CopyRight YANABU Akira
CopyRight YANABU Akira
V. ©R ishizen, naturej
\ Misunderstanding through translation
The words I have treated so far are what were used first from the end of the Tokugawa era to the beginning of the Meiji era, or what were reincarnated then as translating words, even though they had used rarely before that time.
Shizen was also used since modern ages as the translating word of Western word nature etc. This was however not a newly coined word, but used in Chinese classics, for old instance, used in Lao-tsu (Vq), and in Japanese Buddhist term zinen (©R) has had long history, and even after modern ages when shizen has been used as the translating word of nature, besides, at the same time shizen was used by many people as a native word. That is, since modern ages till today, in our word shizen the new meaning of the translating word of nature and the old traditional meaning have been coexisting together.
The problem about the translating word shizen is, at first the mingling of the meaning of the original Western word with the native Japanese word, and above all the important problem is this mingling of the meaning is concealed, or difficult to know for people who use this word, owing to the peculiar effect of translating word. These two meanings are sometimes so different that they contradict even logically each other, and because of the contradiction, the translating word 'shizen' functions in order to conceal this contradiction.
In other words, in the translating word shizen, both the meaning of original word nature and that of traditional Japanese word were mixed, as a result, not only these two coexisted, but also so to speak the third meaning, namely the effect peculiar to translating word has been created. These circumstances may be difficult to understand. Let's see the concrete instances.
Let's have again a view of the debate "Literature and shizen (nature)" between Iwamoto Zenji and Mori Ougai I put above in the chapter of Bi (beauty). The main subject of the article "Literature and shizen" in "Jogaku zassi (Girl students' magazine)" in 1889 was 'The most excellent literature is what can describe shizen, shizen no mama (by itself).' Against which Mori Ougai wrote an article 'Having read "Literature and shizen (nature)"' in "Kokumin no tomo (Friends of nation)" one month after the publication of Iwamoto's article above.
Ougai said at first, there were two literatures, one is literature as science, and the other is that of art:
Let's see for instance "Honsou koumoku (classification of plant)" and "Cosmos", these were able to describe shizen, shizen no mama (by itself). And let's see "The Analects of Confucius" and "The critic of pure reason", these never described shizen, shizen no mama or never simply described shizen, they described not shizen, but 'spirit'. The writer of "Jogaku zassi" knows 'shizen' but not knows 'spirit'.
That is, Ougai said that describing shizen as it is resulted natural science such as "Honsou Koumoku" or "Cosmos", on the other hand, in philosophy and literature one should describe not shizen, but spirit. It is obvious that shizen he said is shizen of shizen kagaku (natural science), namely, translation of nature. It is of course objective existence, and is opposed to personal spirit.
Whereas, what was Iwamoto's shizen? It was Japanese traditional shizen, speaking simply, 'ari no mama (as it is, or spontaneousness)'. In the state of 'ari no mama', there is no difference between the outer objective world and the inner world of spirit.
Against this criticism by Ougai, Iwamoto wrote an objection in "Jogaku zassi", in which at first: 'It is good that the so-called shizen is equivalent to Natur (Ougai said in German).' and continued; 'Shizen I mean of course contains the spirit of shizen.' and then said: He said that the most beautiful literature generally do not describe shizen, shizen no mama (by itself), then, depending on what does one describe? One's idea comes from shizen, or it is developed by shizen. One's taste imitate shizen, or it is taught by shizen. The creator who does not depend on shizen is only just a haughty litterateur.
This argument is however not reasonable. In the first place, while approving 'the so-called shizen is equivalent to Natur', he said 'Shizen c contains the spirit of shizen', and 'One's idea comes from shizen'. On condition that 'Natur' he said had inherited Ougai's 'Natur' in German, it was to be opposed to spirit. In shizen that Iwamoto said there coexisted both the meaning of Natur namely nature and that of Japanese shizen. What he said consequently ran in contradiction. That is, shizen as the meaning of nature did not contain spirit, and shizen as that of traditional Japanese could contain spirit.
Soon after, Ougai wrote a re-objection titled "Asking again the admirer of shizen" in "Kokumin no tomo". In which he said that Iwamoto's view 'is das Naturschone (natural beauty)', and continued; 'beauty of shizen (natural beauty) includes dust, it is the work of poets and sculptors etc. that fire the dust and create das Kunstshone (beauty of art). And he said; 'shizen, shizen no mama including dust is not beauty at all', shizen was confronted with spirit, and with Kunst (art) as well, literature hence aimed at the beauty of art.
The debate still continued, however, while the drift of Ougai's argument was always consistent, what Iwamoto argued was somewhat swaying about. Throughout the debate of these two, while the meaning of Iwamoto's shizen was essentially traditional Japanese, that of Ougai's shizen was Western word of nature. And what was of importance there is
that both two were not conscious it at all. Neither had won in the argument, it was only passing by each other.
Let's refer shizen we are using to dictionaries. "Koujien (Wide Japanese dictionary)" (1976) describes as follows:
shizen @ (also called zinen) spontaneously as it is. as wild as being born. (used as adverb too.) c A nature, in English, in French, ¬ being opposite to culture created by art, without being changed, formed and restricted, the state which has become through spontaneous generation and development.c ¬
being opposite to spirit, total objects of outer experiments. namely, material world and its various phenomena.
Here @ is the meaning of the traditional Japanese, and A is that of the translating word shizen.
And referring to "Dai kanwa jiten (General Chinese characters- Japanese dictionary)" (1958):
shizen @ the meaning not added human art. spontaneity, as it is, spontaneous.kLao-tsulPerson follows the earth, the earth follows the heaven, the heaven follows the way, and the way follows shizen.
Shizen in the famous phrase of Lao-tsu meant, as described in this dictionary, 'spontaneous', and it is also nearly equivalent to the meaning of shizen in our present days as explained in "Koujien"
This deep-rooted traditional shizen and nature are common in some meaning. As we can see comparing @ with A of "Koujien", both are opposite to art or human work, in which sense it was reasonable to have translated nature as shizen.
We should also notice however their difference. At first, traditional shizen is opposite to art, but at the same time, it is not compatible with art. Being shizen means not being art. On the other hand, nature is opposite to art, and compatible with art, or both supplement each other. The relation between the world of nature and that of art is, opposing and supplementing each other. The literature explained by Ougai belongs to this world of art, while as Iwamoto insisted, an ideal of literature is shizen having cleared off art.
And also, as a result, nature belongs to the objective world and is opposed to the subjective world, on the other hand, traditional shizen
can be a world, in which the opposition of subjectivity and objectivity are neutralized, or so to speak, they are not separated, but united.
Still more, while nature is a noun, traditional shizen is in many cases used as a adverb, or an adjective verb in Japanese grammar like shizen na (approximately equal to 'natural'), which is important too.
Let's look back the history of the translation of nature. Nature was translated as shizen since old times.
In "Haruma wage (Interpretation in Japanese, modeled upon F.Halma's dictionary)" (1796), Dutch 'natuur' was put as shizen. Next, in "Zuufu haruma" (1833) which succeeded it, there was no shizen in translating word of natuur. Subsequently to this dictionary, "Oranda jii (Dutch dictionary)" (1855-58) did not rendered as shizen from natuur, but looking at its adjective and adverb, natuurlijk, of which translating words are: 'inborn and shizen doori no (exactly natural), showing the reason of all things, being known as shizen, shizen doori naru (just natural), shizen no (natural)', thus shizen was used there.
Katsuragawa Hoshu who was the author of "0randa jii" knew the difference of the part of speech well. For instance, in "Haruma wage"
some of translation of natuur were as 'damaged, aged', and "Zuufu haruma" also rendered natuur as 'spoiled', which were not suitable for the translation of a noun. "Oranda jii" rendered the corresponding to them as in noun form 'spoiled state of mind'. Consequently,it must have been written consciously that there was no shizen in the translating words of noun natuur, but in adjective natuurlijk there was shizen.
Soon after, in the age of English studies, namely in the Meiji era, the same sort of translation was being succeeded. In "Eiwa Taiyaku shuchin jisho (English-Japanese portable dictionary)" (1862) 'natural' was rendered as 'shizen no, created by heaven', and 'nature' was 'all things in heaven and earth, universe, entity, creator, character, the reason of tenchi shizen * , species', in which tenchi shizen was a
conventional phrase in Chinese classics, meaning 'heaven and earth as they are', and this shizen was not a noun, but an adjective predicate corresponding to a subject tenchi. In J.C.Hepburn's "Waeig Gorin shuusei (Japanese-English dictionary)", there was not an item of 'nature', namely SHIZEN, but was TEN-NEN translated as:
TEN-NEN el VR Natural, produced or effected by nature, of itself, spontaneous: Syn. SHIZEN
That is, shizen was thought to be an adjective.
The first instance that translated nature as shizen, and treated it as a noun was probably Murakami Hidetoshi's "Futsugo meiyo (Elucidation of French)" (1864), which explained as follows:
nature, n. shizen, character
naturall, elle, adj. shizen no, by birth
These were however rather exceptions, and it was after 1880's that shizen became used as a noun under the influence of translation from nature.
These matters are understood well referring the dictionaries centering on Chinese characters or Japanese. For instance,in "Kan-Ei taishou iroha jiten * (Chinese character-English ABC dictionary)", the author Takahashi Goro * wrote:
shizen (adj. adv.) onozukara (spontaneously), onozuto (voluntarily), Natural, Naturally
Here we can understand the sense of this word in those days.
In 1891 however, Ootsuki Fumihiko's "Genkai # (The sea of words)"
interpreted as:
shizen (noun) onozukara shikaru koto (becoming spontaneously so), tennen (spontaneity)
shizen (adv.) onozukara, tennen ni
And in 1894, Mozume Takami's "Nihon dai jirin $ (Japanese general
dictionary)" described as:
shizen (noun) onozukara, hitori mizukara (single person
herself/himself)
In spite of saying 'noun', interpreting 'onozukara (spontaneously)'
seemed somewhat strange, which showed the unstableness of explanation in those days that shizen was a noun.
Thus shizen became considered as noun through being a translating word of nature, the movement of which was shown there.
The use of 'shizen' as a translating word was about three major fields, namely the use in low such as 'shizen hou * (natural law)', the use in science such as 'shizen kagaku * (natural science)' and the use in literature such as 'shizenshugi * (naturalism)'.
Above all the term shizen hou came to stay earliest. Natural law was rendered as sei hou * (essential law) or ten ritsu * (rule of heaven),
in which nature was thought to be essence or heaven. In 1881, the transcript of the lectures by Boissonade # was published titled "Seihou Kougi Shou (The abridge of the lectures of essential law)".
The lectures had given in 1874, after which a law school student Inoue Misao arranged and wrote them. In which the term shizen hou was sometimes used together with sei hou, which showed the term shizen hou became taking the place of sei hou at least in the days this book was published.
On shizenshugi (naturalism) I will explain later. As for shizen in science, "Having read 'Literature and shizen'" by Mori Ougai was maybe the earliest use. Mori himself was shizen scientist translated clearly the object of science as shizen.
Before that time in the field of natural sciences, the translating word of nature was usually ten (heaven), tennen (spontaneity), tenchi (heaven and earth), banbutsu $ (all things). For instance, in 1886, the representative natural scientist of the day Ishikawa Chiyomatsu $ wrote in the preface of his book "Hyakkou kaigen $ (The origin of a hundred of industries)", Nature and Art (tenzou to jinkou $ (creation of heaven and art)).
Since about 1870's the term of natural science 'shizen touta * (natural selection)' was frequently used and became a word in fashion among intellectuals. Natural selection is of course the key word of Darwin's theory of evolution. The beginning of this fashion was Katou Hiroyuki's * "Jinken shinsetsu * (The new theory of human rights)", in
which he used this word as a concept analyzing society and history.
Then, what did shizen in shizen touta mean? Stating my conclusion first, this shizen scarcely meant nature, it was understood as the meaning of Japanese shizen as adjective, onozukara no (spontaneous), or rather, it was the translating word shizen which had the third meaning I explained above. It was used as the word which was thought to have some unknown crucial meaning through the 'effect' peculiar to the translating word.
In 1883, Ishikawa Chiyomatsu translated "On the evolution of animals" dictated by Morse # , in the contents of which he wrote 'The discourse on jini touta (artificial selection $ ) and shizen touta (natural selection $ )', but the beginning of the body was written as: Studying everything under the sun, throughout the world # , what is most previously to be valued much is logic.
'Everything under the sun, throughout the world,' was used to correspond with 'nature', while shizen used to correspond with nature was not employed in the text, in other words, shizen in shizen touta
was not equivalent to nature, but equivalent to natural. The same use of shizen was frequently found in examples at that time.
Shizen touta did not mean selection by shizen (nature), but shizen na (natural, or spontaneous) selection in those days in Japan.
Katou Hiroyuki argued in his book, 'the survival of the fittest' in society and history depending on C.Darwin's evolution theory. The champion of the progressive Katou who had been leading the world of thought since the Restoration, was converted then to become a Meiji regime spokesman. He theorized the ground that the fittest of society 'the superior citizen' lead and rule 'the inferior people'. The representative of Tokyo University, Katou's insistence encouraged the Establishmentarians, and resented the democrats. For this Katou's theory the word 'shizen touta' played an important part.
Katou explained about 'shizen selection' in this book, and about 'artificial selection', said: 'It is the same as shizen selection, hence Darwin called it 'artificial selection'. and continuously:
The superior always gain and defeat the inferior, even if being innocent, he only can survive and leave own posterity, this is eternal shizen rule, and is to be a grand rule in the law of all things.
And still more, about this 'the law of all things', he wrote in a note:
the great shizen law that govern all things in universe,c
There are three shizen in the writings above; shizen selection, shizen rule, and shizen law. Summing up his argument focusing on these three shizen, his logic would be as follows; the artificial selection that 'the superior always gain and defeat the inferior c ' is the same as shizen selection, which is 'eternal shizen rule', therefore 'govern all things'.
Then, what did this shizen mean? It was not equivalent to 'nature' as I explained above, shizen selection thereby did not mean the 'natural selection'. Nevertheless, it was to be the key term which was advanced by 'Darwin' who was famous in the world.
There, upon this shizen, that 'cassette effect' is thinkable to have worked. The meaning was not known well to tell the truth, there must have been contained very important meaning however. From such a word, some profound meaning was drawn, and it would lead the deducible logic. This article written about a century ago is indeed rough in logic in our view, the logical structure led by a translating word is however, shown clearly.
It was also Mori Ougai who translated 'naturalism' in literature using a word shizen and introduced it to Japanese. In the same year 1881 as the debate of 'literature and shizen' mentioned above, he wrote in Yomiuri Shinbun (the Yomiuri Newspaper):
Zola was born in Province in France, and he was what they call today the shizen school (naturalism).
About twenty years after that time, shizen-ism translated from 'naturalism' became the idea leading Japanese literature, created lots of novels and turned out to be the main faction of Japanese literature. There have been a good many criticism of Japanese shizen-ism (naturalism), that is, while naturalism meant the method which its representative Zola would describe novels modeling after the method of natural science being influenced by natural scientist Claude Bernard's "The Preface to the experimental medical science", Japanese shizen-ism was said to have not understood it, or misunderstood it. Let's examine the opinion of a representative critic Nakamura Mitsuo *. He criticized that the standard bearer of the earliest shizen-ism Tayame Katai #
once said 'to describe shizen, shizen no mama (by itself)', and said as follows:
Katai certainly would erase the difference between reality and its expression under the pretense of denying idealizing material.
What was used as the secret of so to speak an unconscious trick
was the idea of shizen. Because if a writer only intended to catch shizen, it could be at once understood by itself, then the difference between real life and its expression would be gone. c
Katai mixed shizen as material, which Ougai said the experienced world, and shizen described in a work, and he united them forcibly in the confession of an author, or vomiting out one's sentiment, which was, I believe, a sorrowful mistake which has given rise to much confusion in Japanese literature. ("Art of Language", 1965. Koudansha Bookstore)
This criticism remind us Ougai's criticism of Iwamoto mentioned above. As Iwamoto said 'the most excellent literature is what can describe shizen, shizen no mama (by itself)', so did Katai 'describe shizen, shizen no mama'. And as Ougai criticized saying 'shizen by itself is not beauty at all', so Nakamura criticized Katai who confused 'shizen as material' with 'shizen described in a work'.
And shizen of Katai was like that of Iwamoto used as the traditional Japanese, while shizen of Nakamura was like that of Ougai used as the translating word from nature. And having said 'it is good that the so-called shizen is equivalent to Natur', Iwamoto kept employing it as the traditional meaning of shizen, in the same way as having thought to be taught by naturalism of Zola, Katai understood it as Japanese shizen-ism. Just as Iwamoto was at a disadvantage over the criticism of Ougai, Katai seemed to be unable to stand against Nakamura's criticism apart from time.
I must say however again that in the case of Katai and Nakamura, their sayings passed through each other too. The mixture of the meanings of between the traditional native word and the translated original word is usually, to such an extent, apt to pass unnoticed.
It is not true that there was a word in the beginning and it is said 'nature' in the West and said 'shizen' in Japan. But it is quite difficult to understand this simple, clear fact. It seems to be particularly difficult for Japanese intellectuals.
Shizen had been a Japanese before nature came to Japan. It did not become a word which meaning was equivalent to that of nature after it was used to the translating word of nature. However defined the meaning of a word is by scholars and intellectuals, apart from a mere sign, the word living in our real life cannot be ruled by the minority. And as Iwamoto and Katai could not change the meaning of shizen though they thought it consciously equivalent to nature, the meaning of a word is the fact that surpasses the consciousness of its users.
Shizen shugi (shizen-ism) was not equivalent to naturalism. Then, was shizen in shizen-ism the same as the traditional Japanese? It may have not been so, I believe.
In the first place, 'to describe shizen, shizen no mama (by itself)' is contradictory on reflection. The traditional meaning of shizen implies unconsciousness, while 'to describe' is a very conscious action. Shizen-ism is still more contradictory term, because 'ism' implies to dare to do, which is just the opposite behavior to shizen.
A matter of real consequence here is, through these contradictions the traditional meaning of shizen was, I believe, changed.
Katai said in "Katai bunwa" (1911):
My inner world is a shizen too. The same as the outer universe is, it is shizen, myself is also a shizen. And the same law, the same rhythm runs through myself and others.
The critics of shizen-ism in those days spoke in various ways the same sort of thinking. For instance, Shimamura Hougetsu said in "The
literary world today and shizen-ism" (1907) as follows:
I see in phenomenon the unity of myself and others, shizen develop its whole circle into phenomena. The phenomenon is not a cool, real and objective one, but a vital, momentary fact on which spiritual eyes can open. c
My sentiment and my life after a state of impassivity, unite with phenomenon, and create a vivid, open-eyed shizen. Which is said that myself and others are melted together and whole circle of shizen appears.
Shizen which was told as 'myself and others are melted together' was of course not from the meaning of nature, but from traditional shizen. However, shizen thus told was not exactly the same as traditional shizen, shizen was objectified against 'I', and simultaneously, on its opposite side there was 'I'.
The 'I' thus found however, would not persist the situation of the subject. At the same time it was found, it would unite with 'others' such as 'myself and others melted together'. The discovery of the I and others, and the following movement of uniting of the I with others, that is 'shizen', thus the meaning of traditional shizen was acquired. It was not the case that because shizen was used as a translating word of nature, its meaning transferred at once to shizen. But because of being used as a translating word of nature, shizen became used in a similar way to nature, that is, saying in terms of logic, its connotative meaning was as it was, it became used as if it were nature in denotative context. Which was contradictory to common meaning. This contradiction searched after the new meaning, or the user demand some meaning which could compensate for the contradiction. Thus shizen which ventured to be consciously shizen was created, the traditional meaning of shizen was in this way recovered, and at the same time the new meaning was created.
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