Shōfujin (Little Women): Recreating Jo for the Girls of Meiji Japan

Abstract

Louisa May Alcott's famous novel Little Women has been translated into Japanese several times. It was first rendered accessible to Japanese readers at the end of the Meiji period in 1906 by an amateur translator, Kitada Shūho, about whom very little is known. This article discusses how Kitada's version introduced the concept of the Christian home and the idea of modern womanhood to the Japanese audience. The approach taken by the translator throws valuable light on the cultural norms of Meiji society. Men held specific expectations about the contribution women could make in their domestic roles to the modern nation, encapsulated in the Good Wife Wise Mother (ryōsai kenbo) ideology propagated through the girls' education system. The Kitada translation upheld these expectations, but at the same time its publication spread enthusiasm among educated young Japanese women to contribute prose to the flora of girls' magazines (shōjo zasshi) appearing around the turn of the twentieth century. Thus it appears also to have helped them escape the Meiji period mindset surrounding literature, which suppressed the true voices of women and confined them to roles as translators.