Hanako Muraoka

was a Japanese novelist and translator. She translated _Anne of Green Gables_ by L.M. Montgomery to Japanese.

## Early life and education

Muraoka was born on June 21, 1893, in Kofu, Yamanashi Prefecture. Her birth name was **Hana Annaka**. Her parents were Methodists. She was raised as a Christian. She studied at the Tokyo Eiwa Jogakuin. She began writing children's stories when she was encouraged by translator Hiroko Katayama. She graduated from school in 1913.

## Career

After graduation, Muraoka returned to Yamanashi and taught at a branch of the Toyo Eiwa Jogakuin there. In 1917 she published her first book, _Rohen_.

She married Keizo Muraoka in 1919. They had a son in 1920. Keizo's printing company went bankrupt in 1926 after the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake. They restarted the company in their home. Soon after that, their son died and Muraoka became depressed. Katayama encouraged her to translate Mark Twain's _The Prince and the Pauper_, and this helped her return to regular life.

In 1932, Muraoka started a radio show She read the news to children. The show became very popular, and children all over Japan called her the "Rajio no Obasan" (Radio Auntie). The show ended in the early 1940s as World War II began. Muraoka did not want to read news that called Canadians the enemy because many of her friends were Canadian.

In 1939 her friend Loretta Leonard Shaw gave Muraoka the book _Anne of Green Gables_. Muraoka translated it during the war. The book was published in 1952 and became a bestseller. It became part of the Japanese school curriculum in the 1970s. Some translators later criticized Muraoka's translation because she had left some parts out.

Muraoka planned her first trip to Prince Edward Island in 1968. But, she did not visit before she died of a stroke on October 25, 1968. A television drama called _Hanako to Anne_ was broadcast in 2014. It was based on a book about her life called _An no Yurikago Muraoka Hanako no Shogai,_ written by her granddaughter, Eri Muraoka_._

### Translations

- Mark Twain's _The Prince and the Pauper_ (1927)
- Eleanor H. Porter's _Pollyanna_ (1930)
- Harriet Beecher Stowe's _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ (1948)
- Emma Orczy's _The Scarlet Pimpernel_ (1950)
- Oscar Wilde's _The Happy Prince_ (1951)
- Jean Webster's _Daddy-Long-Legs_ (1951)
- L.M. Montgomery's _Anne of Green Gables_ (1952) (sequels published from 1954-1959)
- Marie Louise de la Ramée's _A Dog of Flanders_ (1952)
- Lewis Carroll's _Alice's Adventures in Wonderland_ (1952)
- Frances Hodgson Burnett's _A Little Princess_ (1954)
- Frances Hodgson Burnett's _The_ _Secret Garden_ (1955)
- Charles Kingsley's _The Water-Babies, A Fairy Tale for a Land Baby_ (1956)
- Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings's _The Yearling_ (1958)
- Mark Twain's _Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_ (1959)
- L.M. Montgomery's _Jane of Lantern Hill_ (1960)
- L.M. Montgomery's _Emily's Quest_ (1969)

## Infobox (person)

- **name**: Hanako Muraoka
- **image**: Hanako Muraoka1953.jpg
- **native name**: 村岡花子
- **native name lang**: ja
- **birth name**: Annaka Hana
- **birth date**: June 21, 1893
- **birth place**: Kōfu, Yamanashi Prefecture, Yamanashi, Japan
- **death date**: October 25, 1968
- **death place**: Ōta, Tokyo, Japan
- **nationality**: Japanese
- **occupation**: Novelist, translator