Oscar Wilde and Honma Hisao, the First Translator of De Profundis into Japanese

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This essay focuses on the activities of Honma Hisao, who merits attention as the first Japanese to translate Oscar Wilde's De Profundis. Honma also introduced Wilde's other works relating to the theory of aestheticism and wrote a doctoral dissertation with the title "A Study of the Aesthetic Movement in Modern England." I am concerned to highlight the sequence in which Wilde's works were introduced, those aspects of Oscar Wilde's oeuvre that were—and were not—readily received by young Japanese intellectuals of the late Meiji and early Taisho periods, and the influence Oscar Wilde exerted on Japanese literature. Through this process, it will become apparent that the social and literary needs of the time and the interest and enthusiasms of those involved in the translation endeavor were necessary conditions for the successful introduction of not only Wilde but any Western writer into Japan. The possibility that Honma's very distinctive personal and provincial background
International Research Center for Japanese Studiesの論文