Apart from the changes made to the Chinese protagonist and the suspension of the serialization in Qing yi bao, Liang Qichao translated Chance Meetings into elegant Chinese prose and transposed most of the classical Chinese poems verbatim. That Liang already began to translate this work aboard the ship on the way into exile, even though his knowledge of the Japanese language at that time must have been rudimentary at best, is suggestive of how Chinese literati regarded this language. To Liang Qichao and many of his contemporary Chinese peers, Japanese was chiefly considered as the language for mediating translations of modern Western discourse into Chinese. In his 1899 essay “Lun
xue Riben wen zhi yi ” (Advantages of Learning Japanese), for example,
Liang Qichao emphasized that China could introduce Western knowledge necessary for the country’s modernization much faster and more efficiently by using its Japanese translations as an intermediary than trying to directly grapple with the Western originals. While dismissively claiming that “there is nothing in Eastern [i.e., Japanese] scholarship that does not come from the West” and that “Eastern learning cannot match Western learning,”41 Liang still underlined the advantages of acquiring reading skills in Japanese due to the swiftness of the learning process, as he insisted, “those who learn Japanese can see initial results in a few days and completely master it in a few months.”42 For the Chinese who felt mounting worries about the fate of the country faced with the imminent
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41 Liang Qichao, “Dongji yuedan, xulun ” (1902), in Yinbingshi heji: wenji, vol.4, p.82. 42 Liang Qichao, “Lun xue Riben wen zhi yi ” (1899), in Yinbingshi heji: wenji, vol.4,
challenges of modernization, Japanese was such a useful tool that his teacher Kang Youwei extolled, “I will use the West as the cow, Japan as the farmer, and eat it [the essence of Western scholarship] in my armchair.”43 Liang’s view of this language was crystalized in a reading manual that he and his fellow expatriates compiled around 1900.
Entitled Hewen handu fa (How to Read Written Japanese in Chinese), this
popular textbook was premised on the eccentric concept that every single Japanese sentence had a corresponding Chinese phrase upon which it was based, and all it took to read it was just to recover that “original” phrase following a fixed set of simple rules.
Three and a half decades later, Zhou Zuoren (1885-1967), the prominent Chinese
writer and scholar of Japanese literature, whom I examine in Chapter Five, lamented that Liang Qichao’s popularized method had caused so much misunderstanding, and criticized its underpinning idea that ignored the simple fact that “Japanese, in the end of the day, is a foreign language.”44 While Zhou Zuoren thus recognized Japanese as a “foreign language,” and Japanese materials as originals with authority, Liang and his contemporaries took Japanese mainly as the language that mediates translation of Western texts into Chinese, seeing little literary value in Japanese writing itself.
The image of Japan as a medium for China to introduce modern civilization constitutes a cliché upheld by many scholars even today. Liang Qichao, in fact,
understood his translation of Chance Meetings within this precise framework, arguing, “The political novel was most responsible for the day-to-day progress of the political worlds of the United States, England, Germany, France, Austria, Italy, and Japan. As a
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43 Kang Youwei, “Riben shumu zhi, zixu ” (c.1897), in Kang Youwei quanji, vol.3,
p.268.
certain English gentleman has said, the novel is the soul of a nation. What could be truer than this? I have especially chosen one that was written by an eminent Japanese scholar and is closely related to the contemporary affaires of China. I shall translate it in
installments and publish in the end of each issue. May the patriotic men appreciate it!”45 So Liang Qichao closed his well-known preface to his translation of Chance Meetings, published in the first issue of Qing yi bao in 1898. By rendering into Chinese the political novel that had allegedly been “most responsible” for political modernization in Japan as well as in the West, Liang intended to similarly bring about political reforms in China.
He thus took Shiba Shirō’s work as a medium through which a Chinese audience was to
gain knowledge about modern civilization and introduce it into their country. Scholars, however, have often overlooked the structural condition that made Japanese writing such a transparent and convenient intermediary for the Chinese to transplant Western knowledge. The status of Japanese as a functional medium for such double translation, in fact, constitutes the exact flipside of the fact that the unique translational relationship between the host and the intermediary languages, Chinese and Japanese, was built upon the thick trans-regional cultural tradition. The pre-vernacular prose style, the kanbun kundoku tai, prevailingly used in many early-modern Japanese publications including Shiba Shirō’s novel, played a particularly decisive role in Liang’s and his contemporary Chinese literati’s translation and interpretation of Western
discourse, via Japanese. This early-modern Sino-Japanese translational relationship, therefore, bespeaks a paradoxical symbolic configuration where the very working of the modern spread of knowledge following the civilizational hierarchy, which positions the !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
45 Liang Qichao, “Yi yin zhengzhi xiaoshuo xu ” (1898), Qing yi bao 1, reprint, vol.1,
West at the center, Japan on a periphery, and China on a further periphery, hinged on the East Asian transnational cultural tradition. To adapt Spivak’s oft-quoted notion, exploring this “politics of double translation” is undoubtedly a key to the understanding of early-twentieth-century East Asian cultural modernities.46
The beginning of Chance Meetings and its translation illustrate this paradoxical structure. In the opening scene, the Japanese hero Tōkai Sanshi visits the Independence Hall in Philadelphia and recalls the history of the American Revolutionary War.47
Original
Tōkai Sanshi one day climbed the Independence Hall in Philadelphia, and looked up to see the Liberty Bell and down to read the Declaration of Independence. He was overwhelmed by his emotions as he recalled the nobleness of the American people who had raised these righteous banners to remove the tyranny of the British king and could become an independent, free nation. With his emotions welling up, he was leaning against the window and looking out, when two women climbing up the spiral staircase suddenly caught his eye. They had their faces covered with thin green clothes, hidden in the shades; a slight fragrance lingered. They had hats with white feather, wore short silk crepes, and trailed gorgeously patterned long skirts. Their elegance was striking.
Chinese Translation
Tōkai Sanshi one day climbed the Independence Hall in Philadelphia, and looked up to see the Liberty Bell and down to read the Declaration of Independence.
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46 See: Gayatri Spivak, “The Politics of Translation.”
Deeply moved, he recalled the time when the American people had raised these righteous banners to remove the harsh laws imposed by the British and could finally become an independent, free nation. Leaning against the window and looking out, he remembered their noblesse; looking down and up, he felt a rush of emotion. Suddenly, two women climbed up the spiral staircase. They had their faces covered with thin green clothes, hidden in the shades; a slight fragrance lingered. They had hats with white feather, wore short silk crepes, and trailed gorgeously patterned long skirts. Their elegance appeared carefree and subtle. In Shiba Shirō’s original, composed against the backdrop of the rising Freedom and Popular Rights Movement, the narrator uses notions that were newly coined in Chinese
characters to translate Western concepts, such as “jiyū ” (liberty), “dokuritsu ”
(independence), and “jishu no tami ” (free nation), thereby praising values of
modern civilization embodied by the independence of the United States. Liang Qichao’s
Chinese translation transposes these words (“ziyou ,” “duli ,” “zizhu zhi min
”), and thus provides the Chinese audience with the same perspective on modern civilization as that with which the original narrative opens. This perspective, however, soon becomes distracted as the silhouettes of two elegantly dressed women enter the protagonist’s sight. At that very moment, the eyes of the readers of the Chinese
translation must also be caught by the materiality of the host language, as Liang Qichao’s translation starts to assume the formal characteristics of classical Chinese parallel prose (pian ti wen ).48 Not only does the translator provide orthodox prosody based on four- and six-syllable phrase units, but he also appends a phrase not present in the
original, “daidang jingmu ” (carefree and subtle), in the end of the quoted
passage to make a balancing couplet with the preceding expression, “fengya gaobiao !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
48 Saitō Mareshi, in his examination of Liang Qichao’s translation, also points out that this passage has the
” (elegance). (See the wave-underlined part.) In inviting Chinese readers to
witness the archetypal landscape of modern civilization, Liang, in a contradictory gesture, treats their ears with a familiar rhythm.
The two women, who will soon turn out to be Yūran and Kōren, the expatriates from Spain and Ireland, also reflect on the history of the War of Independence and praise the American Revolution for its having given birth to “a wealthy and strong state of civilization.” Their voices, however, take on a lamenting tone, as they contrast the American achievement with the adverse situations of their nations. Overhearing their conversation, Sanshi evokes an anachronistic landscape that is completely heterogeneous to the scene in front of his eyes, the one of the “free” state of “civilization.”49
Original
Listening to that [conversation between the two women], Sanshi could not help wondering why, those elegant, beautiful women, even though they lived in the country of liberty and were enjoying the benefits of civilization, were despairing and sorrowful so sincerely that they reminded him of the emotions of Wang Dao, who had gathered with his fellows at the New Pavilion in the last days of the Jin court, and been indignant at the sight of alien mountains and rivers and shed tears like the hostages of the Chu vainly wearing the crown of the south. Sanshi could not help being suspicious.
!
Chinese Translation
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Listening to that [conversation between the two women], Sanshi secretly suspected, thinking that it was indeed odd that those beautiful women, even though they lived in the country of liberty and were enjoying the benefits of civilization, were despairing and sorrowful, just as the worthy men gathered at the New Pavilion in the last days of the Jin court had shed the face-to-face tears of the Chu hostage, lamenting that the mountains and rivers were already not the same. In this odd passage, while the two heroines visualize the epic of modern nation building in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Sanshi imagines the landscape of the southern city of
Jiankang in fourth-century China. This passage, in fact, alludes to an episode that
appears in classic sources such as the eminent fifth-century compilation of tales, Shishuo xinyu (The New Account of the Tales of the World). This well-known story goes that when the Western Jin Dynasty (265-316) fell and relocated its capital from the
northwestern city of Luoyang to Jiankang in the unfamiliar south, the general Wang
Dao (c.267-c.330) and his fellows gathered at the New Pavilion for feasts. A person
remarked, “Though winds and sunshine are not unlike [Luoyang], mountains and rivers
look truly different!” (zheng zi you shanhe zhi yi ) and “everybody
looked at each other and shed tears” (jie xiang shi liulei ). Wang Dao then
told them not to “face to each other like the hostages of the Chu” (zuo Chu qiu xiang dui
) and work together to restore the dynasty.50 Wang Dao is remembered for his contribution to the foundation of the Eastern Jin Dynasty (317-420) based in the south,
which succeeded the Western Jin. These remarks by Wang Dao recorded in Shishuo
xinyu further allude to an ancient anecdote that is documented in a canonical commentary,
known as the Zuo commentary, to one of the Confucian Classics, Chunqiu (The
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Spring and Autumn Annals, c.4th C. BCE). The episode is about “the hostages of the Chu,” the ancient southern state (?-223 BCE), who were captured by its adversary Jin
(11th C. BCE-376 BCE) and “shackled, wearing the crown of the south” (nanguan er zhi
), remembering their home country.51 The Japanese author thus associates the
Wang Dao anecdote taken from Shishuo xinyu with this ancient history that his source refers to, thereby composing a loaded phrase, “[Wang Dao and his fellows had] been indignant at the sight of alien mountains and rivers and shed tears like the hostages of the Chu vainly wearing the crown of the south.” Comprehending this network of signifiers based on the canons of classical Chinese literature, the translator Liang Qichao renders the convoluted Japanese passage succinctly into two six-syllable phrases, “[the two women appeared as though they] had shed the face-to-face tears of the Chu hostage, lamenting that mountains and rivers were already not the same.” Liang Qichao also adds
a four-syllable phrase “qieqie yizhi ” (secretly suspected) in the beginning of
the passage, in order to maintain prosody in the style of parallel prose. (See the wave- underlined parts.)
This example indicates that just as Wang Dao and his peers, mentioned in Shishuo xinyu,expressed their emotions and loyalty to the fallen dynasty by alluding to the Zuo
commentary in fourth-century Jiankang, so does the novel’s hero articulate the emotions he perceives in the voices of the women by referring to the precedents from classical Chinese literature. The Spanish and Irish expatriates imply the emotions of sorrow for the ruin of their countries and sustained loyalty to them, and they touch the heartstrings of
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51 See: the entry for the ninth year of the reign of the Duke Cheng of Lu (Chenggong jiu nian ) in
Sanshi, who, now on foreign soil, also experienced the demise of the regime he had pledged loyalty to. While the Chu hostage anecdote in the ancient Zuo commentary serves as a “topos” for conveying the emotion of loyalism in the narrative in the fifth- century Chinese source, that Wang Dao story likewise functions as a “topos” for describing the same emotion in the nineteenth-century Japanese political novel. Liang Qichao’s rendition, moreover, suggests that such a coded communication by means of the literary language is also realized between the Japanese author and the Chinese translator; fathoming the whole network of signifiers concerning loyalism in the original, Liang Qichao succeeds in transposing into Chinese a narrative woven with intricate references to these literary precedents. By associating the modern imperative of building a “wealthy and strong state of civilization” with the old emotions of dynastic loyalism and
civilizational restoration articulated in Wang Dao’s reference to the ancient Chu hostage tale, the Japanese text transforms the meanings of the universal ideas of modernity –– such as “liberty,” “[national] independence,” and “civilization” –– from those bestowed by the historical experience of the American Revolution. Such idiosyncratic
reinterpretation is faithfully reproduced in the Chinese translation. This unique literary communication between the Japanese author and the Chinese translator, just like the one between Wang Dao and his fellows in the fourth century, is contingent upon their shared literary tradition.