1997 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
The Study on the introduction process of the concepts of the western social sciences in Japan : Review of the traslations in the Meiji era
| Project/Area Number |
07610186
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
社会学(含社会福祉関係)
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| Research Institution | Osaka Prefecture University |
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Principal Investigator |
SAWADA Zentaro Osaka prefecture University College of Integrated Arts and Sciences, 総合科学部, 教授 (90137232)
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
YAMADA Yoshiaki Osaka Prefecture University College of Integrated Arts and Sciences, Professor, 総合科学部, 教授 (70027978)
TABUCHI Sinya Osaka Prefecture University College of Integrated Arts and Science, Professor, 総合科学部, 教授 (30079115)
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| Project Period (FY) |
1995 – 1997
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| Keywords | translation / Meiji / bureaucracy / republic / democracy / social science |
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| Research Abstract |
The purpose of this study is to exmine the Japanese traslations, which were published in the Meiji era, of the western literatures on social sciences, and to analyze how Japanese people in those days understood the western societies and the concepts of the western social sciences. Our main findings are as follows.
1, "Bureaucracy" which J.S.Mill treated in On Liberty and Considerations on Representative Government was frequently mistranslated. That is, the Japanese translators often interpreted the sentences, where Mill talked about the evils of the administrative bureaucy as a whole, as the evils of tyranny of few influential persons who could control the bureaucratic system. Probably, the mistranslations were brought about by the premature state of the early Meiji administrative bureaucrcy and the Japanese tradition which had attached the education of Chinese classics.
2, For the most Japanese in the early Meiji period, the constitutional difference between the federal system of the United States of America and the European nation-states was not inteligible enough. The typical example was found in the translation of Tocqueville's Democracy in America, made by Ryuu Hiduka in 1880. Hiduka translated both "democracy" and "republic" into a same word, "kyouwa" (a Japanese equivalent for "republic"). The Japanese people at that time had only a superficial understanding of the essence of the American Democracy.
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