2 EXPLANATORY PERITEXTS

Gerard Genette introduced the term “peritext” in his book Seuils (1987, eng. trans. 1997).

According to him “peritext” means all texts located in the same volume as the main text but are not part of the main text including, for instance, footnotes, titles and illustrations (e.g. Genette 1997:5; also Tahir-Gürçağlar 2011:113). Over the last few decades, peritexts have attracted attention in translation studies, but the main focus has often been on questions related to agency (see e.g. Borgeaud 2011; O. Paloposki 2008; Tahir-Gürçağlar 2002). Moreover, the research has mainly been based on samples (e.g. Harvey 2003;

Kovala 1996). In this study I intended to observe the phenomenon of cultural mediation not in peritexts of a sample material but in peritexts of all translations of Japanese literature into Finnish within later-described limits. However, even though visual material, like covers and other illustrations, would have been interesting from the perspective of cultural mediation, I have concentrated on textual material for methodological reasons and left the illustrations for possible future research.

For the purpose of my research, I had to coin a new subgroup of peritexts to refer to textual material that was not part of the translated main text but located within the covers of the translated book. I call these explanatory peritexts (EPs), even though these texts may also contain information other than explanatory material. In these EPs I have included various notes, prefaces and postfaces. Here prefaces and postfaces are defined by their location before or after the main text, and may refer to various texts that are explanatory or commentary in nature, not only those texts that are titled as prefaces and postfaces. Writers of these peritexts may vary considerably, including translators, original authors, editors and cultural specialists. In EPs it is possible to provide more general cultural information and longer explanations than within the main text itself, so they are a natural place to begin research on cultural mediation. Previously Outi Paloposki (2008) has studied cultural mediation in footnotes of Finnish translations, but her focus was on translators' roles, not on cultural mediation itself.

3 DATA

Before one can begin to answer the what, where, when and who questions, the research material had to be defined and gathered. Moreover, the material was categorised to describe and analyse the data.

To observe the phenomenon of peritext usage, it was important not only to focus on the books containing EPs, but also to observe, for comparison, what kinds of books did

not contain extra explanations. Moreover, since the research data did not consist of a sample material but included all material which met the set criteria, the criteria needed to be considered carefully. Eventually, the criteria were set on Finnish language translations of fiction and poetry whose originals were written in Japanese and published as books in Finland by the end of the year 2010. The criteria excluded e.g. translations that were published in the Soviet Union for the Finnish and Karelian speaking people in the Karelian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (see Kruhse & Uitto 2008), and compilation works containing material that was originally written in other languages than Japanese. In addition, singular poems and stories that were published in periodicals were excluded, since the workload of finding all of these works would have been excessive for this study. Translations from intermediate languages were included as long as the language of the original work was Japanese.

However, an exception was made concerning the original language of the work. Until the 20^th century both Japanese and Chinese were used as literary languages in Japan, although as languages they differ essentially from each other (see e.g. Sato Habein 1984).

It is unclear when Chinese writing was first introduced in Japan, but from as early as the 7^th century several written examples of its usage have survived (Sato Habein 1984:8).

Chinese writing continued to be used in official documents and intellectual works, even though during the Heian period (794-1185) indigenous Japanese writing systems, katakana and hiragana, were created. Since reading Chinese texts required knowledge of Chinese language, gradually an annotation method was developed to help Japanese readers to read and understand these texts. These annotation marks guided pronunciation and showed the Japanese word order and grammatical particles (Kato 1981:6). This way Chinese text could be read in “Japanese”, without profound knowledge of Chinese language. Among the data for this study are books which include poems that were originally written in Chinese, even though they were written in Japan and by Japanese writers (Riehaantunut pilvi by Ikkyū, trans. Kai Nieminen). These were included in the data even though the original language is not “Japanese” (see Nieminen 2005:62;

for Japanese writing systems see Coulmas 1989:122-133).

The criteria were later revised to contain only first editions of translations of prose, poetry and fairy tales. Even though possible changes in the EPs of later editions would have been an interesting research topic, the scope of this article does not allow us to look at more closely at this issue as well.

To collect a corpus consisting of all the translations within set criteria, both the search methods and relevant catalogues, and other sources had to be chosen carefully. As for the sources, both internet-based databases and published catalogues were used. The main sources were Japanese Literature in Finnish Language Bibliography (Kuusikko 2000) and the extensive FENNICA database, which is the national bibliography of Finland and maintained by the National Library of Finland. Index Translationum, the international, UNESCO maintained translation database was used only to cross-check information, since information concerning Finnish translations is more reliable and up-to-date in FENNICA (see O. Paloposki 2000:2). Additionally, a number of Finnish library databases and the Japanese Literature in Translation Search were used to verify and complement

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the main sources. Because of possible errors in database information, the database information was later verified from the peritexts of the translations themselves, for instance the year of publication, or from some other source, such as the publisher.

Insufficiency of information for my research purposes was not only catalogue related, but appeared also in peritexts: some books contained no information about, for example, the translator or the source language. It also seemed common that there were shortages in information that concerned translations which were used as mediators on intermediate translations. Even the title of the mediating translation was often disregarded in the publishing information of the Finnish translation. Some of the necessary information was found from the publisher's information elsewhere or from the translators themselves, but sometimes tracing the information was not possible.

In addition to problems with insufficiency of information, defining and classifying the material proved challenging, often due to the heterogeneity of material within a single book. The translations were classified according to translator, publisher, source language, genre, year of publication, different explanatory peritext types, series where translation was published, and writer of explanatory peritexts etc. Some of the categories were relatively easy, such as adding the translator's name into translator category if the information was available, but some, like genre needed defining.

The classification into genres (prose, poetry, fairy tales) was mainly conducted according to the peritextual information of the books themselves, complemented with information in databases. In the beginning of the study, I decided to use classifications of target culture instead of Japanese genre categories. This was done because the data are translations, and as translations are already part of the field of Finnish literature and classified in Finnish library databases and catalogues. Books containing multiple categories were classified case by case, according to the peritextual information and the material in the book. For example, Syötäviä runoja (Eng. Poems to Eat) by Ishikawa Takuboku contained poetry and essays, but was classified as poetry, since the title of the translation said “poems” and essays were not included as a separate category into the study. However, it should be taken into account during the analysis. Similarly, Genjin tarina (Eng. The Tale of Genji) by Murasaki Shikibu was classified as fiction, even though there were a number of poems and notes connected to these poems within the narration.

The genre classification was later refined by dividing the fiction and poetry into classical and modern literature. This was done in order to see whether there was a difference in the use of EPs between translations of older and newer literature. The division into classical and modern was done using the year of the Meiji Restoration, 1868, as the dividing line; the Meiji period was a time of changes in Japanese cultural history, as well as in literature and Japanese written language (see Kuusikko 2007:284; Sato Habein 1984:98). During this period, Western literature was introduced in Japan, which resulted in the arrival of new genres and movements of Western literature to Japan (Keene 1984:2–4). At the same time, the Japanese written language was being modernised, which was seen, for instance, in the use of colloquial language in novels (Sato Habein 1984:98-102). The change was not sudden, and the birth of modern literature can be set a few decades after the Meiji Restoration as well (see e.g. Nieminen 1994:407).

In this study all of the works that appeared prior to 1868 were grouped under the category “classical literature”, even though the period when the originals were written exceeded eight hundred years. This was done because the number of translations of classical literature was relatively small within the data.

4 RESULTS

4.1 Distribution of data

Translated books used as data reached 91 in total. The earliest translation in the corpus was published in 1906. Even though earlier translations from Japanese exist, they do not fall within the set criteria. The last year for which data was collected was set in the year 2010, which was the last full year at the time the research was begun. However, the most recent translations within the corpus were published in 2009, since in 2010 there were no first editions published. The distribution of genres is shown in Figure 1. The number of books varied from 55 to 4 per genre, the largest group by far being modern prose with 55 books, which is approximately 60% of all translations in the material. The smallest group, modern poetry, consisted of only 4 books. For the rest of the genres, classical poetry included 16, classical prose 9, and fairy tales 7 translations. The prominence of modern prose reflects Pirjo-Riitta Kuusikko's table of overall distribution of Japanese literature in Finland, where modern prose comprises the largest group with 123 works. The table was published in Kuusikko's article on Japanese literature in Finland, and includes also categories that are not present in this article, such as manga, Japanese comics (Kuusikko 2007:284).

Out of all the translations in the material, 65 books included at least one EP, while 26 did not have any footnotes, endnotes, prefaces or postfaces. However, it should be noted that the length of the books or the number of the EPs in a book were not taken into consideration in the statistic, so the numbers do not show the number or length of EPs per book or per page. Instead, the numbers indicate occurrences of books containing EPs within the research material.

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