Translating Race and Revolution: Frantz Fanon’s Writings in Japan
In this project, you’ll examine the Japanese translation and reception of the writings of the Martinique-born psychiatrist and intellectual Frantz Fanon, whose texts were crucial in shaping Japanese intellectuals’ understanding of race and colonialism.
It will be an exciting opportunity for you to develop a profile in the emerging field of Afro-Japanese intellectual history and to contribute to an understanding of how transcontinental anticolonial connections have been forged. Moreover, the project provides several opportunities to hone pedagogical and public engagement skills by working to develop material for online courses aimed at lay audiences.
You need to be proficient in English and Japanese to apply for this project.
Summary
The Martinique-born psychiatrist and intellectual Frantz Fanon achieved global influence through translation. However, to date, there has been almost no attention to the reception of his writings in Japan, where his works were translated in the 1960s amid widespread public unrest, sparked by anger against American imperialism in Asia. In this context, his writings were crucial in shaping Japanese intellectuals’ understanding of race and colonialism.
The lack of attention to Fanon’s influence in Japan reflects a long-standing marginalisation of Japan’s interactions with Black and Global South writers in academic research. Moreover, it reflects an under-theorisation of race, as it pertains specifically to blackness, in Asian studies more generally. This project will help to centre the study of race in a discipline where such studies remain underrepresented.
There will be professional and training opportunities through placements with organisations. You will be able to support language learning for pupils and the wider public by developing materials and courses for use in schools and online, and you’ll have opportunities to work with secondary school pupils interested in anti-racism. There will also be an opportunity to create continuing professional development training material for teachers to help advance initiatives for decolonising the curriculum.
Aims
This project will examine how Fanon was rendered and received in Japan in the 1960s and 1970s, asking how the dismantling of the Japanese empire and the ascendance of American imperialism in Asia shaped engagement with his work.
You’ll examine paratexts, including book prefaces, book reviews and other responses to Fanon’s work, reading them against the background of domestic debates. You’ll then carry out comparative textual analyses of the Japanese translations of Fanon’s collected works.
Research questions
You’ll be invited to review and refine the questions proposed when you start your project. Currently, possible broad questions include:
- How have Frantz Fanon’s works been translated and received in Japan?
- In what ways were the translation and reception of Fanon interlinked with contemporary Japanese debates, including debates around American imperialism in Asia?
- To what extent can the case study of Fanon’s presence in Japan forefront questions of race and decoloniality in Asian Studies today?
Source/materials
You’ll discuss the selection of materials with your supervisors when you start. Currently, the proposed primary sources for analysis comprise the four-volume collected works of Franz Fanon in Japanese translation. This collection includes Fanon’s famous psychoanalytical reflection on race Peau noire, masques blancs (Black Skin, White Masks, 1952), his controversial revolutionary manifesto Les Damnés de la terre (The Wretched of the Earth, 1961), L’An V de la Révolution Algérienne (A Dying Colonialism, 1959/1965), and Pour la révolution africaine: écrits politiques (Toward the African Revolution: Political Essays, 1964).
Sources will also include paratexts, including book prefaces, book reviews and other responses to Fanon’s oeuvre. These will be accessed through electronic databases of newspapers and magazines (e.g., Asahi Kikuzo Visual II, Yomidasu Rekishikan, Japan Times) held at Cardiff University and affiliated institutions, as well as other material provided through the National Diet Library Japan’s Digital Library, and Japan Search.
While you need to be proficient in English and Japanese to apply for this project, you do not need to read French as you will work with authoritative English translations. Your supervisors will alert you to divergences between the French original and its English translation where relevant.
