Naoko Okamoto

Research Fellow, Center for Innovative Research, National Institutes for the Humanities *Profile is at the time of the award.

2024Inamori Research GrantsHumanities & Sociology

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Research topics: Study of Joseph-Charles Mardrus, Translator of "One Thousand and One Nights": Toward a Clarification of the Realities of Literary Space in the Mediterranean Region

Keyword

Summary: J.-C. Mardrus (1868-1949), who was born in Egypt and expanded his activities in Paris, translated the « Thousand and One Nights » into French, it is read the world over as global literature. On the other hand, researchers underestimate him because the original text is not recognised. I intend to re-evaluate his work in the context of the cultural mechanism of Paris in the Belle Époque and his passage from the Mediterranean to the world via Paris, by investigation of the newly discovered personal archives of Mardrus (Mardrus Collection Bequest), and by interviewing his descendants. My aim is to shed light on the reality of the Mediterranean literary space and to establish a new theory of area studies from a literary perspective.

Message

By capturing the reality of the Egyptian-born Mardrus' activities in Paris and his inner life through his newly discovered personal archives, I hope to provide a perspective on issues that are relevant today, such as immigration.

Outline of Research Achievements

I have undertaken the collation of J.-C. Mardrus’s unpublished manuscripts, organized related materials and previously unpublished correspondence concerning Mardrus, and gathered information from relevant parties; I have now prepared the edited unpublished manuscripts and other unpublished materials, such as the correspondence, for future publication. I re-examined and analyzed Mardrus’s activities not through the existing methodologies of literary research, such as the conventional ‘search for original sources’, but from the perspective of the literary space in the Mediterranean region, or the global mechanism whereby culture flows from the Mediterranean out into the world, with Paris as a hub, thereby re-evaluating Mardrus.

Nishio Tetsuo, Okamoto Naoko (November 2024) Second voyage de l’Histoire arabe de Sindabad Le Marin par François Pétis de La Croix : Traduction japonaise et annotations (in French) Bulletin of the National Museum of Ethnology 49(1):121-134 https//doi.org/10.15021/0002000235

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Humanities & Sociology

Koichi Utagawa

St. Luke's International University