著者

大村 梓 大村 梓 OMURA Azusa オオムラ アズサ Omura Azusa

出版者

山梨県立大学

雑誌

山梨国際研究 : 山梨県立大学国際政策学部紀要 (ISSN:21874336)

巻号頁・発行日

no.11, pp.1-10, 2016-03-05

---

The Meiji Restoration (1868) required Japanese to create a new kind of written language appropriate for describing modern Japan. Some novelists maintained a traditional style influenced by the Chinese classics,others actively learned new expressions from translations of Western literature. Horiguchi Daigaku was one of the most important of the translators through the Meiji, Taishô and Shôwa periods. He cultivated his passion for literature by composing traditional verse in the genre called Tanka and also Shintaishi (a new style of poetry), and further translated French poetry. Gekka no ichigun(Poets Under the Moon), a translation volume of 340 poems written by 66 French poets, was published in 1925 and it gave an excellent start to his career as a translator. Aside from poetry, he translated some French modernist novels, especially the fiction of Paul Morand. Most Japanese translations of Morand's novels were made by Horiguchi and Morand had been unknown before Horiguchi introduced him to Japanese literary society. Horiguchi repeatedly wrote of Morand as a modernist writer and argued his language was exotic and novel. This perspective undeniably influenced Japanese readers' views of Morand's works. This paper will focus on three issues in order to investigate how the reputation of Paul Morand was created in Japanese literary society of the 1920s and 1930s. First of all, evaluating Horiguchi Daigaku as a translator in respect of his influence on the reputation of Morand's works. Second, describing how Horiguchi's reading of Morand's novels guided readers' understanding of Morand's use of language and alsoof the author himself. Third, drawing a picture of how literary society in Japan at that time vitally needed something exotic that could satisfy their aspiration for western/ modern culture. I will demonstrate howMorand's Japanese translations were influenced by Horiguchi's reputation as a translator, his essays on Morand and contemporary Japanese literary trends.