Four-Character Idioms and the Rhetoric of Japanese Shakespeare Translation

Daniel Gallimore

doi:10.18778/2083-8530.23.02

Authors

Daniel Gallimore Kwansei Gakuin University, Japan https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2839-4710

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-8530.23.02

Keywords:

Japanese writing system, yoji jukugo, Matsuoka Kazuko, idiomatic expression, visualization, classical rhetoric, malapropism

Abstract

Yoji jukugo are idioms comprised of four characters (kanji) that can be used to enhance the textuality of a Japanese Shakespeare translation, whether in response to Shakespeare’s rhetoric or as compensation for the tendency of translation to be carried out at a lower textual register than the source. This article examines their use in two translations each of Julius Caesar by Matsuoka Kazuko (2014) and Fukuda Tsuneari (1960) and of The Merry Wives of Windsor by Matsuoka (2001) and Odashima Yūshi (1983); in both cases Matsuoka uses significantly more yoji jukugo than her predecessors. In the Julius Caesar translations their usage is noticeable in the set speeches by Antony and Brutus in 3.2, and commonly denote baseness or barbarity. In the Merry Wives translations they commonly denote dissolute behaviour, often for comic effect, and can even be used malapropistically in the target language.

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Author Biography

Daniel Gallimore, Kwansei Gakuin University, Japan

Daniel Gallimore has been teaching English and English literature at Japanese universities since 2003. His doctoral thesis Sounding Like Shakespeare: A Study of Prosody in Four Japanese Translations of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ was published by Kwansei Gakuin University Press in 2012, and an essay on the pioneer of Japanese Shakespeare translation, ‘Tsubouchi Shōyō and the beauty of Shakespeare translation in 1900s Japan’, in Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, Appopriation and Performance, vol. 13 (ed. José Manuel González, 2016). He is currently working on a monograph on Shōyō and Shakespeare. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2839-4710

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