earticle

영어

The author (i)compared Smiles’ Self-Help with Saigoku Risshihen, NAKAMURA Masanao’s translation of it into Japanese, and Dokusho Muekiron (Traditional Reading Being Fruitless), Chiba’s work on education, (ii)compared Mill’s On Liberty with Jiyu no Ri, Nakamura’s translation of it, and Itsukaichi Manuscript of Japanese Constitution written by Chiba, and (iii)investigated Chiba’s actions in Jiyu Minken Undo, the Movement for Liberty and Rights of Japanese People in early Meiji Era. The author concluded that Chiba understood the key points of Smiles’ theory on education through the translation, and gained Mill’s keynotes, on freedom of mind and on being able to restrict persons’ actions when only harming others, reading between the lines of only Nakamura’s translation which was not enough. This fact shows that people can realise the important points of original works even if they read only imperfect translations. In addition to the contents above, this work has two advantages. One is that it described both advanced and obsolete aspects of Jiyu Minken Undo. Professor IROKAWA Daikichi, the discoverer of Chiba’s works, has tended to describe only advanced aspects of the movement, and ISHII Michio covered Irokawa’s weak points showing obsolete aspects of it. However, OKAMURA Shigeo wrote only advanced aspects of it again in recent years. Therefore the author of this work offered an eligible stance of describing the movement. The other advantage is that this work indicated that Jiyu-ron in the series of Iwanami Bunko paperbacks, which is today’s most famous standard translation of Mill’s On Liberty into Japanese, includes a big problem that it does not express Mill’s keynotes above.