Manifestation of Multilingual Nature in Japanese Translations of Lafcadio Hearn’s “From the Diary of an English Teacher”

This paper studies the Japanese translations of Lafcadio Hearn's "From the Diary of an English Teacher" and explores their role in highlighting the multilingual nature of the original text. "From the Diary of an English Teacher" (1894) is based on Hearn's experience as an English teacher in an ordinary middle school (Jinjo Chugakko) and in a normal school (Shihan Gakko) in Matsue. The essay is one of Hearn's most popular works and has been translated several times into Japanese. In his interactions with Japanese colleagues and students, he showed a strong interest in various types of Japanese, such as that used in the Japanese anthem "Kimigayo" or the Imperial Rescript on Education (Kyoiku Chokugo). Hearn sometimes transcribed these Japanese words using Roman characters, while at other times he translated them into English. This makes his writing difficult to translate into Japanese, and it becomes necessary to examine each translated word closely. Hearn also paid attention to the English compositions written by his students. These writings are also difficult to translate into Japanese and require special strategies. In this paper, we analyze the works of three translators of Hearn's essay: Ryuji Tanabe, Teiichi Hirai, and Sukehiro Hirakawa. Tanabe's version was published in 1926 and was included in the first collected works of Hearn in Japanese. Hirai's version was included in his translation of Hearn's works in 1964, which played an important role in making Hearn popular in Japan. Hirakawa's version, however, is the most accessible and widely read of the three.