Tsubouchi Shoyo

Tsubouchi Shoyo

Tsubouchi Shōyō ( Japanese 坪 内 逍遥 ; actually 坪 内 雄 蔵 Tsubouchi Yūzō ; born June 23, 1859 in Ōita, Mino (today: Minokamo , Gifu ); † January 28, 1935 in Atami ) was a Japanese playwright, narrator and translator.

Life

1950 postage stamp

Tsubouchi Shōyō studied English literature at the University of Tokyo and became a professor at the forerunner institution of today's Waseda University in Tokyo. Here he published the literary magazine Waseda Bungaku from 1891 .

Tsubouchi, who had read Western authors early on, began translating his favorite writers. The crowning achievement was the complete translation of Shakespeare's dramas, which he performed from 1884 to 1928. His contributions to literary criticism and other writings were influenced by this early translation work. In his criticism, he pushed for realism, objectivity, characterization, uniformity and seriousness of presentation. He summarized this position in his literary theoretical treatise Shōsetsu Shinzui (小説 神 髄). He believed that Japanese literature could reach a higher level if it turned more towards the present, showed more philosophical and psychological depth. To demonstrate his ideas, Tsubouchi wrote nine short stories between 1885 and 1890. Even if none of these nine fully realized his ideas, the best of them, such as (一 読 三 嘆 当 世 書生 気 質, Ichidoku Santan - Tōsei shosei katagi; 1885 to 1886), changed the development of literature in Japan.

After 1888 Tsubouchi turned to theater criticism. There, too, he campaigned for renewal, for a hybrid form of western and traditional Japanese theater. Between 1894 and 1920 he wrote dozens of pieces to illustrate his ideas. With the exception of his best piece "Shinkyoku Urashima" (新 曲 浦 島) from 1904, which is based on the fairy tale Urashima Taro , Tsubouchi missed his goal. After all, the theater was changing in a new direction, the Shingeki .

In 1929 Tsubouchi was awarded the Asahi Prize .

plant

• Shōsetsu shinzui (1885/86) - (The essence of the novel)
• Tōsei shosei katagi (1885/86) - (The character of today's students)
• Makubesu hyōshaku (1891) - (Critical Notes on Macbeth)
• Wakaguni no shingeki (1893)
• Kiri hitoha (1894)
• Rokotsunaru byōsha (1904) - (True Depictions)

literature

• S. Noma (Ed.): Tsubouchi Shōyō . In: Japan. An Illustrated Encyclopedia. Kodansha, 1993, ISBN 4-06-205938-X , p. 1628.

Web links

Commons : Tsubouchi Shōyō  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Digital copies ( memento of October 27, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) of the works of Tsubouchi near Aozora (Japanese)

Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . Thus, Tsubouchi is the family name, Shōyō the first name.