Dr Rebekah Clements publishes new book: A Cultural History of Translation in Early Modern Japan

Dr Rebekah Clements, Research Fellow at Queens' and Research Associate at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, has published a new book: 

A Cultural History of Translation in Early Modern Japan (Cambridge University Press, 2015). 

This is the first book to offer a comprehensive survey of the important role of translation in Japan during the Tokugawa period (1600-1868). By examining a wide range of translations into Japanese from Chinese, Dutch and other European texts, as well as the translation of classical Japanese into the vernacular, Rebekah Clements reveals the circles of intellectual and political exchange that existed in early modern Japan, arguing that, contrary to popular belief, Japan's 'translation' culture did not begin in the Meiji period. Examining the 'crisis translation' of military texts in response to international threats to security in the nineteenth century, Rebekah also offers fresh insights into the overthrow of the Tokugawa shogunate in 1868.