A Bibliography of Irish Studies in Japan, 1984-2003 |
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Introduction
The literature of Ireland was studied in Japan long before there was much understanding of Irish literature as a separate area of production from English literature. However, translations into Japanese of works of Irish literature did not really get under way until the 1920s, alongside the acquisition by university libraries here of standard texts, and more or less at the same time as these works were being translated into European languages. Pre-war, annotated editions by Japanese scholars were surprisingly frequent, but in the years since the war these have become commonplace. Reviews in Japanese journals and newspapers were also contemporaneous, with quite a stir occasioned by some milestone publications. The poet James Cousins held a brief professorship at Keio University from 1919-20, giving a series of lectures on modern poetry in the English language. Introducing a reading given by Cousins, the Japan Times & Mail declared, The exquisite lyric philosopher of the following stanzas...is not by any means the least distinguished star in a galaxy which includes the benign, effulgent AE, the scorching, scoriac James Jolce, the mildly twinkling Lady Gregory and the distant and melancholy Padraic Colum (Japan Times & Mail: 21 June 1919). ‘James Jolce’, yes-but it is extraordinary that the Japan Times should have heard of Joyce only four years after the serial publication of the Portrait, with Ulysses three years off. And this at a time when the treatmnt of Ireland and Irish affairs in the Japanese press was shot through with references to ‘Fenianism’, when Korea, then a Japanese colony in the throes of the ‘Mansei’ Independence movement was routinely described as ‘Japan‘s Ireland’, and when some of the most trusted foreign consultants to Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs were paid-up members of the Protestant ascendancy. The great problem for Irish Studies in Japan, the great problem for any academic work in Japan, has always been language. No matter how assiduous their use of Anglophone material, no matter how close their acquaintance might be to currents and new developments in the home of their speciality, Japanese scholars of literature in English could not hope that their work might enter the mainstream of international academic exchange without publishing in the English language. This was particularly true in the 1920s and 1930s, when the number of foreigners capable of reading Japanese barely reached one hundred souls, a figure that only began to be stretched in the 1950s. Unfortunately, even today, non-Japanese scholars who are literate in Japanese demonstrate only a limited appetite for scholarship on Irish Literature written in Japanese, preferring instead to focus on Japanese literature. The result has been a considerable accumulation of scholarship received from abroad, and of an academic literature in Japanese, with not much going the other way, from Japan to the world. IASAIL-Japan was set up in 1984 as a pragmatic response to the isolation faced by Japanese scholars. From the beginning, the language of the Society was English, and all meetings were conducted in that language (except, one suspects, when there were no native speakers present), and all lectures given in it. Most importantly, the annual bulletin of IASAIL-Japan, The Harp, was in English.The early numbers of The Harp, edited by Ken’ichi Matsumura, current President of IASIL Japan, took the form of a Newsletter, with two columns of cramped type per page.IASAIL-Japan was in the cradle and members were expected to contribute articles to the Irish University Review. However, by the 1990s, most of the content of The Harp consisted of academic papers. By its 15th and final issue, in 2000, The Harp had become a full academic journal, published in English, with a limited but varied readership of Japanese and non-Japanese literary scholars and writers. In 2001, The Harp became the Journal of Irish Studies, continuing from The Harp XV (2000) to the Journal of Irish Studies XVI (2001). These early issues of the Journal of Irish Studies carried not only academic papers but new poetry from Ireland and some new fiction. Under the editorship of Peter McMillan, the Journal began to interest readers and writers outside the academy. Two years later, when I became editor, I had less interest in reaching new constituencies than in maintaining and even improving the content of the Journal so that we might continue to speak to those we had. 2003 was also, is also, the twentieth anniversary of IASIL Japan, and it seemed to make sense to mark our coming of age (the Japanese become adults at twenty, not twenty-one years) with something useful. The idea of compiling a Bibliography first suggested itself when I learned that the previous compilers of the annual IASIL Japan Bibliography, published from 1992 in The Harp and then the Journal of Irish Studies, Hiroyuki Yamasaki and Kazuhiro Doki, had kept most of their data on disk. The initial plan was to put together a bibliography of IASIL Japan members’ publications in Irish Studies from 1992-2002, using this data.However, we soon agreed that if the bibliography was to have any usefulness outside IASILJapan, it should carry information about publications by members of other Irish Studies societies in Japan. Akiko Manabe then organized an appeal to the other Irish studies societies to send us their bibliographical data. The strongest response came from Tetsuro Sano of The Yeats Society of Japan, who edited a 4,500 word list culled from the Bulletin of the Yeats Society of Japan and Yeats Studies. Many IASIL Japan members are also members of The James Joyce Society of Japan and have published papers in its bulletin, Joycean Japan, so these were easily added to our bibliography. Other members of other societies responded individually. Then we added items from earlier issues of The Harp. Finally, after a busy summer, we had a bibliography that could be said to represent Irish Studies in Japan over the last twenty years. What does this collection of titles tell us about the focus of Irish Studies in Japan in the last two decades? Let’s play the numbers game. Eighty years after the Japan Times waxed so lyrical on the ‘benign, effulgent AE’, there is only one paper devoted to him. Even taking into account a possible imbalance from Professor Sano’s generous input, as the subject of 263 publications, W. B. Yeats remains the runaway favourite of Irish Studies scholars in Japan. Some way behind, ‘the scorching, scoriac James Jolce’ is neck and neck with Samuel Beckett at fifty-eight entries, thirty-one of them on Ulysses, eight on Finnegans Wake. Seamus Heaney is in the frame, of course, but a distant fourth at twenty-nine entries, followed by Lafcadio Hearn (17), Brian Friel in hot pursuit (15 papers), Oscar Wilde on his knees before a passing daisy (12), J. M. Synge (10), Paul Muldoon (9), George Bernard Shaw pulling up for an interview (8), Jennifer Johnston up on Sean ’Casey (both at 7), Thomas Kinsella (6), and the remainder (though not the also-rans) – Elisabeth Bowen, Paul Durcan, Sean O’Faolain, Elisabeth Bowen, Maria Edgeworth, Frank McGuinness et al. –bunched and milling some way behind, with Frank O’Connor, even in the centenary of his birth, almost a non-starter. Besides this focus on single writers and their works, we can see an encouraging tendency among scholars in Japan towards surveys of movements in the field, with twenty-nine entries on Irish iterature, ten on Anglo-Irish literature, and six on the ascendancy. Above all, this is a record. It shows what scholars here have been reading and thinking. It shows directions forward as well as dried-up trails. In twenty years time, it may all look very different, but for the immediate future, for any young Japanese scholar considering a research degree or for anyone thinking of writing a paper or a book, this Bibliography would be a useful beginning to any literature search. Not the reference point, but one among a number of research sources that no Japanese scholar of Irish Studies should ignore. For scholars abroad, there is a huge range of perception, approach, synthesis and sheer illumination represented here. The old problem of access is not entirely gone, because most of the papers and books published here are in Japanese, but all the papers in The Harp and the Journal of Irish Studies are in English, as are quite a few of those given in Yeats Studies. In editing the document that follows, I have had a great deal of friendly, unstinting advice and help from Akiko Manabe, Andrew Fitzsimons, Ken’ichi Matsumura, Kimiyo Ogawa, Hiroyuki Yamasaki, Kazuhiro Doki, David Burleigh, Nobuaki Tochigi and Mitsuko Ohno. I am particularly grateful to Tetsuro Sano for his heroic compilation of titles from Yeats Society members. Kazuhiro Doki’s advice on format and conventions was invaluable. Finally, I am quite sure there are inaccuracies, gaps and other infelicities in this compilation. As editor, I should say that these are my responsibility and that I will be happy to receive corrections in time for the 40th anniversary edition. Peter O’Connor Musashino University Notes Other conventions Titles within single quotations marks are the
titles of papers. Titles within double quotation marks are the titles
of literary works. Italicised titles are the titles of books and of
university journals: unfortunately, some of these are in English translation,
and should be in the original Japanese. Continuous page numbers, e.g. pp.20-32 show the pages taken up by the
paper in a journal or book. Single page numbers, e.g. 220, indicate the number of pages in a
book.
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Last Update 11/12/2003