JAITS＜博士論文要旨＞

論文題目：Translated, Embodied, and Performed: The Language of
Shakespeare’s Heroines in Japanese
提出者：酒井 もえ
授与機関：聖心女子大学
取得学位の名称：博士（文学）
学位取得の方法：課程
取得年月日：2022 年 3 月 12 日
要旨

The present dissertation deals with the issues that arise when translating the plays ofWilliam Shakespeare (1564 – 1616) into Japanese, with a special focus on the language offemale characters. Gender in translation poses a challenge for those who translate between
English and Japanese, as the spoken Japanese language is more clearly defined by thespeakers’ social positions (including age, occupation and gender) and their relationships
with the listeners. Thus, an awareness of the various gender identities of the characters inthe source text, as well as how translation may represent gender issues in the context ofthe target text, is essential for a translator of Shakespeare into Japanese .
Despite the importance of gender in Shakespeare translation, however, it has notreceived due scholarly attention owing to various factors both in the context of translation
studies and Shakespeare studies. In the former discipline, for example, discussing theatretranslation has been considered too complex because of the multiple agencies involved
with the act of performing a translated text, such as the author, the translator, the director,
the actor, and the audience. In addition, feminist translation theory has mainly focused ontranslations between European languages. In Shakespeare studies, on the other hand,translation, both textual and performative, has long been considered marginal due to thetendency within the discipline to prioritise Shakespeare’s use of his language. Based on
this awareness, the present dissertation aims to offer relevant analyses of how the languageof Shakespeare’s female characters has been translated into Japanese based on the textual
and contextual evidence of both the source and the target texts, focusing on the Japanesetranslations of three Shakespearean plays with prominent female characters: Romeo andJuliet, The Merchant of Venice, and As You Like It. In order to consider not only the plays
and their translations as written texts but also their effects in performance and roles intheatre history, the discussion is limited to the translations which are recorded to have beenused in theatrical productions, including the works of Tsubouchi Shōyō (1859 – 1935), Doi
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Shunsho (1869 –1915), Fukuda Tsuneari (1912 – 94), Odashima Yūshi (1930 –), MatsuokaKazuko (1942 –), and Kawai Shōichirō (1960 –).
In the various Japanese translations of Romeo and Juliet (1596– 97), it has been notedthat the language of Juliet, the female protagonist, has been translated into a language thatis emphatically “feminine,” overlooking the more complex and multidimensional natureof her language and character in the source text. Matsuoka Kazuko, the first womantranslator of the play to have her translation used in stage productions, claims that she tried
to avoid the overuse of onna kotoba (“women’s language”) in Japanese, which consists ofwords (including personal pronouns), expressions, and grammatical structures that arestrongly associated with femininity, in her translation of Juliet’s speech, opting instead fora more gender-neutral style. Based on the historical development of onna kotoba as a
linguistic resource and the theory of onna kotoba as yakuwarigo [role language], the firstchapter of the dissertation offers an attempt to analyse the various methods of translating
Juliet’s language in relation to both how the character is depicted in the source text andhow the play has been received in Japan.
In the source text, the language of Juliet is characterised by extreme verbal
competence, including the ability to navigate a conversation, use rhetorical devices, referto classical literature, and articulate her desires, all of which helps her become an active
agent in her love affair with Romeo rather than a passive object of love. Suchcharacteristics, strongly in contrast to the gender norms of Elizabethan and J acobeanEngland which praised silence as a feminine virtue, have nevertheless not been fully
represented in the Japanese translations of the play. This may be due to the fact that Juliet
has mainly been perceived in Japan as an innocent and well-born young lady, as well as
the historical Japanese tendency to read the play as a romantic poem rather than as a
dramatic script. The chapter traces the history of the Japanese reception of the play,including various translations and performances, noting a change in the image of both theplay and its heroine in the 1960s, and analyses how it leads to the current situation in Japan,
where multiple translations of Shakespeare coexist.
An important characteristic of theatre translation, which sets it apart from thetranslation of other genres of literature such as novels and poetry, is the fact that a dramatic
text is written to be embodied by actors in performance. In the case of Shakespeare, thefemale characters in the source text were meant to be performed by teenage “boy actors,”
whereas the majority of Japanese translations of his plays would presuppose contemporary
Japanese women in the same roles. Based on this understanding, the second chapter of thedissertation attempts to illustrate, through the early performance history of Shakespeare’s
The Merchant of Venice (1596 – 97) in Japan, the relationship between two different but
intertwined phenomena in Meiji theatre: the introduction of Shakespeare’s works as part108

of the theatrical repertoire and the development of professional “actresses” (joyū). Bothbegan as attempts to modernise the Japanese theatre and thus elevate its cultural status bymaking it more similar to Western drama, which was notably different from Japanesetraditional drama such as kabuki in its primacy of the spoken word over song and dance
and the importance it placed on being “real” and “natural” on stage. Notable actors,
directors and translators of the period, such as Kawakami Otojirō (1864 –1911), Kawakami
Sadayakko (1871– 1946), Doi Shunsho, Tsubouchi Shōyō, and Ichikawa Sadanji II (1880–1940), produced the trial scene from The Merchant of Venice in Meiji Japan to varying
degrees of success, each attempting to produce a “new” and “modern” Shakespearean
production suitable for the new Japanese theatre. Towards the end of the Meiji era, however,the popularity of Shakespeare as a vehicle for the “new” and “modern” Japanese drama
dwindled, while actresses came to be seen as absolutely necessary for the production of
the “new social drama” such as the plays of Ibsen preferred by the younger advocates ofshingeki [“new theatre”]. In the subsequent decades of Taishō and early Shōwa,
Shakespearean drama was mainly appreciated as an object of literary study.
In post-WWII Japan, however, diverse translations and productions of Shakespeare
began to emerge and coexist, partly as a result of the break away from the naturalistic viewof theatre that dominated the Japanese stage in the first half of the twentieth century.
Especially since the 1960s, textual and embodied performances of gender in Japanese
Shakespeare have become more varied and multi-dimensional, transcending the dichotomyof the Japanese versus the Western, the old versus the new, and the performative versus thenaturalistic. Such multiplicity in the performance of gender can be seen most clearly in thelanguages of cross-dressed female characters, and it is in this context that the third chapterof the dissertation discusses As You Like It (1598 – 1600), which contains what is arguably
Shakespeare’s most complex representation of gender in its heroine, Rosalind. As Rosalind,a character that was in all probability played by a young boy in the play’s earliest
performances, disguises herself as a boy called Ganymede, who then assumes the personaof “Rosalind,” a fictional female character invented for her interaction with her loveinterest, Orlando, it may be said that the play thrives on the gender ambiguity of its heroine.
When it is translated into Japanese, however, the target language allows less room for such
ambiguity because of the distinction between male and female speeches. Drawing on theprevious analyses of the characteristics of the women’s language in translated drama, thischapter analyses the various strategies adopted by the Japanese translators to negotiate
between the source text and the target culture, especially in the context of performance,
where the question of who embodies Rosalind is closely connected to the choices made by
the translators.
While translated Shakespeare is often considered secondary or marginal in the world109

of Shakespeare studies, the case studies presented in the present dissertation illustrate that
it offers a rich potential to be more than an interesting appendix to the field. The
importance of Shakespeare translation is steadily increasing both in practice and as a
research topic, while the concept of gender and gendered language is also evolving
continuously, opening up new spaces for the analysis and discussion of the role of gen derin Shakespeare translation.
【著者紹介】酒井もえ（SAKAI, Moe） 聖心女子大学非常勤講師、日英・英日翻訳者。
シェイクスピアおよび同時代の劇作品における異文化の表象、翻訳・翻案を含むシェイクスピア受容（特にジェンダーの視点から）の研究に取り組む。

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