Translating Ariyoshi Sawako: A Conversation with Jan Bardsley and Hiroko Hirakawa
Novels with clear social messages never fail to incite debate in my Japanese literature courses. They push readers to care, to take a point of view, and to act. Literary works by Ariyoshi Sawako (1931-1984) are a case in point. The Doctor’s Wife (1966), for one, questions how an entire family’s mission revolves around celebrating and supporting the eldest son’s discovery of anesthesia. Although his achievements were possible only due to the self-sacrifice of the women in the household, they are silenced.
Ariyoshi was one of Japan’s most famous modern authors, but we’re still waiting for more translations of her work.
The other day, I caught up with two Japan scholars, Hiroko Hirakawa and Jan Bardsley, who are working on something new—translating and explicating a book of essays by Ariyoshi.
They kindly filled me in on their project.
Before sharing our conversation, let me introduce the translators.
Jan Bardsley
Jan Bardsley retired from UNC-Chapel Hill in 2019, after 25 years of teaching Japanese language and culture. Her books include Maiko Masquerade: Crafting Geisha Girlhood in Japan; Women and Democracy in Cold War Japan; and The Bluestockings of Japan: New Woman Essays and Fiction from Seitō, 1911–16.
Hiroko Hirakawa
Hiroko Hirakawa recently retired from Guilford College in North Carolina, where she led the program in Japanese language and culture. Her work explores gender and popular culture in Japan, with essays in Manners and Mischief, Bad Girls of Japan, and the US-Japan Women’s Journal. For 28 years she taught Japanese language, first-year seminars, courses on modern Japan, and managed study abroad.
Friends over decades, Jan and Hiroko first collaborated on the chapter, “Bad Girls Go Shopping,” in Bad Girls of Japan. Looking at popular novels, TV shows, and feminist debates from around 2000, they explored how women buying foreign luxury goods were seen as “bad girls” for their supposed over-the-top spending.
The New Translation: New Onna Daigaku (1959-60) by Ariyoshi SawakoRebecca Copeland: What’s the new translation?
Hiroko Hirakawa: Thanks for asking us about this project, Rebecca. It’s a challenging one.
New Onna Daigaku is a series of satirical essays published monthly throughout 1959 in Fujin kōron (Women’s Review) and as a book in 1960.
Fujin kōron was a sophisticated magazine that tackled controversial issues and featured the leading literary lights of the day. Even though Ariyoshi was young—only 28—she had become quite a star by the late 1950s. Readers certainly would have perked up when they saw her name.
RC: Onna Daigaku? I’m surprised to hear a feminist writer like Ariyoshi would have anything to do with that Tokugawa relic. Isn’t it basically a primer reminding women all about their inherent inferiority and their duty to obey and respect the men in their lives?
Jan Bardsley: Exactly! As you can imagine her “new” Onna Daigaku is a parody. She ridicules the men who freely tell women what to do, even though they have no experience living as a woman or needing to face the consequences of their advice.
RC: Good for her! I bet she skewers the Neo-Confucian moralist.
JB: Oh, yes, and with delight. But what fascinates Hiroko and me is her satire of 1950s Japan, too. Essentially, she claims that despite all the postwar reforms—giving women the vote, property rights, access to education—patriarchy remains well entrenched. That’s why, women must pretend to obey Onna Daigaku dictums to manipulate unsuspecting men to their own advantage.
RC: What stories stand out?
HH: Ariyoshi’s insightful essay on women’s internalized misogyny is poignant. Overhearing women at the office complaining about other women, Ariyoshi realizes that the target of their anger goes far beyond any one individual. Rather, they are expressing their own deep, unconscious dislike of “being a woman” (onna de aru koto) themselves.
She tells this story in a funny way, but the underlying message is unmistakable.
RC: What are some of the challenges you’ve faced in this project?
JB: Ariyoshi assumes an educated reader who will understand her allusions to world classical literature and movies, folklore, myth, and current events. Hiroko and I have fun doing research to catch up to Ariyoshi’s fast-moving references. It makes her humor shine and brings home her main messages.
HH: Ariyoshi’s stance can be hard to pin down. Sometimes it’s unclear whether her outrageous positions are meant to be taken seriously or played for laughs. When translating the more ambiguous stories, it’s tempting to make her position clearer. We have to keep asking ourselves: is this passage really as ambiguous as it seems?
JB: Passages where Ariyoshi is obviously exaggerating for comic effect are the most fun to translate.
RC: How does this fit into ongoing work on Ariyoshi?
HH: New Onna Daigaku was published early in Ariyoshi’s career. It shows her frustration with being pegged as a postwar “woman of talent” (saijo) who was seen as carrying the flag for women’s progress. She felt the label was superficial. She was much more interested in questioning the narrative of “progress.”
RC: Interesting! I always think of her as a progressive, championing the rights of women, the elderly, marginalized communities.
HH: Exactly! By the mid-1960s and after traveling in the US, Europe, and other countries abroad, Ariyoshi was becoming a progressive herself. She had also married, borne a daughter, and divorced. So, New Onna Daigaku marks an early point in her thinking. Yet even here we can see Ariyoshi struggling with the question of grand narratives of nation, gender, and race, too.
JB: The fact that New Onna Daigaku ran in Fujin kōron also shows how fraught the topic of “postwar woman” was in the 1950s—was she a symbol of the success of reforms or the Americanization of Japanese women? We can see this question explored in the work of other writers of the time like Hirabayashi Taiko (1905-1972), and by women know as social critics like Ishigaki Ayako (1903-1996) and Sakanishi Shiho1(896-1976).
RC: What else would you like to see translated from writers of Ariyoshi’s generation?
JB: I’m curious about writers’ short pieces for magazines, especially their personal essays. What do those show us about the way they presented themselves as writers and what issues concerned them?
HH: I, too, am very curious about those personal essays, particularly those, like Ariyoshi, who grew up in Asia outside of Japan such as Morisaki Kazue (1927-2022) and Sawachi Hisae (b.1930).
RC: Good luck to you both, Jan and Hiroko! The New Onna Daigaku translation sounds both fun and revealing.
The post Translating Ariyoshi Sawako: A Conversation with Jan Bardsley and Hiroko Hirakawa appeared first on Rebecca Copeland.
