's College, Cambridge, under Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson. Known as an eccentric, he was often at odds with his father: according to a well-known anecdote, after one quarrel cut off his allowance, he sat outside the International Press Club in Tokyo with an upturned hat and a sign reading \"\u003cem\u003ePrime Minister's son — penniless\u003c\/em\u003e\", counting on his father's embarrassment to restore it. Orwell stayed with him: in 1966 he published a translation of \u003cem\u003eAnimal Farm\u003c\/em\u003e. Here he translated Part Three, while Parts One and Two and the Newspeak appendix were done by Tatsunokuchi Naotaro (1903–1979).\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003e\u003cspan lang=\"EN-US\"\u003eThe book also carries the translation-rights licence of the occupation authorities (GHQ\/SCAP, Civil Information and Education Section), which auctioned translation rights to foreign titles: exclusive rights were granted to the publisher from 17 December 1949, a month before Orwell's death. The English title is printed with a misprint, \"\u003cem\u003eNinteen Eighty-Four\u003c\/em\u003e\". \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch4\u003eBinding \u0026amp; condition\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MsoNormal\"\u003eOriginal wrappers and pictorial dust jacket. Good: light wear and minor losses to the jacket spine foxing to the verso of the jacket, \u003cspan lang=\"EN-US\"\u003ewrappers,\u003c\/span\u003e and edge\u003cspan lang=\"EN-US\"\u003es, \u003c\/span\u003etoning to the first and last two leaves from contact with the jacket flaps, \u003cspan lang=\"EN-US\"\u003es\u003c\/span\u003emall ownership stamp to rear free endpaper.\u003cspan lang=\"EN-US\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch4\u003eRarity\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan lang=\"EN-US\"\u003eOCLC records only two holdings outside Japan, at UCL and the British Library.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Syrovatskaya Books \u0026 Curiosities","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":59218694078812,"sku":"SYR-015","price":620.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1048\/0654\/7804\/files\/DSC00433.jpg?v=1789993463"}],"url":"https:\/\/syrovatskaya.com\/collections\/in-translation.oembed","provider":"Syrovatskaya Books \u0026 Curiosities","version":"1.0","type":"link"}