Back to: Matsui, "On the Drafts of Minakata's Letter to Gowans Publishing Company"
Matsui Ryugo & Nakanishi Sumi, ed.
To Mr. Director,
Gowans and Gray & Sons, Glasgow
Tanabe, Kii, Japan
March 16, 1909
Dear Sir,
I have the honor of answering to your favor of 7 January which was received on the 15th last month. The delay of this reply has been mainly due to my attentive investigations which I have made before deciding which one of Bakin's prodigious fictional productions could suit your requirement best. Such decision, of course is, really impracticable for, as a Chinese adage has it, "every one's taste as much differs from other's as his face does from all others." And this impracticability is particularly enhanced when we reflect upon the fact that Bakin has been such an incessant writer that more than 290 works has seen the light during his brief life of 8_ years, whereas not few still remain unpublished.
Now, whether native or foreign, no one well versed in Japanese literature, denies the palm to Bakin as the greatest romancist this country has ever produced, -- perhaps with the sole exception of the authoress of the 'Genji Story', which has already been anglicized tolerably well by Baron Suematsu, and which depicts only the life of higher class and love affairs frequently verging to veritable immorality, whilst its reading helps not much to understand the modern Japanese society, for it was composed nine centuries ago. There is much truth in the opinion of Mr. Tsubouchi, our great living critic, who calls Bakin the Scot of Japan. Not only Bakin and Scot lived contemporaneously, but their writings mutually resemble in many respects - fluent in narration, solemn in manner, pure in style, eager in edification, and very plentiful curious facts and conceits imparted from immense erudition. As regards the morals, Bakin's romances though abundantly interspersed with first-rate humors, are all singularly free of that impropriety or grossness which more or less entered into those of most contemporaries of his, whose popularity founded itself on this very objectionable essence. Indeed, so thoroughly unspotted with the prevailing moral failing all his writings were, that under the very austere Governmental Reform of 1842, whereas all other romancists of note were severely punished and one most eminent exponent of sensualism even perished in handcuffs, Bakin alone tranquilly enjoyed a perfect impunity, continuing in romancing, beleaguered by tigerish inquisitors as he was. Thus, any composition of his has nothing that needs omission or excision for presenting it before the decent English public.
If my memory plays me not false, it was the words of Alexander Pope that, of all sorts of compositions translation is the hardest to execute. And I understand translation has its difficulty double: it is so often pains worthy to rightly comprehend the texts produced in a past time, as they usually concerns with things and sentiments now long since lost; yet much more difficult it is to transmit from one to another language, -- no two languages, however opulent in words and phrases possess much of the expressions that exactly fits one another. Add to which, which two any languages are radically heterogeneous. How difficult or hopeless the task is of translating Japanese into English, you can easily form an idea, should you put yourself remind how frequently you witness a well-educated American or colonist hopelessly puzzled by a matter-of-fact talk of an ordinary Englishman. And once more, Japanese literature rests on the traditions and practices which all stood aloof from European; and as for their ongoing beliefs, some are quite endemic, others derived from Chinese or Mongol, from Corean, or from Indian, each requiring a special, deep investigation to ascern - hitherto there being no vernacular work ready to facilitate such. Now, blood! Bakin is the very romancist who, delighted overmuch with parading all his unparalleled wide reading, too frequently and unnecessarily cites from or allocates to numberless facts and sayings, whose sources are often hidden considerably out of the way. You have a special study termed Shakesperiana, and so in truth to provide for the trial we are about we are in urgent need of a Bakiniana, as an urgent necessity to the credit of their own literatures.
With all these these [sic] precautions in my mind, I have carefully examined for last one month, some forty of Bakin's romances - all that are accessible for me in this small town. Though there are many of them that are each viewed by different critics his chef-d'oeuvre, yet I ascertain they are all so tedious and somewhat complicated as sufficiently to discourage at the outset the English reader who is but a tyro to Japanese subjects. So, only the conclusion I have eventually arrived at is towards naming the Musobyoe Kocho Monogatari, or ' A Dreamer's Butter-fly Tale,' 9 books, as the best of Bakin's that suit your purpose best. This is an allegory of the nature of Swift's 'Gulliver's Travels.' Its plan is briefly thus. A man of no little sophistry, self-assuming there is no more knowledge for him to seek in his own land, daily indulges in the insatiable hope of preternaturally travelling all over the world and observe every novelty spick & span. One day, it happens that a godlike old man visits him in a vision, and instructs him how to achieve his chimerical feat. He acts as was instructed, and successively sojourns in the following countries:
(1) The Country of Infancy; (2) of Lust (High Grade); (3) of Lust (Middle and Low Grade); (4) of Drunkenness; (5) of Greed; (6) of Trouble; (7) of Sorrows; (8) of Falsehood; (9) of Happiness. To each country one of the 9 books are devoted. Its whole contents taken together make up the summa summarum of all thoughts upon these mental states and motives in the Far East from immemorial antiquity down to the time the book was published in, i.e. 1809-10. It is replete with clever remarks, wise philosophy, and amusing and instructive stories; and its scope is wide and its episodes are diverse and concerns all institutional features, supreme or mean; so that the topics and allusions in the whole work, if properly commented on, are tantamount to form a most profitable mine of informations on Oriental lores - literary, philosophical, ethical, historical, biographical, mythological, ethnological, sociological, and whatnot. Such being the characteristics of the 'Butter-fly Tale,' once if it be carefully translated with excellent notes, it will be sought after by all European readers already interested or seeking to be interested in things Japanese with the same assiduity with which we Orientals do repeatedly perused your Burton's 'Anatomy of Melancholy,' which, besides recreating our minds with its morals, adds much to our knowledge by means of its multifarious quotations ever useful and entertaining. Verily, as was the 'Anatomy' treated by Johnson, the 'Butter-fly Tale' is the only book that ever took me out of bed 30 minutes sooner than I wished to get up.
As my humble & undeserving name so frequently figured in the Japanese & English periodicals, such as Nature and Notes and Queries -numerous are invitations from abroad of late--sent me to publish some of my MSS or to engage me in some important translations--the proposal, among others, of the United States Government made two years since was particularly liberal and alluring. These, however, I always declined, because I am unceasingly busy in my own studies, and am sojourning in this small town for last 4 years, making it a station whence to make various explorations into deep mountains and over the sea in order to complete my collection of the lower plants in this part, for which cause, already I have spent all 8 years since my return from London.
Notwithstanding, now that you have done me an honor with your fiduciary inquiry, accompanied with a reference to the name F. Vr. Dickins, who use forever to patronize me with his through [sic] discernment as for what sort of man I am and what ability or inability is my endowments, I must this time make an exception to my custom and rule in complying with your behest, provided the terms I subjoin be accepted by you. You say you want the best work of Bakin in a literal translation. This is extremely hard to perform. One insurmountable difficulty is that, the Butter-fly Tale, as is characteristic with all Japanese belles-lettres, so abounds with the plays upon words which, though indispensably embellishing and highly graceful in in [sic] original sayings, would appear much abnormal in its English transliteration. Formerly, I know you also had a frequent use of puns in your writings, especially in poetry, but even then never so copiously as in Japanese literature, in which both the poem and the prose equally adapt them so often. Thus, even if a Japanese paronomasias be happily rendered into English, the Englishman, whose prose now very seldom admits such, would find in it but a downright farce, just as though a drowsy grimalkin might result should one attempt to portray a spirited tiger with insufficient paints. When you remind how comparatively few persons in your country can claim to thoroughly understood some of Shakespeare's plays rich in puns, say "Love's Labor's Lost" which no Japanese can translate into his own tongue, you can easily form an idea how far more difficult it would be to interplet[sic] the Japanese plays upon words into good English. However, to omit them entirely in the translation is surely a deprivation of its beauty. Of course, we can help the best puns in the text with exhaustive notes, but it will be against your usage to cram a romance with tiresome rhetorical explanations, which, but for some philological or linguistic specialists, would not receive much attention from ordinary readers. After careful deliberations, therefore, in all Mr. Dickins's translations, in which I often assisted him, as well as in that of the 'Japanese Thoreau of the Twelfth Century' he and I have done conjointly for the Royal Asiatic Soc. London, I adopted a method of my own to stick to as fast and to follow as long as possible, one of the two parallel chains of thought in the punning passage, giving a very brief foot-note just to mark there is a pun in the original.
Now a few words upon the notes other than on the puns we have just been upon. I know well of course the text of a storybook is too frail to bear a ponderous burden of so numerous researches and the lengthy annotations injure the symmetry of the book as product of fine art. On the other hand, I perceive much truth in the Chinese saying, 'Terse writing is attainable only after amassed erudition' and practically, as Isaac Taylor has uttered, 'It is easier to condense than to expand.' So, if I should prove to have given notes in superabundance for explaining all matters of however slight concern with the text of the Butter-fly Tale ---comprising the Japanese, Chinese and Indian names, customs, beliefs, things, practices, history, folklore, and whatnot--- there would ensue no positive harm, for, then it will be tolerably easy for you to find a competent editor therefore and let him review whole my MS., set in order and shap [sic] more agreeable to the English readers, and by his deft winnowing and pruning, let him freely modulate to a density fit to your purpose the notes I shall have lavished prolixly upon every points seemingly unintelligible to most Englishmen --- if my MS be preserved carefully, it can serve you when in future may an occasion need an enlarged edition of the book. Before all and after all, let me once more repeat that, for the translation of this sort of literature to be interesting and useful, it is particularly necessary to have, at least in its draught, those notes ample and extensive even to a degree of some weariness to go over, for, as again the canon has given us instruction, 'The public is surprisingly ignorant, and is grateful for explicit information on matters which are supposed to be common knowledge,' the remark specifically applicable to the present case.
To such an editorship I deem Mr. Dickins the very fit man, and as you have his acquaintance, you will do well to ask his assistance on your own account. If he is perfectly healthy, he will never decline this because of the friendship he so long cherishes towards me. But if it happens that his hygienic condition deters him from accepting your offer, I would [sic] that you should ask the help in the task of Sir Robert K. Douglas or of Mr. Arthur Morrison, with both of whom I was in intimacy during my long stay in London. Sir Robert might consider the work rather irksome on the score of his age as well as of his having experienced not so much connexion with Japan as he ever does so prominently with China. Mr. Morrison, though not versed in any oriental language, yet he uses to take great interest in things Japanese, add to which he has this advantage that he is himself an eminent novel writer, processing every requisite talent about such publications. As regards the pictures, of which your intended use we might need insertion, it will be easy for you to have them photogravured from an illustrated copy which I shall send you if you like. One day in 1893, I was shown by the late Sir A. Wollaston Franks in the British Museum MS. Scroll of the Butter-Fly Tale, with most sumptuous paintings which doubtless is still in the MS. Department of that institution and may serve your purpose.
As for the charge I should make for the translation and all its accessory works, it is not easy to give answer, for, to what utmost pitch I might strain my energy and skill, it can never be appropriately gauged. Two years ago the Agricultural Bureau of the U.S. Government pressingly requested me to translate for their sake some few chapters of a Chinese botanical work relating to the oranges, making the tender of an unusual sum per lines or per words. This I declined to the last though repeatedly asked, because I considered such proffers could have no faculty of judgment; for, whilst it is very easy for any translator to make his version unnecessarily prolonged and verbose, compactness and terseness are unfailingly the outcome of only excessively cudgeling the brains. In the days I served in the South Kensington Museum, I worked about 6 hours daily and was paid 21S. per diem and that work was no hard one at all; it consisted of simply transliterating the titles of Japanese prints, translating brief explanations thereon, and giving their dates and artists' names; in short, my office was to act as a provider of raw materials for the museum catalogue makers. I was then leading quite a student's life, always alone, without family cares and behaved myself as I wished. Now I have a family made up of 4 persons, all dependent only on my resource, am concerned with a local newspaper, unceasingly writing to native and foreign periodicals, often called for as a connoisseur; but above all, I am these 8 years seriously busying myself in scientifically collecting and researching on the lower microscopic plants of this part, which ever severely tells on my means and time. As you might have learnt from Mr. Dickins, I am of such inborn habit that I cannot do any work in a slipshod, perfunctory manner, but do persistently apply myself with all my might, always holding in high esteem the Buddhist moralization, 'Even to attack a single rabbit, the august lion departs himself with all his ardor.' So, it is no extraordinally [sic] happening for my servant to hear me bustle amongst the heaps of books an entire night, for hitting on a single required pat expression, or to see me hurry over 2-3 miles' distance only in order to secure accurate citations. So over-industriously I was to toil, for it is my firm convention from parallel examples in my botanical gathering, that any work whereon the author himself is aware that it is but passably done, can never claim a perpetual reputation. To accomplish the translation in question, therefore, I must bring here all of the reference and cross-reference books from my extensive library kept 70 miles away over the sea - the passage frequently perilous, must qualify myself for the diction and phraseology by utilizing every available leisure for wide and assiduous reading in English, must eagerly hunt up the facts & passages for the notes, must exhaust my faculty to render as clear as possible the senses of all Japanese, Chinese & Sanskrit words the romance contains, and I must labor arduously to furnish the notes, not only to make the book interesting and instructive to its readers but also to fit out its editor with materials enough to make his view very just and much comprehensive. But most momentous of all, my present course of pursuits is that I must unavoidably curtail the time, which I otherwise would apply to my scientific researches, by seven or eight hours everyday, and more over often jumping out of my bed for writing when a flash of happy idea passes on my nightly meditation. [sic] - such diminution of time available for plant studies necessitating the postponement of what I could finish this year to the following one. Down to twenty years ago, Japan was a country very easy for living. Since the late wars with China and Russia the tide of fortune has remarkably turned; now it is a region hardest to settle in. Owing to our national debts so enormously contracted, the taxes the people bear are unprecedentedly heavy, the obvious consequence of which being everything high in price, everybody short of means. And alas, my too long residence abroad has made me a complete European, who cannot subsist here upon scanty food and poor stipend such as bulk of the Japanese is inured to; which fact makes my expenditure here unusually large.
Taking all these into consideration, I shall now reply to your favor with the subjoined prospects. The entire work you require will occupy 8 months, and you will remunerate me for the labor with the sum of £120 which is to be paid me in this way: you will remit to me £30, for, without beholding this earnest pledged, all my family would unitedly object to my troubling myself with what appear to them quite erratic & risky a task, so that consequently I may be unable to make an adequate preparation therefore.
7/1/1909
Mr. Minakata Kumagusu
Dear Sir,
Mr. F. Victor Dickins tells us of your wonderful knowledge of Japanese & of English.
We should like to try the experiment of issuing one of the very best of Bakin's novels in a literal translation, with short notes explaining names & customs, which are unintelligible to an ordinary English reader. If you would care to undertake this task, will you kindly suggest a novel & let us know what charge you would make for the work & we shall see if we can afford it?
Yours very truly,
Gowans & Gray Ltd.,
A.G. Director
30/4/1909
Mr. Kumagusu Minakata, Tanabe, Kii, Japan
Dear Sir,
We have received your letter of 19th Apr, and beg to thank you for the most interesting letter we have ever received.
We can see quite clearly that in the circumstances it is impossible for you to accept less than the price you mention (130) & it is with the greatest regret that we are obliged to say that we cannot in the meantime, afford to pay so much. Perhaps we shall be able to do so at some future time.
The writer is himself deeply interested in Japanese & has read in the original Bakin's "Yumiharidzuki" & "Raigo Ajari," also part of the "Nanka no Yume." He is therefore able to appreciate what you say.
We have pleasure in sending you with our compliments a set of our "Nature Books," which we hope you will like.
Yours truly
GOWANS & GRAY LTD.,
A.G. DIRECTOR
Back to: Matsui, "On the Drafts of Minakata's Letter to Gowans Publishing Company"