Mohamed Hassan Elnoby
Comparative literature
Graduate school of social-cultural studies, Kyushu University.
alnoby109@yahoo.com
One thousand and one nights has an influence on modern Japanese literature. George Fyler Townsend's revised edition of the one thousand and one nights was the first European literary work to be translated into the Japanese language during the Meiji era, by Nagamine Hideki in 1875, But there is an information emerges from the Edo era documents indicate that the Japanese society knew one thousand and one nights before the date of its first translation even before Meiji period.
This paper is trying to follow this information to find answers about two questions
First, Did Japan knows about one thousand and one nights during the Edo period and whether there was a chance to be translated?
Second, if there was an opportunity to translate, why did not Japanese translators translate one thousand and one nights during the Edo Period?
(Key words; Comparative literature, translation, intercultural studies, Arabic literature , Japanese literature )
Social map of Japanese translation of One thousand and one nights During Edo period
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"The King Shahryar Pardons Scheherazade", by Arthu...It was in 1875, eight years after the Meiji Restoration that the first Japanese translation of One thousand and one nights was made by Nagamine Hideki (1848-1927), a teacher at the Naval Academy. Since then one thousand and one nights has been translated to Japanese language with different aspects and for different proposes.
This paper is an attempt to draw a social map of the translation of one thousand and one nights to the Japanese language before Meiji period concentrated on the last decades of Edo period. The study is a part of thesis address the impact of One thousand and one nights on...