Japanese spirit, or Yamato damashii

Today's list: Richard Reitan's "Völkerpsychologie and the appropriation of “spirit” in Meiji Japan"(Modern Intellectual History, Vol. 7, issue 3, Sep 2010, pp. 495-522), which resonates with the conception of Yamato damashii 大和魂, drew me to reconsider the Japanese translation strategies toward European texts in favour of their articulation of the Japanese ethos in relation to Chinese context and led me to rethink the publishing sphere of the late-nineteenth-century Japan particularly in Tokyo.

Reitan's article also brought me to two important works: Nitobe Inazo (ed.), Western Influences in Modern Japan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1931) [HK none], and the French social psychologist Gustave Le Bon (1841-1931)'s The Psychology of Peoples (Les Lois psychologiques de l'évolution des peuples, 1894), which divided humanity into four groups: the primitive, inferior, intermediate, and superior races, the Japanese and the Chinese being in the intermediate category, was translated three times into Japanese: Rubon shi minzoku shinrigaku, trans. Tsukahara Msaji (Tokyo: Ikuseikai, 1900); Kokumin shinrigaku, trans. Kokmin kyoiku gakkai (Tokyo: Kinshodo, 1900); and Minzoku hatten no shinri, trans. Maeda Chota (民族発展の心理. Tokyo: Dai Nihon bunmei kyokai, 1910). It is intriguing to note that, as Reitan told us, Chota's translation edited out all references to Japan.