Nihon gaishi goes global: A translation history of a nineteenth-century blockbuster

Rai San'yō's Nihon gaishi, sometimes credited as a possible source of inspiration for the Meiji Restoration, is a grand, sweeping history of the rise of Japan's warrior class from the twelfth to the seventeenth centuries. Gaishi was a massive best seller in nineteenth-century Japan, had become a national classic by the century's end, and continued to be popular well into the century that followed. Focusing on the period 1870-1915, this article explores several previously unstudied translations of Gaishi into English, French, and Russian; its promotion in the United States; and its printing and circulation in China. As the article shows, Gaishi was translated earlier and more broadly than other Japanese texts, including the celebrated Tale of Genji; moreover, its various translations and their reception also reveal a globe-spanning debate over differing concepts of literary value and whether effective literary translation was actually possible between “Asia” and the "West".