Jessica Chiba
Translators are often unmentioned, unnoticed, and praised, if at all, only when they have successfully remained inconspicuous(*1). An exhibition that honours the work of a particular translator is thus a welcome break from this tradition. And who more deserving of celebration than Kazuko Matsuoka, the first Japanese woman, and only the third Japanese person, to have completed the translation of all of Shakespeare’s plays? Yushi Odashima might be credited as the translator who established the current standard of translating into the colloquial Japanese of the day, making Shakespeare accessible for a wider public, and it is no wonder that his translations from the 1970s dominated the stage well into the 1990s(*2). But what was modern in Odashima’s day is no longer so, and Matsuoka has produced a complete set of readily comprehensible and performable translations that update Shakespeare for the modern generation, becoming the standard text of our day(*3). It is unsurprising that, unlike many translators, Matsuoka has not remained unnoticed, winning awards, appearing in numerous newspaper and magazine articles and television interviews, and having academic articles written about her work; she herself adds to this visibility, publishing columns, articles and books in which she discusses her work as translator. Her achievement speaks for itself, and deserves to be spoken of.
When I think of Matsuoka’s translations of Shakespeare, I think of love. No doubt every translation of Shakespeare is a labour of love, for in a country where his works have already been translated, a new translation might be desirable but not strictly necessary, and a translator who takes on Shakespeare must know the works,and, even better, love them. Matsuoka’s love for Shakespeare is manifest in all the dedication she has put into working with actors and directors, and in what she says about her translations. Her translator’s afterwords are full of her admiration of Shakespeare’s artistry; indeed it would appear that the more difficulty Shakespeare’s words have given her, the greater her wonder and appreciation. For instance, in the afterwords to Much Ado About Nothing and The Merry Wives of Windsor Matsuoka notes her difficulty and delight in translating verbal tics and malapropisms(*4). As Dirk Delabastita notes, malapropisms ‘not only confront two conceptual meanings but also two styles, so that language is being made “palpable” with regard to its sociolinguistic stratification as well as its structural properties of forms and conceptual meaning’(*5).
Those misuses of language anachronistically referred to as malapropism are not only amusing, but complex, or rather, they are humorous in their ability to signify in multifaceted ways. Shakespeare takes evident delight in the misuse of words, not just for comedic purposes, but in their capacity to reveal a character’s ignorance, attempts to seem more learned than they are, nervousness, or even what we might now call Freudian slips. But involved wordplay such as puns and malapropisms, can cause no end of frustration for translators, who must make choices about whether to preserve the literal meaning and lose the joke, or find, if possible, a substitute that will create a similar network of inferred meaning for a native speaker of the target language. It is a testament to Matsuoka’s genuine enjoyment of her task that she speaks of such difficulties with delight, treating them as an amusing challenge rather than a difficulty to overcome. Thus in the afterword to her translation of Much Ado About Nothing, Matsuoka writes with characteristic merriment of the way she carries around a notebook of Japanese malapropisms to which she adds to whenever she hears slips of the tongue in conversations as she goes about her life(*6) The attractiveness of Matsuoka’s renderings of such jokes no doubt lie in this spirit of discovery: rather than trying to translate Shakespeare’s jokes, she finds in herself the same sort of enjoyment of language Shakespeare must have experienced to write as he did.
One would be doing a disservice to Matsuoka to imply that light-heartedness characterises her entire approach to translation, however. Anyone who has read anything she has written about her experience of translating Shakespeare’s works will have discerned the extent to which this is not just a translation job but part of her life, sometimes on a personal level — as when she speaks of how Prospero put her in mind of her own father, incarcerated in the Soviet Union after the war — but also in the effect the smallest word choices have on her(*7) In her afterword to Macbeth, she mentions the way that Macbeth asks the Doctor ‘How does your patient?’ (V. 3. 37) of Lady Macbeth brought tears to her eyes: ‘why couldn’t he have said “How does my wife?”’(*8). If reading Matsuoka’s translations were not enough to convince one that this is Shakespeare mediated through the eyes of a loving reader, then such small indications of her passionate involvement in her translations surely reveal that Matsuoka has given to Japanese readers a complete works of Shakespeare that contains her heart.
Of course, it is not only the personal qualities she brings to her work that make Matsuoka’s translations effective. It is fitting that the Japanese term for ‘translate’,「訳」 can also mean ‘reason’ in the sense of an explanation, for a good translation is also an interpretation. As Susan Bassnett writes, ‘[w]hat the translator provides […] is his or her reading of a text or […] in case of translating for the theatre, a reading devised in collaboration with the other participants in the staging of a work’(*9). Matsuoka has been an invaluable interpreter of Shakespeare in Japan through her translations, in the concise footnotes accompanying those translations, and in her insightful critical publications on Shakespeare. What stands out about Matsuoka’s readings are her search for the「訳」, the reason why things are the way they are. Thus, for instance, she raises an instance when a question from an actor playing Desdemona (Yu Aoi) prompted her to consider why Desdemona responds to Othello’s ‘Well, my good lady […] How do you, Desdemona?’, with ‘Well, my good lord’ (Othello, III. 4. 33-5), a term of address she only uses here(*10). The conclusion she reaches in collaboration with Aoi is that Shakespeare writes a Desdemona replying in playful response to Othello’s overly formal ‘my good lady’ (his normal terms of address include ‘my dear love’, ‘my sweet’ or even ‘chuck’)(*11). In another instance, Matsuoka questions the reason why Ophelia refers to herself, rather uncharacteristically, as ‘the noble mind’ when she returns Hamlet’s ‘rich gifts’ which she claims have ‘waxed poor’ for her (III. 1. 99-100)(*12). Matsuoka’s speculative claim is that when Ophelia returns Hamlet’s gifts, she is speaking words her father has put in her mouth, and that Hamlet’s suddenly colder response ‘Ha, ha! Are you honest?’ (III. 1. 101) indicates that he has noticed, from Ophelia’s choice of words, that her father is behind this act. In support of her deduction, Matsuoka points out that the conversation between Reynaldo and Polonius in Act II, scene 1 establishes him as a character who gives people minute instructions about how to act and what to say. Ezra Pound reportedly claimed that ‘there was no more thorough form of literary criticism than translation’, and it would be little exaggeration to claim that the translator of Shakespeare knows the text better than most academics and actors, since they must make choices about every word and every preposition(*13). It is an oft-repeated cliché that translation involves inevitable losses, but Matsuoka exemplifies the fact that translation is also a search for meanings and explanations that have the potential to inform scholarship or acting choices in material ways.
Matsuoka’s translations also enrich the scholarly community in Japan, not only by making the works even more accessible to a future generation of scholars who will most likely encounter Shakespeare first in translation, but in giving established scholars additional material for close reading. Her translations and commentaries are regularly used by Japanese scholars who supplement their close readings of the English lines with interpretations of a translator’s choices, treating the translations like literary criticism. 14 This is similar to the way that scholars may consult the footnotes of an academic edition, but where a footnote is a purely explanatory text — one that is also often provided by a translator — a translated text is a rewording, a work in its own right that requires interpretation in a way that a footnote should not, expanding the potential meanings a critic might consider. Analysing Shakespeare alongside the translator’s text, then, gives the critic a glimpse into the translator’s reading of the text. A modern piece of Japanese criticism that brings translation to bear on interpretation would be thoroughly lacking if it did not reference Matsuoka’s choices alongside the past great translators such as Odashima and Shoyo, not least because, like these past masters, she has completed translating the entire works, providing resources for scholars working on any play, and not just the famous ones.
It is in performance, however, that Matsuoka’s translations have had the biggest impact; especially in her long collaboration with the director, Yukio Ninagawa. While there is an established tradition of translators working alongside directors in Japan, as Odashima did alongside Norio Deguchi, the truly collaborative aspect of Matsuoka’s translations come from her constant attendance at Ninagawa’s rehearsals. Translators may make changes to their otherwise complete manuscripts based on feedback, but it is evident from Matsuoka’s writings that many of her final translations were discovered in her conversations with the actors and director. As she states succinctly in the blurb of Deep Reading Shakespeare, ‘my translations are completed in the rehearsal room’(*15). It is natural to think that a translator can only have benefitted speakers of the language into which they translate, but this theatrical collaboration has ensured Matsuoka’s legacy outside of Japan as well. English reviewers of Japanese Shakespeare productions have often been ‘primarily — and perhaps exclusively — concerned with the visual aspects of a production’, especially when it comes to Ninagawa(*16). However, global audiences who have enjoyed his productions and the performances of other acclaimed Japanese Shakespeare performances such as the Ryutopia Shakespeare series, owe more to Matsuoka than they know. It is not that Shakespeare could not have been performed without this particular set of translations, but as Ryuta Minami points out, ‘a style of translation defines an acting style’(*17). Matsuoka was the specific mediator through whom the texts were brought to life on stage, the translator through whom particular interpretations were made possible.
In Translation Studies it is a topic of debate as to whether a translator is a creator like the author of a work, and it is not a subject that has a ready answer(*18). To some extent a translator creates anew (as Matsuoka’s malapropisms show) but the translation must remain a rendition of the original to be recognised as a translation at all. Yet, without resolving the question of authorship and creativity between Shakespeare and Matsuoka, there can be no doubt that Matsuoka is an artist. In a private conversation about my research on untranslatability, Matsuoka told me that all translation begins with impossibility. Like artists who know that no human art can capture the beautiful view they nevertheless attempt to commit to canvas, translation, for Matsuoka, is to be inspired to try to communicate the beauty she feels when reading or watching Shakespeare. It is to the credit of Chikuma, the publishers of Matsuoka’s translations, that her name features so prominently on the covers of the books.
Instead of the modern tendency of drawing ‘as little attention to the translation and the translator as possible’, the books are presented as part of ‘the complete work of Shakespeare’ with Matsuoka’s name taking pride of place on the spine and cover(*19). This is Matsuoka’s Shakespeare, and long may she be recognised for her outstanding achievement.
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*1 Lawrence Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation, 2nd edn (Abingdon: Routledge, 2008), p.5–7.
*2 Akiko Sano, ‘Shakespeare Translation in Japan: 1868–1998’, Ilha do Desterro, 36 (1999), 337–369 (p.340).
*3 Koshi Odashima, the son of the Shakespeare translator and a translator himself, points out generational differences in the use of language in ‘Jouen Honyaku ni Okeru Gender Ishiki’ [‘Gender Consciousness in Stage Translation’], The Institute for Theatre Research: Bulletin, Waseda University, 1 (2003), 375–382 (p.378).
*4 Kazuko Matsuoka (trans.), The Merry Wives of Windsor (Tokyo: Chikuma, 2001), p.197; Kazuko Matsuoka (trans.), Much Ado About Nothing (Tokyo: Chikuma, 2008), p.187.
*5 Dirk Delabastita, There’s a Double tongue: An Investigation into the Translation of Shakespeare’s Wordplay, with Special Reference to Hamlet (Amsterdam: BRILL, 2021), pp.101–2.
*6 Matsuoka (trans.), Much Ado, p.185.
*7 Kazuko Matsuoka (trans.), The Tempest (Tokyo: Chikuma, 2000), p.168.
*8 William Shakespeare, Macbeth, ed. by Sandra Clark and Pamela Mason, The Arden Shakespeare Third Series (London:
Bloomsbury, 2015) and Kazuko Matsuoka (trans.), Macbeth (Tokyo: Chikuma, 1996), p.186.
*9 Susan Bassnett, Translation (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2013), p.169.
*10 William Shakespeare, Othello, ed. by E. A. J. Honigmann, The Arden Shakespeare Third Series (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1997).
*11 Kazuko Matsuoka, Fukayomi Shakespeare [Deep Reading Shakespeare] (Tokyo: Shinchosha, 2011), p.160.
*12 William Shakespeare, Hamlet, ed. by Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor, The Arden Shakespeare Third Series revised edn (London: Bloomsbury, 2016).
*13 Piotr Kuhiwczak, ‘The Troubles Identity of Literary Translation’, in Translation Today: Trends and Perspectives, ed. by Gunilla Anderman and Margaret Rogers (Clevedon: Multilingal Matters, 2003), p.116.
*14 See, for example, Yukio Kato, ‘Caesarean Section and Death of “Woman”: Was the Riddle in Macbeth Solved?’, Studies in Language and Literature: Literature (Tsukuba University), 35 (1999), 1–20, and Manabu Tsuruta, ‘Rhetorical 'Action' in Early Modern English Writing and Shakespearean Drama’, The Bulletin of Central Research Institute Fukuoka University Series A: Humanities, 16 (2017), 43–53.
*15 Matsuoka, Fukayomi Shakespeare, back cover.
*16 Tetsuo Kishi, ‘Japanese Shakespeare and English Reviewers’, in Shkapeseare and the Japanese Stage, ed. by Takashi Sasayama, J. R. Mulryne, and Margaret Shewring (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp.110–23 (p.119).
*17 Ryuta Minami, ‘Finding a Style for Presenting Shakespeare on the Japanese Stage’, Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, Appropriation and Performance, 14 (2016), 29–42 (p.32).
*18 See, for instance, Claudia Buffagni, Beatrice Garzelli and Serenella Zanotti (eds), The Translator as Author: Perspectives on Literary Translation (Berlin: Lit, 2011) and Hanne Jansen, ‘I’m a Translator and I’m Proud: How Literary Translators View Authors and Authorship’, Perspectives, 27 (2019), 675–688.
*19 Cecilia Alvstad, ‘The Translation Pact’, Language and Literature, 23 (2014), 270–284 (p.276).
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Bibliography
Alvstad, Cecilia, ‘The Translation Pact’, Language and Literature, 23 (2014), 270–284
Bassnett, Susan, Translation (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2013)
Buffagni, Claudia, Garzelli, Beatrice and Zanotti, Serenella (eds), The Translator as Author: Perspectives on Literary Translation (Berlin: Lit, 2011)
Delabastita, Dirk, There’s a Double tongue: An Investigation into the Translation of Shakespeare’s Wordplay, with Special Reference to Hamlet (Amsterdam: BRILL, 2021)
Jansen, Hanne, ‘I’m a Translator and I’m Proud: How Literary Translators View Authors and Authorship’, Perspectives, 27 (2019), 675–688
Kato, Yukio, ‘Caesarean Section and Death of “Woman”: Was the Riddle in Macbeth Solved?’, Studies in Language and Literature: Literature (Tsukuba University), 35 (1999), 1–20
Kishi, Tetsuo, ‘Japanese Shakespeare and English Reviewers’, in Shkapeseare and the Japanese Stage, ed. by Takashi Sasayama, J. R. Mulryne, and Margaret Shewring (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 110–23
Kuhiwczak, Piotr, ‘The Troubles Identity of Literary Translation’, in Translation Today: Trends and Perspectives, ed. by Gunilla Anderman and Margaret Rogers (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 2003)
Odashima, Koshi, ‘Jouen Honyaku ni Okeru Gender Ishiki’ [‘Gender Consciousness in Stage Translation’], The Institute for Theatre Research: Bulletin, Waseda University, 1 (2003), 375–382
Matsuoka, Kazuko (trans.), Macbeth (Tokyo: Chikuma, 1996)
—— (trans.), The Tempest (Tokyo: Chikuma, 2000)
—— (trans.), The Merry Wives of Windsor (Tokyo: Chikuma, 2001)
—— (trans.), Much Ado About Nothing (Tokyo: Chikuma, 2008)
——, Fukayomi Shakespeare [Deep Reading Shakespeare] (Tokyo: Shinchosha, 2011)
Minami, Ryuta, ‘Finding a Style for Presenting Shakespeare on the Japanese Stage’, Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, Appropriation and Performance, 14 (2016), 29–42
Sano, Akiko, ‘Shakespeare Translation in Japan: 1868–1998’, Ilha do Desterro, 36 (1999), 337–369
Shakespeare, William, Othello, ed. by E. A. J. Honigmann, The Arden Shakespeare Third Series (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1997)
——, Macbeth, ed. by Sandra Clark and Pamela Mason, The Arden Shakespeare Third Series (London: Bloomsbury, 2015)
——, Hamlet, ed. by Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor, The Arden Shakespeare Third Series revised edn (London: Bloomsbury, 2016)
Tsuruta, Manabu, ‘Rhetorical ‘Action’ in Early Modern English Writing and Shakespearean Drama’, The Bulletin of Central Research Institute Fukuoka University Series A: Humanities, 16 (2017), 43–53
Venuti, Lawrence, The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation, 2nd edn (Abingdon: Routledge, 2008), p. 5–7.
Dr. JESSICA CHIBA is Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow of the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham. She was awarded her PhD at Royal Holloway, University of London.
Her publications include ‘Lost and Found in Translation: Hybridity in Kurosawa’s Ran’ in Shakespeare Bulletin, 36 (2019), ‘“And Nothing brings Me All Things”: Shakespeare’s Philosophy of Nothing’ in The Routledge Companion to Shakespeare and Philosophy (London: Routledge, 2018). Her first book, Shakespeare’s Ontology (forthcoming), which considers Shakespeare’s treatment of existence from the perspective of philosophical ontology. She is currently working on her postdoctoral project, ‘Shakespeare’s Untranslatability’, funded by the Leverhulme Trust.
Japanese Translation Rieko ISHIBUCHI
RIEKO ISHIBUCHI is Assistant Professor of the Tsubouchi Memorial Theatre Museum, Waseda University. She obtained her PhD at Tokyo Woman’s Christian University in 2020. Her research interests lie in early modern literature and culture, especially Shakespeare’s works and women’s writing. Her publications include ‘The Act of Speaking in Urania and Volpone: From the Viewpoints of Cross-Cultural Awareness and Gender’ in The Green Fuse and the Green Garden: Festschrift in Honour of Hiroto Iwanaga (2020) and ‘The Unmarried Characters in Mary Wroth’s Love’s Victory and Shakespeare’s As You Like It’ (2013). She is teaching at Waseda University, Chuo University and Tokyo Woman’s Christian University.
