On the Bullet Train with Emily Brontë
Wuthering Heights in Japan
Reveals how and why Brontë’s novel won a huge following in Japan and has been reimagined by writers and manga artists
Description
While teaching in Japan, Judith Pascoe was fascinated to discover the popularity that Emily Brontë’s novel Wuthering Heights has enjoyed there. Nearly one hundred years after its first formal introduction to the country, the novel continues to engage the imaginations of Japanese novelists, filmmakers, manga artists, and others, resulting in numerous translations, adaptations, and dramatizations. On the Bullet Train with Emily Brontë is Pascoe’s lively account of her quest to discover the reasons for the continuous Japanese embrace of Wuthering Heights. At the same time, the book chronicles Pascoe’s experience as an adult student of Japanese. She contemplates the multiple Japanese translations of Brontë, as contrasted to the single (or nonexistent) English translations of major Japanese writers. Carrying out a close reading of a distant country’s Wuthering Heights, Pascoe begins to see American literary culture as a small island on which readers are isolated from foreign literature.
Judith Pascoe is George Mills Harper Professor of English at Florida State University. She is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in nonfiction, which supported work on this book.
Reviews
"Raise[s] important questions about how texts are transferred between cultures, and about why certain texts speak strongly to specific individuals and cultures."
- Publishers Weekly
—Publishers Weekly
"A highly readable and enjoyable little book."
- Amy Chavez
—Japan Times
"Engrossing and far-reaching, this book is a unique and valuable contribution to literature on Japan, made all the better for its author’s willingness to wander off her chosen path."
- Times Literary Supplement
—Times Literary Supplement
"...[an] interesting, entertaining and revelatory account...Readers with an interest in Japanese culture and language will...find much to enjoy in Pascoe's book."
- Brontë Society Gazette
--Brontë Society Gazette