JOYCEANS IN ASIA
The Kansai James Joyce Study Group 2006
Contents of This Page


  Kyoto Joyce
  The Hill of Tara (Irish pub)
  
  
CONTENTS
   1  Tokyo JJSJ Conference 2004
   2  Seoul JJSK Conference 2004
   3  Culture Tour to Yeoju and Icheon 2004
   4  Welcoming Prof. Kiljoong Kim in Kyoto 2005
   5  The Kansai Joyce Study Group 2006
   6  The Kanto Joyce Study Group 2006
   7  Seoul JJSK Conference 2006
   8  Seoul: miscellanea 2006
   9  The Kanto Joyce Study Group 2007
  10  Seoul JJSK Conference 2008
  11  Seoul: miscellanea 2008
  12  Meeting Morris Beja and Ellen Carol Jones in Tokyo 2010
  13  Seoul JJSK Conference 2010
  14  Seoul: miscellanea 2010
  15  Gwangju JJSK Conference 2012
  16  Suncheon-si, Jeollanam-do (Post-Conference Tour) 2012
  17  2013 Shanghai James Joyce International Symposium
  18  Shanghai: miscellanea 2013

The Kansai James Joyce Study Group
At Kyoto Notre Dame University

18 February 2006

The Kansai James Joyce Study Group


  The Kansai Joyce Study Group have a reading session at least once a month: They have been having a series of meetings for reading James Joyce's Ulysses for more than fifteen years in Kyoto, the former Japanese capital (794-1867).  Now they have a monthly session at Kyoto Notre Dame University, 1 Minami-Nonogami-cho, Shimogamo, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto.  It is directed by Prof. Chizuko Inoue, Baika Women's University and organized by Prof. Izumi Sugawa, Kyoto Notre Dame University.  The number of the current registered members, mostly living in the Kansai District, is 15 (March 7, 2006).  The contact person is Takashi Hashimoto, University of Hyogo.



Joyce Studies in Japan


  Japan, like Korea where all major works of James Joyce including Finnegans Wake have been translated, is one of the most developed countries in Joyce studies.
  
   James Joyce was first introduced to Japan by Yonejiro Noguchi's article about A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in 1918 (Gakuto the literary magazine, March 1918 issue).  The next year Ryunosuke Akutagawa, one of the most famous novelists at that time, bought two books of James Joyce including A Portrait.  He was much impressed with Joyce's technique, especially the boy narrator of its first chapter: Later he tried to translate some fragments of the novel under the title "Dedalus."
  
  The first Japanese article about Joyce's Ulysses was published in Eigo-Seinen the literary magazine (English name: The Rising Generation), December 15, 1922 issue by Mirai Sugita.  In 1925 Daigaku Horiuchi wrote an article titled "Shosetsu no Shin-Keishiki toshiteno 'Naiteki-Dokuhaku'" ("Interior Monologue as a New Novel Form"), mentioning that the narrative style of Ulysses was influenced by Edouard Dujardin's Les Lauriers sont coupes (Shincho the literary magazine, August 1925 issue).  One of the earliest Ulysses influence can be seen in another famous novelist Tanizaki Junichiro's lesbian novel "Manji" (1928), in which Tanizaki had a woman narrator use a Joycean interior monologue.  (The interior monologue itself was already lectured in the English Department of Tokyo Imperial University since c. 1900 when some English professors lectured William James.  It became popular among some ambitious novelists through Joyce's works.  Riichi Yokomitsu's novel "Kikai" (literally "Machine") appeared in Kaizo the literary magazine, September 1930 issue.
  
  The first influential academic introduction was done by Prof. Kochi Doi (Tohoku Imperial University)'s "Joyce's Ulysses" in the Kaizo magazine, February 1929 issue, in which Doi introduced and analyzed the structure of the novel and its relationship with A Portrait.  Kochi Doi was said to have known Ulysses in 1922 when he stayed in Boston but it was 1923 in Edinburgh that he got the copy and read it.  Since then, many Japanese scholars including Junichiro Nishiwaki, Yukio Haruyama and Kazutoshi Fukunaga began to argue Ulysses, sometimes comparing with Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, etc.
  
  The first Japanese readers could enjoy the first Japanese translation of Ulysses in 1931, even earlier than most American readers did.  The first legal American edition (Random House, January 1934) was made available after the famous Judge John M. Woolsey's decision, and British readers were able to buy the first legal British edition (Bodley Head, September 1937).  The 1931 Japanese translation was probably the third one after the German translation (1927) and the French translation (1929).  This doubtlessly proves that there have been many Japanese people who read Ulysses even a little earlier than in Europe and in America.  The second translation of Ulysses (by Sohei Morita, Nahara Hirosaburo, Naotaro Tatsuguchi, Takehito Ono, Ichiro Ando and Eitaro Murayama) was published by Iwanami-shoten, Tokyo in 1932-1935.  However, according to Joyce's existing letter to T.S. Eliot (dated 20 June 1932), both of the first and the second translations were "pirated editions" ("13,000 copies have been sold to date" as Joyce investigated) before Joyce and Paul Leon brought an accusation against the two Japanese publishers, although they just did not know the Berne convention.  The first complete translation of Dubliners by Sadamu Nagamatsu was published by Kinsei-do, Tokyo in 1933.  The first complete translation of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by Matsuji Ono and Tomio Yokobori was published by Sogen-sha, Tokyo in 1932.  The first partial translation of Finngans Wake (the ALP chapter) by Junzaburo Nishizaki was published by Daiichi-shobo, Tokyo in 1933.  Since then, many different translations of Joyce's works have been published by dozens of people.  Finally in 1993, Naoki Yanase published the first complete Japanese translation of Finnegans Wake by Kawade-shobo-shinsha, Tokyo.
  
  The James Joyce Society of Japan was founded in 1989.  The foundation greatly owed to Prof. Shigeo Shimizu, Waseda University, and the first president was Prof. Masayoshi Osawa, Chuo University.  It has an annual symposium and publishes the annual magazine Joycean Japan around Bloomsday in June.  Now the number of the member exceeds 130 (March 2006).
  
  The James Joyce Parlour Japan, another Japanese Joycean society, was established in 1988 and directed by Prof. Tsutomu Hamada, Tokyo Agricultural University.  It continues to publish The Abiko Quarterly, edited by Laurel Sicks the curator, about once a year.
  
  Many Japanese students and scholars have been publishing essays on Joyce in numerous academic magazines and in book form.  Thus it is no wonder that a great many Japanese people have been reading and researching James Joyce.
  

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Kyoto Joyce
      Now they have a monthly session of reading Ulysses at Kyoto Notre Dame University, 1 Minami-Nonogami-cho, Shimogamo, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto.
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 (Saturday 18 February) Portrait of James Joyce.  Courtesy of The Hill of Tara (Irish pub), Millennium Bldg.1,2F, Kawaramachi-higashini-hairu, Oike-dori, Nakagyo-ku, Kyoto
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 (Saturday 18 February) Post-meeting party at The Hill of Tara, Kyoto:
  Mari Nakao, Nara University (left 1), Izumi Sugawa, Kyoto Notre Dame University (left 2), Yasumi Imai, Ryukoku University (right 2) and Motohiro Kojima, Sapporo University (right 1).
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kyc2006-004
 (Saturday 18 February) Post-meeting party at The Hill of Tara, Kyoto:
  Motohiro Kojima, Sapporo University (left 1), Mari Nakao, Nara University (left 2), Izumi Sugawa, Notre Dame University (left 3), Chizuko Inoue, Baika Women's University (middle), Takashi Hashimoto, University of Hyogo (right3), Makiko Hashimoto, Kobe Gakuin University (right 2) and Yasumi Imai, Ryukoku University (right 1).
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 (Saturday 18 February) Post-meeting party at The Hill of Tara, Kyoto:
  Eishiro Ito, Iwate Prefectural University (left 1), Mari Nakao, Nara University (left 2), Izumi Sugawa, Notre Dame University (left 3), Chizuko Inoue, Baika Women's University (middle), Takashi Hashimoto, University of Hyogo (right 3), Makiko Hashimoto, Kobe Gakuin University (right 2) and Yasumi Imai, Ryukoku University (right 1).  Photo by Motohiro Kojima, Sapporo University.
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 (Saturday 18 February) Post-meeting party in front of Kyoto City Hall, Teramachi-Oike, Nakagyo-ku, Kyoto:
  Makiko Hashimoto, Kobe Gakuin University (left 1), Chizuko Inoue, Baika Women's University (left 2), Takashi Hashimoto, University of Hyogo (left 3), Yasumi Imai, Ryukoku University (middle), Mari Nakao, Nara University (right 3), Izumi Sugawa, Notre Dame University (right 2), and Motohiro Kojima, Sapporo University (right 1).
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kyc2006-008
 (Saturday 18 February) Post-meeting party in front of Kyoto City Hall, Teramachi-Oike, Nakagyo-ku, Kyoto:
  Chizuko Inoue, Baika Women's University (left 1), Makiko Hashimoto, Kobe Gakuin University (left 2), Takashi Hashimoto, University of Hyogo (left 3), Yasumi Imai, Ryukoku University (middle), Mari Nakao, Nara University (right 3), Izumi Sugawa, Notre Dame University (right 2), and Eishiro Ito (right 1), Iwate Prefectural University.  Photo by Motohiro Kojima, Sapporo University.



        


Maintained by Eishiro Ito