Die Übersetzung eines heiklen Konzepts: „Rasse“ in Fukuzawa Yukichis Sekai kunizukushi
Identifiers (Article)
Abstract
The aim of this paper is to retrace the early history of the concept of “race” in Meiji Japan (1868–1912). Similar to numerous other new concepts that were imported in the process of the Meiji Restoration, “race” was also translated into the Japanese language. It was, however, not merely a lexical matter: it meant translating a hegemonic discourse, that under the cover of scientific legitimation was offering a rationale for imperialism. Obviously on the losing side of this discourse, the Japanese translators engaged with it faced a dilemma: “Race” was, after all, part of the “modern” Western knowledge that was eagerly being imported. Yet, it also implicated the inferiority of the Japanese. The Meiji thinker Fukuzawa Yukichi (1835–1901) managed, through a process of translation and adaptation, to resolve this dilemma by rejecting the determinism implied by the notion of “race” without negating the existence of differences between humans. Thereby, he asserted that the Japanese were able to reach the level of civilization displayed by the Western powers.
Statistics
References
Primärquellen
CORTAMBERT, Eugène (1876 [1846]): Cours de Géographie comprenant la Description Physique et Politique et la Géographie Historique des Diverses Contrées du Globe [Einführung in die physische und politische Beschreibung sowie die historische Geografie der verschiedenen Gegenden der Erde]. Paris: Librairie Hachette et Cie.
FUKAMAUCHI, Motoi 深間内基 (1874): Yochi shōgaku 輿地小学 [Eine kurze Studie der Geografie] (Bd. 1). Tōkyō: Meizankaku.
FUKUZAWA, Yukichi (2007): The Autobiography of Fukuzawa Yukichi. Übers. von Kiyooka Eiichi. New York: Columbia University Press.
FUKUZAWA, Yukichi (2008): An Outline of a Theory of Civilization (Bd. 3). Übers. von David A. Dilworth & G. Cameron Hurst. Tōkyō: Keiō University Press.
HORIKAWA, Kensai 堀川建斎 (1872): Chikyū sanbutsu zasshi 地球産物雑誌 [Zeitschrift über die Erzeugnisse der Erde]. Tōkyō: Izumiyahanbee.
Keiō Gijuku 慶應義塾 (Hg.) (1969–1971): Fukuzawa Yukichi zenshū [Fukuzawa Yukichi: Gesamtwerk] 福沢諭吉全集 (Bd.1). Tōkyō: Iwanami shoten.
KNOX, Robert (1850): Races of Men: A Fragment. Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard.
MITCHELL, Samuel Augustus (1865 [1843]): A System of Modern Geography: Political, Physical and Descriptive. Philadelphia: E.H. Butler and Co.
Sekundärquellen
AMEDA, Eiichi (2000): „Fukuzawa no ‚maruhadaka no kyōsō‘ to ‚jinshu kairyō‘ no shisō [Fukuzawas Ideen des „maruhadaka no kyōsō“ und der „Verbesserung der Rasse”] 福沢の「丸裸の競争」と「人種改良」の思想“. In: Tōyō bunka kenkyū 東洋文化研究 2: 385–418.
ANDERSON, Benedict (2006 [1983]): Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.
AUSLIN, Michael R. (2004): Negotiating with Imperialism: The Unequal Treaties and the Culture of Japanese Diplomacy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
BIDDISS, Michael Denis (1975): „The Politics of Anatomy: Dr Robert Knox and Victorian Racism“. In: Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 69, no. 4: 245–250.
BITTERLI, Urs (2004 [1976]): Die ‚Wilden‘ und die ‚Zivilisierten‘. Grundzüge einer Geistes- und Kulturgeschichte der europäisch-überseeischen Begegnung. München: C.H. Beck.
CRAIG, Albert M. (1968): „Fukuzawa Yukichi: The Philosophical Foundations of Meiji Nationalism“. In: WARD, Robert E. (Hg.): Political Development in Modern Japan. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
CRAIG, Albert M. (2009): Civilization and Enlightenment: The Early Thought of Fukuzawa Yukichi. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
FAIRBANK, John K. (Hg.) (1968): The Chinese World Order: Traditional China’s Foreign Relations. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
FREDRICKSON, George M. (1982): White Supremacy: A Comparative Study of American and South African History. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
FREDRICKSON, George M. (2004): Rassismus: Ein historischer Abriß. Hamburg: Hamburger Edition.
GOULD, Stephen Jay (1981): The Mismeasure of Man. New York: Norton.
HANNAFORD, Ivan (1995): Race: The History of an Idea in the West. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
HOWELL, David L. (2005): Geographies of Identities in Nineteenth-Century Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press.
HOWLAND, Douglas R. (2001): Translating the West: Language and Political Reason in Nineteenth-Century Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
KAMEI Shunsuke 亀井俊介 (Hg.) (1994): Kindai Nihon no hon’yaku bunka [Die Übersetzungs-kultur des modernen Japan] 近代日本の翻訳文化. Tōkyō: Chūō kōron sha.
KEEVAK, Michael (2011): Becoming Yellow: A Short History of Racial Thinking. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
KRENN, Michael L (2006): The Color of Empire: Race and American Foreign Relations. Dulles: Potomac Books.
KOWNER, Rotem, Walter DEMEL (Hg.) (2013): Race and Racism in Modern East Asia: Western and Eastern Constructions. Leiden: Brill.
LAUREN, Paul Gordon (1996): Power and Prejudice: The Politics and Diplomacy of Racial Discrimination. Boulder: Westview Press.
LIU, Lydia (1995): Translingual Practice: Literature, National Culture, and Translated Modernity – China, 1900–1937. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
MALIK, Kenan (1996): The Meaning of Race: Race, History and Culture in Western Society. New York: New York University Press.
MARUYAMA, Masao (1986): Bunmeiron no gairyaku o yomu [Bunmeiron no gairyaku lesen] 文明論之概略を読む. 3 Bände. Tōkyō: Iwanami Shoten.
MARUYAMA, Masao, KATŌ Shūichi (1998): Hon’yaku to Nihon no kindai [Übersetzungen und die japanische Moderne] 翻訳と日本の近代. Tōkyō: Iwanami Shoten.
MCFARLAND, Brian James (2002): „From Publisher to Pocket: Interpreting Nineteenth Century American History through the Pocket Maps of Samuel Augustus Mitchell“. MA-Arbeit, University of Texas at Arlington.
MERIDA, Tarik (2020): „A Japanese Anomaly: Theodore Roosevelt and Japan's Racial Identity at the Turn of the Twentieth Century“. In The Asia-Pacific Journal 18, no. 20: 1–16.
MILES, Robert, Malcom BROWN (2003 [1989]): Racism. London: Routledge.
MIYOSHI, Masao (1994): As We Saw Them: The First Japanese Embassy to the United States. New York: Kodansha International.
MONTAGU, Ashley (1997 [1942]): Man’s Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press.
MORRIS-SUZUKI, Tessa (1998): Re-inventing Japan: Time, Space, Nation. New York: Sharpe.
OGUMA, Eiji (1995): Tan’itsu minzoku shinwa no kigen [Über den Ursprung des Mythos der homogenen japanischen Nation] 単一民族神話の起源. Tōkyō: Shin’yōsha.
RUSSEL, John G. (2009): „The Other Other: The Black Presence in the Japanese Experience“. In: WEINER, Michael (Hg.): Japan’s Minorities: The Illusion of Homogeneity. London: Routledge: 84–115.
SAKANO, Tōru 坂野徹 (2005): Teikoku Nihon to jinruigakusha: 1884−1952 nen [Das imperiale Japan und die Anthropologen: 1884–1952] 帝国日本と人類学者 – 一八八四-一九五二年. Tōkyō: Keisō shobō.
SCHEID, Bernhard (2001). „Der Fünf-Artikel-Eid (1868).“ In: „Religion-in-Japan: Ein digitales Handbuch“. Universität Wien: https://www.univie.ac.at/rel_jap/an/Geschichte/ Staatsshinto/5-Artikel-Eid (zuletzt aufgerufen am 29.05.2021).
SEIFERT, Wolfgang (1999): „Westliches Menschenrechtsdenken in Japan. Zur Rezeption einer ‚ausländischen Idee‘ zwischen 1860 und 1890“. In SCHUBERT, Gunter (Hg.): Menschenrechte in Ostasien: Zum Streit um die Universalität einer Idee II. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck: 297–344.
TAKEZAWA, Yasuko (2015): „Translating and Transforming ‚Race‘: Early Meiji Period Textbooks“. In: Japanese Studies 35 no. 1: 5–21.
UCHIYAMA, Akiko (2009): „Translation as Representation: Fukuzawa Yukichi’s Representation of the ‚Others‘“. In MILTON, John, Paul BRANDIA (Hg.): Agents of Translation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company: 63–83.
UCHIYAMA, Akiko (2012): „Assimilation or Resistance? Yukichi Fukuzawa’s Digestive Translation of the West“. In SATO-ROSSBERG, Nana, Judy WAKABAYASHI (Hg.): Translation and Translation Studies in the Japanese Context. London: Continuum: 73–91.
WAKABAYASHI, Bob Tadashi (1992a): Anti-Foreignism and Western Learning in Early Modern Japan: The New Theses of 1825. Cambridge: Harvard East Asian Monographs.
WAKABAYASHI, Bob Tadashi (1992b): „Opium, Expulsion, Sovereignty: China’s Lessons for Bakumatsu Japan“. Monumenta Nipponica 47, no. 1: 1–25.
WAKABAYASHI, Judy (2018): „The Meiji Government’s Strategic Deployment of Non-Fiction Translation as a Vehicle of Modernization“. In: WONG, Lawrence Wang-chi (Hg.): Translation and Modernization in East Asia in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press: 2–30.
WEINER, Michael (1997): „The Invention of Identity: Race and Nation in Pre-war Japan“. In: DIKÖTTER, Frank (Hg.): The Construction of Racial Identities in China and Japan: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press: 96−116.
WILDMAN, Kate Nakai (1980): „The Naturalization of Confucianism in Tokugawa Japan: The Problem of Sinocentrism“. In: Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies (40.1): 157−199.
YANABU, Akira (1991): Modernisierung der Sprache: Eine kulturhistorische Studie über westliche Begriffe im japanischen Wortschatz. Übers. von Florian Coulmas. München: Iudicium.
YONAHA, Jun 與那覇潤 (2003): „Kindai Nihon ni okeru ‚jinshu‘ kannen no hen’yō: Tsuboi Shōgorō no ‚jinruigaku‘ to no kakawari wo chūshin ni [Die Veränderung des Konzepts der Rasse im modernen Japan: Die Anthropologie von Tsuboi Shogorō] 近代日本における「人種」観念の変容“. In: Minzokugaku kenkyū 民族学研究 (68.1): 85–97.
YOUNG, Louise (1997): „Rethinking Race for Manchukuo: Self and Other in the Colonial Context“. In: DIKÖTTER, Frank (Hg.): The Construction of Racial Identities in China and Japan: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press: 158–176.
ZACHMANN, Urs Matthias (2011): „Race without Supremacy: On Racism in the Political Discourse of Late Meiji Japan, 1890-1912“. In: BERG, Manfred, Simon WENDT (Hg.): Racism in the Modern World: Historical Perspectives on Cultural Transfer and Adaptation, edited by Manfred Berg and Simon Wendt. New York: Berghahn Books: 255–279.
