How Do We Have Eighteenth-Century Japanese Fiction? Hermeneutic Mitate, Unreadable Novels, and Tension in Translation

The turn of the eighteenth century witnessed the importation of a vast array of new Chinese texts into Japan, and the remainder of the century was marked by the experimental reworking of the language, themes, and compositional techniques found in these works. While this history of Sino-Japanese engagement is often presented as a narrative of Japanese “domestication” of foreign literary forms, this article highlights authors who intentionally emphasized Chinese linguistic borrowings and narratological techniques that could not be easily assimilated. In thinking about how texts from the non-European world might be used to expand definitions of the novel, works that encapsulate this history of Sino-Japanese borrowing, like Tsuga Teishō’s Garland of Heroes and Santō Kyoden’s Treasury of Loyal Retainers from the Water Margin, provide new models for discussing the history and developmental trajectory of the global eighteenth-century novel.