Shomu Nobori

Shomu Nobori (昇 曙夢, Nobori Shomu, 17 July 1878 – 22 November 1958) was the pen-name of a noted translator and educator of Russian literature in Taishō and Shōwa period Japan. His real name was Naotaka Nobori (昇 直隆, Nobori Naotaka). He also served as a special advisor to the Japanese cabinet on Russian and Soviet issues.[1]

Shomu Nobori
Shomu Nobori
Born	17 July 1878 Shiba, Kakeroma Island, Japan
Died	22 November 1958 (aged 80) Tokyo, Japan
Occupation	Translator
Genre	Russian literature

Biography

Nobori was born in Shiba Village, Kakeroma Island, one of the Amami Islands in southwestern Japan. Although he was known for his intelligence in the island, he failed to enter Kagoshima Normal School in 1894. It was a desperate hope for higher education to follow an Eastern Orthodox Christian who happened to visit the island. He moved to Kagoshima Orthodox Church and was baptized there.[2] He attended a school run by the Russian Orthodox Church in Tokyo where he was initially a seminarian, and he later worked as a teacher at the same school. Recruited into the Imperial Japanese Army during the Russo-Japanese War for his Russian language abilities, the war came to an end before he graduated from the Imperial Japanese Army Academy.

Despite the unpopularity of things Russian after the war, he contributed articles on Russian culture and literature to magazines and newspapers, and worked on the first comprehensive survey of Russian literature in Japanese, Roshia Bungaku Kenkyū ("Studies on Russian Literature", 1907). In 1912, he worked as an instructor at the Central Military Preparatory School, and from 1915 as a lecturer at Waseda University. He was also a professor at the Imperial Japanese Army Academy from 1916. In 1928, he traveled to the Soviet Union on the occasion of the 100th birthday of Tolstoy, and on his return to Japan was the acknowledged Japanese expert on Soviet literature and culture. His translations of various Russian authors from the 1930s and onwards cover almost all major authors in every period.[3] He was awarded the Yomiuri Literary Prize in 1956 for his A History of Russian and Soviet Literature.

Many of his translations of Russian into Japanese, as well as his analysis and literary criticisms of Russian authors were later translated from Japanese into Chinese.[4] Asia and Africa Today stated that Nobori "connects the achievements of Russian literature" with Gogol and Alexander Pushkin.[5]

In the 1920s, Nobori saw the transition to the next generation translators such as Hakuyō Nakamura and Masao Yonekawa. Shifting his focus to Russian folklore studies, he published a number of books on folk songs, proverbs and fairy tales. Norori's son Ryūichi conjectured that Nobori's enthusiasm for Russian culture was driven by the apparent similarity between Russia and Amami.[2]

Being inspired by Kunio Yanagita, the father of Japanese folklore studies, he worked on the folk culture of Amami. His first published work on this field was the Amami Ōshima to Dai Saigō (1927). He also engaged in songwriting in the motif of Amami. In 1934, he wrote the words to the Iso no matsukaze and Tsuki no Shirahama, which were composed by Minoru Mikai, a songwriter from Amami Ōshima. His lifelong research on Amami resulted in the Dai Amami-shi (1949).[2] The bulky book was published by a small Kagoshima-based company despite the post-World War II economic turmoil. The difficult decision was certainly influenced by the occupation of Amami by the U.S. military, who showed its intention to separate Amami from Japan.[6]

Nobori was one of leading figures in the Amami reversion movement. Despite ill health, he served in several important positions of the mainland Japanese side of the movement while in the Amami Islands, the movement was led by Hōrō Izumi. A highlight of Nobori's contribution was an open hearing of the Upper House's Foreign Affairs Committee in 1951, where he clarified Amami's identification with Japan. Ideology-free Nobori helped the movement focus on the ultimate objective of reversion without intensifying ideological differences within the movement. He witnessed Amami's return to Japan in 1953.[2][7]

He died in 1958, and his grave is at the Tama Cemetery, outside of Tokyo.

Publications

• Nobori, Shomu. The Great Russian Writer, Nikolai Gogol (露国文豪ゴーゴリ Rokoku Bungō Gōgori) was published in 1904.[5]
• Nobori, Shomu. Dai Amami-shi (大奄美史, "History of Great Amami") 1949, Kagoshima.[8]
• Nobori, Shomu and Katsumaro Akamatsu. The Russian Impact on Japan Literature and Social Thought. University of Southern California Press (1981). ASIN: B0006Y4HZY

See also

• Japanese literature
• List of Japanese authors

References

• Asia and Africa Today. 1979, Issues 19–24. Contributors: Sovetskiĭ komitet solidarnosti stran Azii i Afriki, Institut vostokovedenii͡a (Akademii͡a nauk SSSR), Institut Afriki (Akademii͡a nauk SSSR).
• Matsumoto, Nobuhiro, Tōichi Mabuchi, Keiō Gijuku Daigaku. Gengo Bunka Kenkyūjo. Folk religion and the worldview in the southwestern Pacific: papers submitted to a symposium, the Eleventh Pacific Science Congress held in August–September 1966. Keio Institute of Cultural and Linguistic Studies. Keio University, 1968.

Others:

• Nobori, Shomu and Katsumaro Akamatsu. The Russian Impact on Japan Literature and Social Thought. University of Southern California Press (1981). ASIN: B0006Y4HZY
• Wada, Yoshihide. Roshia bungakusha Nobori Shomu & Akutagawa Ryunosuke ronko. Izumi Shoin (2001) ISBN 4-7576-0105-0 (Japanese)

Notes

1. Ravina, Mark (2011). The Last Samurai: The Life and Battles of Saigo Takamori. Wiley. ISBN 1118045564.
2. Tashiro Shun'ichirō 田代俊一郎 (2009). Genkyō no Amami: Roshia bungakusha Nobori Shomu to sono jidai 原郷の奄美: ロシア文学者 昇曙夢とその時代 (in Japanese).
3. Rimer, Thomas J. A hidden fire: Russian and Japanese cultural encounters, 1868–1926. Stanford University Press (1995). ISBN 0804725136, page 162
4. Gamsa, Mark. The Chinese translation of Russian literature: three studies. Brill. 2008. ISBN 9004168443, p. 219
5. Asia and Africa Today. 1979, Issues 19–24. p. 50. "The year 1904 saw the publication of Shomu Nobori's book The Great Russian Writer, Nikolai Gogol, in which the author includes material on Pushkin.[...] Shomu Nobori connects the achievements of Russian literature, which has produced such brilliant writers as Turgenev, Dostoyevsky, and Gorky, with whom Japanese readers are already well familiar, with Pushkin and Gogol, whom he calls[...]"
6. Yamashita Kin'ichi 山下欣一 (2009). Amami kenkyū no koten 奄美研究の古典. In Nobori Shomu. Dai Amami shi 大奄美史. pages=i–vii.
7. Eldridge, Robert D. The Return of the Amami Islands: The Reversion Movement and U. S.-Japan relations. Lexington Books (2004). pages=31–77. ISBN 0739107100
8. Matsumoto, et al., "Some Problems of Folk-Religion in the Southwest Islands (Ryūkyū)," p. 117. "Nobori Shomu, 1949 : Dai Amami-shi (History of Great Amami), Kagoshima."