(The Edo-Gawa River, Tokyo) Sakamoto Ryoma and "The Little Prince"
It was hot in the afternoon yesterday. I was reading some books in my room. Then I took an afternoon nap. When I woke up, it was dark. So, at speed, I wrote a post card to drop it into a mailbox by a post office, though I am not a politician preparing for an election.
Nonetheless, the books I was reading were not boring.
In fact one of the books contains various personality stories of notable Japanese and also nameless ones, including writers, scholars of literature, politicians, and samurais since the end of Edo Period under the last samurai regime 140 years ago.
( http://www.amazon.co.jp/%E4%B8%80%E7%87%88%E3%82%92%E6%8F%90%E3%81%92%E3%81%9F%E7%94%B7%E3%81%9F%E3%81%A1-%E6%96%B0%E6%BD%AE%E6%96%87%E5%BA%AB-%E5%B0%8F%E5%B3%B6-%E7%9B%B4%E8%A8%98/dp/4101262160)
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For example, the author of the book, Mr. Naoki Kojima, depicted the meeting of Sakamoto Ryouma, the most notable revolutionary samurai during the civil war in Japan 140 years ago, with Yokoi Shonan, the most notable samurai scholar in the same period.
(for Sakamoto Ryoma:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sakamoto_Ryoma
For Yokoi Shonan:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yokoi_Shonan )
Any Japanese today knows the name Sakamoto Ryoma (Sakamoto as a family name). Through his efforts, two major samurai clans got into alliance so as to overthrow the Tokugawa Shogunate, the last samurai regime in the Japanese history who could not however sufficiently address the invasion by the Western powers into Japan in the late 19th century.
Most of knowledgeable Japanese also know the name Yokoi Shonan (Yokoi as a family name), since he was not only a Confucian scholar but also an excellent teacher. Many of his samurai students later assumed higher office of the Empire of Japan after the Meiji Restoration.
It should be noted that modernization and westernization of Japan that started 140 years ago were extensively driven and piloted by bureaucrats of the Empire of Japan who were actually ex-samurais taught by teachers and scholars, such as Yokoi Shonan, before the Meiji Restoration or in the end of the Edo Period.
The two heroes met for the first and probably last time when Sakomoto Ryoma visited a local territory of a certain clan, in the far north of Kyoto, to see or interrogate Yokoi Shonan who was staying there as a guest teacher.
The revolutionary samurai Sakomoto had heard that prominent and influential scholar Yokoi was teaching something against a political idea Sakamoto and his political group were then upholding in their underground movement to destroy the Tokugawa regime.
(The Tokugawa clan had already decided to open the door of Japan to the world; Sakamoto at that time however wanted to continue the closed door policy, though he later drastically switched his thought to the opposite.)
Sakamoto, as a master swordsman, was determined to kill Yokoi with a sword if Yokoi’s philosophy had been against the anti-Tokugawa movement. Their conversation inevitably got heated sometimes with angry shouts. At any moment, Sakamoto might have stood up and pulled out his sword.
But, one of disciples of Yokoi Shonan was silently listening to the two behind the sliding door in the adjoining room, holding a sword in the hand.
Yet, there was no sword battle, since Sakamoto Ryoma suddenly started to laugh loudly and Yokoi Shonan followed it.
However, several years later or just after contributing to the decisive alliance of anti-Tokugawa samurai clans, the samurai hero Ryoma Sakamoto was foully assassinated with swords in Kyoto by some secrete agents on the Tokugawa’s side.
Further several years later or a few years after the Meiji Restoration (or the fall of the Tokugawa Regime), Yokoi Shonan was also assassinated with swords in Kyoto by those who hated his philosophy and success in the new government.
These incidents told that Japan’s westernization and modernization had been driven through bloody strife among the samurai class which eventually changed its social status mostly to Western-style bureaucrats, school teachers, policemen, and military officers in the Meiji Government that outwardly took an absolute Imperial system based on ancient traditions.
But, the one whom the author Mr. Naoki Kojima paid specific and adoring attention to was the disciple of Yokoi Shonan, who had been hiding in the next room holding a sword to protect his teacher in case.
This samurai disciple could survive the civil war, full of assassinations, to become a medical doctor in the Meiji era.
His name was Taikichi Naito (Naito as a family name). He had three sons and one daughter. One of his sons, called Arou, became a scholar of French literature.
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Arou Naito was sent to France to study French literature in Paris by the Japanese Government in 1923. A few years later, he returned to Japan and became a professor of a university.
He died in 1977 at the age of 94. But, he is today well known in Japan as the first Japanese translator of The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince) written by Saint-Exupéry.
The Little Prince "has sold more than 50 million copies worldwide, putting it at number 3 on the most printed books list, just behind the Bible and ‘Gone With the Wind’ by Margaret Mitchell…"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Little_Prince
But, it is truly surprising that Arou Naito was 70 years old when he translated the Little Prince into Japanese as the first in Japan, since a certain female Japanese writer who had found that the Little Prince of the English version was not a simple fairy tale asked the old scholar to translate it into Japanese from the original French text.
Anyway, his Japanese translation of the Little Prince (Le Petit Prince) received great recognition and popularity among Japanese adult readers who mostly had suffered the tragedy of WWII.
Today, almost all the Japanese know at least the title of the book the Little Prince (Le Petit Prince), though it is called “Hoshi-no Ouji-sama” in Japanese.
Yet, “Hoshi” means a star; so the Japanese title means “The Prince of a Star.”
If the original title had been literally translated into Japanese, the book might not have appealed to the general public so much.
(It would have been such as “Chiisana Ryoushu (A Little Lord),” for example.)
But, what I want to discuss is not the quality of the translation by Arou Naito who also wrote and edited many textbooks and dictionaries for Japanese learners of French.
I will discuss my point of interest tomorrow.
So far as today, you must realize that if Sakamoto Ryoma had not trusted Yokoi Shonan and actually tried to kill him, the father of Arou Naito should have fought Sakamoto with a sword to save the life of Yokoi, his venerable master.
Yet, the chance seems to be that Sakomoto would have killed Yokoi and his disciple, namely the father of Arou Naito, because Sakamoto Ryoma was a master swordsman.
Then, Arou Naito would not have been born; hence there would not have been such a boom of the Little Prince (Le Petit Prince) in Japan as was observed when its first translation version was published in 1953.
By not killing Yokoi Shonan in 1851, Sakmoto Ryoma not only allowed many talented samurais to have a chance to learn from the great scholar Yokoi Shonan and become able bureaucrats of the Empire of Japan, but also allowed the great French novel by Saint-Exupéry to be effectively introduced into Japan in troubled times after WWII.
That is a great lesson today; but I will discuss more on Arou Naito, a translator of “Le Petit Prince” and also a son of the father who had been once so close to the sword of Sakomoto Ryoma, the last samurai hero before the Meiji Restoration.
(As I once said, Paris made some Japanese more stupid and arrogant, so that I never personally go to Paris until the proud French capital regrets its status, though you may officially visit it like a samurai:
http://www.fukuchan.ac/music/movie/aldila.html)
Mat 7:14 Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.