Chapter Un lungo viaggio di Res publica: distanze e incroci linguistici fra la «Repubblica fiorentina» e il Giappone moderno

Abstract

Contact with Western civilisation generated an enormous amount of translation of Western writings in Japan in the second half of the 19th century. Society and culture of modern Japan were built on this great undertaking, but discrepancies between the source and target languages can create complex entanglements. It is certainly fascinating to pay attention to the very entanglements created in the process of moving from the original language to the language of translation. From this point of view, one of the most interesting examples, the subject of this essay, is the term res publica/republic and its Japanese translation kyōwa, due to their linguistic distances and intersections.