Portraits of the Other:

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  • 異貌の自画像
  • 異貌の自画像--尾崎紅葉『侠黒児』とMaria Edgeworht"The Grateful Negro"
  • イボウ ノ ジガゾウ オザキ コウヨウ キョウコクジ ト Maria Edge
  • ―尾崎紅葉『俠黒児』と Maria Edgeworth “The Greateful Negro”
  • Ozaki Koyo’s <i>Kyo-Kokuji</i> and Maria Edgeworth’s “The Grateful Negro”

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<p>　As Japan grew as a modern nation state，“Japanese” identity was formed with the imagery of “gaijin”，or foreigners as “the others”. In this paper I analyze Ozaki Koyo’s Kyo-Kokuji (1893), which is about black slaves’ rebellion in Jamaica. It is translated from an Irish novelist Maria Edgeworth’s “The Grateful Negro” (1802). Koyo reduced it to a third of its original length, though he left the plot unchanged. Edgeworth intended to criticize slavery, but Koyo changed it to a story which praised “gikyo”，or the chivalrous spirit, which culminated in death.</p><p>　Although Japan did not adopt slavery, strongly connected with modem western colonialism, it later became a ruler of other Asian countries. How did Japan understand western colonialism? Kyo-Kokuji was written and published just before the Sino-Japanese War, when Japan was imbued with nationalism. Many works in the “Shonen-Bungaku” series, including Kyo-Kokuji, recommend the “gikyo” spirit, and rejected foreigners in Japan. But in Kyo-Kokuji, the black people speak like the Japanese do, and are portrayed as similar to the Japanese.</p><p>　Kyo-Kokuji reinforced the illusion of a universal “Japanese” identity, erasing the “otherness” of foreigners, although it mostly fulfilled the Japanese curiosity about different cultures. Here, Koyo did not adapt the western gaze itself, but used black people as receptacles of the Japanese “gikyo” spirit.</p>

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