On the Bullet Train with Emily Brontë: Wuthering Heights in Japan

by Judith Pascoe

While teaching in Japan, Judith Pascoe was fascinated to discover the popularity that Emily Brontë’s novel Wuthering Heights has enjoyed there. Nearly one hundred years after its first formal introduction to the country, the novel continues to engage the imaginations of Japanese novelists, filmmakers, manga artists, and others, resulting in numerous translations, adaptations, and dramatizations. On the Bullet Train with Emily Brontë is Pascoe’s lively account of her quest to discover the reasons for the continuous Japanese embrace of Wuthering Heights . At the same time, the book chronicles Pascoe’s experience as an adult student of Japanese. She contemplates the multiple Japanese translations of Brontë, as contrasted to the single (or nonexistent) English translations of major Japanese writers. Carrying out a close reading of a distant country’s Wuthering Heights , Pascoe begins to see American literary culture as a small island on which readers are isolated from foreign literature.

Genres: Nonfiction, Japan, Books About Books

192 pages, Hardcover

First published December 5, 2017

Reviews

[Alwynne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights has been bizarrely popular in Japan since it was first translated in 1932, it’s spawned a further 19 translated versions, been transformed into theatre, Manga and anime, influenced authors like Taeko Kono and been completely reimagined by novelists like Minae Mizumura. But why? What is it about Bronte’s novel that’s so captured the imagination of successive generations of Japanese readers and creators? And what might its reception in Japan tell us about cross-cultural literary influences? And what is the continuing appeal of characters like Heathcliff and Catherine, and their myriad Japanese versions? During a year lecturing in Japan, Judith Pascoe unexpectedly became intrigued and then slightly obsessed with exploring these questions, reflecting along the way on issues ranging from gender to family and power. Her approach to her topic’s remarkably clear, informed by a mix of formal research and her encounters with an array of actors and writers. Pascoe’s academic insights are interwoven with a fluid account of her personal experiences as she considers her own slowly unfolding relationship with Japanese literature, language and culture. I found this quirky, light, deceptively direct take on the reception of Emily Bronte’s novel enormously enjoyable, just demanding enough to keep my attention but readable enough to sweep me along from start to finish.

[Suzanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

If only all academic books could be as entertaining as this one! I thoroughly enjoyed Pascoe's exploration of the intersection of Wuthering Heights, Japan, and the Japanese language. I even chuckled a few times.

[Elizabeth Grant · Rating 4 out of 5]

A funny, serious, thoughtful book. While it is a scholarly study of Bronte reception, it is so much more. As Pascoe describes her encounters in Japan, I found myself remembering, with gratitude and humility, the heart-warming kindness and patience I experienced while living there and in other countries where I am a foreigner.

We see the author struggling with an unknown culture, language, script, with her own insecurity, with her doubts and failures. I suffered with her, laughed with her, rooted for her, delighted with her in her finds and insights.

An insight I took away with me: the futility of an endeavour does not make it any less worthwhile. Life, for example.

The layout is a bit unfriendly, and one gets the sense that the publishers didn't give the author the time and encouragement she really deserves. How about a new edition with thicker paper and more space on the pages?

[Kathleen Flynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this. Wonderfully odd, rueful, erudite and funny, about the effort to learn Japanese well enough to understand the place Wuthering Heights occupies in Japanese culture. Ultimately she fails— Wuthering Heights is very mysterious in English, let alone Japanese— yet the book itself succeeds.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

The most affirming, upbeat account of an abandoned (failed?) scholarly project that I can imagine. Breezy and erudite at the same time; delightful reading; a genre-buster that crosses monograph with "I novel" (shi-shosetsu). I think I will want to read it again.

[meheadhurts · Rating 5 out of 5]

August Readathon 2024 TBR Takedown Challenge #1 This Just In - recently aquired book
(also Summer reading challenge - book about books/book lovers)