Welcome to my home page, which replaces previous home pages I created in Oxford in 1999 and in Tokyo in 2004.
I research Japanese Shakespeare translation, with a particular interest in the work of Tsubouchi Shōyō (1859-1935), and have been teaching English and English literature at Japanese universities since 2003. I have also translated a number of modern Japanese plays and Japanese Shakespeare adaptations.
My home page provides resources relating to my research and teaching that are not generally available on the internet.
Daniel Gallimore
Further details of my activities can be found below:
NEWS
I have been elected to the committee of the Shakespeare Society of Japan, starting in April 2025.
A chapter outlining my strategy for reading Shakespeare translations is due for publication in Arden Shakespeare's Contemporary Readings in Global Performances of Shakespeare, edited by Alexa Alice Joubin, on 31st October, 2024.
On 29th September, 2024, I gave a presentation in Japanese at the September meeting of the Kansai Shakespeare Circle entitled ''Gokuraku tonbo': Tsubouchi Shoyo no Sheikusupia-geki honyakuron ni mukete' ('Heavenly Dragonfly': towards a theory of the Shakespeare translations of Tsubouchi Shoyo).
Between 3rd and 10th September, 2024, I led an accredited study tour to London by students from Kwansei Gakuin; the theme of the tour was :'Shakespeare and immigration, then and now'.
On 24th July, 2024, my new book The Japanese Shakespeare: Language and Context in the Translations of Tsubouchi Shoyo was published by Routledge in its Advances in Translation and Interpretation series. The second and third chapters on Tsubouchi's individual view and reception of Shakespeare and on the features of his translating style will be available for free on Open Access in 2025.
On 16th and 17th December, 2023, I was honoured to be invited to participate in an international symposium, 'Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Verse', organized as part of the Birmingham/Waseda Research Collaboration, joining Robert Stagg and Jessica Chiba (Shakespeare Institute, Birmingham) in a panel discussion on Japanese translations of Shakespeare's verse (16th) and Jessica Chiba, Adrian Pinnington (Waseda), Robert Stagg and Rieko Suzuki (Waseda) in a roundtable on sonnets and the cross-cultural (17th).
On 27th October, 2023, I gave a presentation at an international conference celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Shakespeare Association of Korea, held at Seoul National University. My presentation discussed Tsubouchi Shoyo's role as a Shakespeare translator in the context of his Meiji ideology of harmonisation of local Japanese, generalizing Chinese and Western metaphysical aesthetic domains (wakanyo).
On 29th September, 2023, I gave a presentation on prosody in Tsubouchi Shoyo's Shakespeare translations (what I call 'the Shoyo line') at an international conference organized by the Global Japanese Studies Model Unit, Waseda University, 'Translation of Shakespeare as Cultural Exchange'.
My article, 'Shakespearean comedy and Japanese (wo)men's Shakespeare: a refraction for the twenty-first century', was published in Cahiers Elisabethains 111: 1 ('Hot Shakespeare, Cool Japan' issue, ed. Sarah Olive, July 2023).
My article, 'Shoyo’s realism and Shakespeare’s real women: the case of Isabella' on Tsubouchi's translation of Measure for Measure (1918), was published in the Journal of the Society of English and American Literature, Kwansei Gakuin University (March 2023).
My review of Conor Hanratty's monograph on Ninagawa Yukio's forty years of Shakespeare production (Arden Shakespeare, 2020) was published in the online English Journal of the Japan Society of Theatre Research 3: 1 (March 2023).
My article in Japanese, 'Tsubouchi Shoyo to Sheikusupia no fushigi' (Strangeness in the Shakespeare translations of Tsubouchi Shoyo) on keywording in Tsubouchi's translation of The Tempest (1915), was published in the Journal of the Society of Humanities, Kwansei Gakuin University (December 2022).
My article, 'Ninagawa's Ancient Journeys', was published in Critical Survey 34: 4 ('Shakespeare and Rome' issue, ed. Graham Holderness, September 2022).
On 19th September, 2022, I gave a presentation on archaism in Tsubouchi Shoyo's Hamlet translation at an international conference organized as part of the University of Birmingham-Waseda Research Collaboration, 'Found in Translation: Understanding Shakespeare through Intercultural Dialogue' (Waseda University).
I contributed an appreciation of Matsuoka Kazuko for an exhibition organized online and at the Tsubouchi Memorial Theatre Museum, Waseda, commemorating her translation of Shakespeare's Complete Works in 2020 (uploaded 3rd September, 2022). I am grateful to Dr Rieko Ishibuchi of the museum for her Japanese translation of my article.,
My undergraduate coursebooks, 'History of English Literature' and 'Shakespearean Comedy' (A4 70 pages each), were published by Kwansei Gakuin University Press in April and September 2022.
I am a co-investigator in aKaken Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B) project based at Waseda University (Principal Investigator: Prof. Tetsuhito Motoyama), 'A Brave New World for Japanese Shakespeare Adaptations: Rethinking Shakespeare Studies through Adaptations'. The project is scheduled to run from 1st April, 2022, to 31st March, 2026.
On 9th October, 2021, I gave an online presentation entitled 'Shoyo's realism and Shakespeare's real women: the case of Isabella' at the annual conference of the Shakespeare Society of Japan .
My essay, 'From tea to Shakespeare: a reflection on my Japanese past', was published in margASIA 9: 1 (Centre for Asian Studies, Bhubaneswar, Odisha) (Summer 2021). I am grateful to Dr Lipika Das of IIIT Bhubaneswar for inviting me to contribute my essay.
On 7th August, 2021, I participated in a workshop on active approaches to teaching Shakespeare as critical pedagogy organized by Jennifer Kitchen (University of Warwick) for the online conference of the British Shakespeare Association.
On 17th July, 2021, I convened an online seminar on Shakespeare translation as mediation for the 11th World Shakespeare Congress with Vasso Giannakopoulou (University of Cyprus). The other participants were Dirk Delabastita (respondent, University of Namur), Anna Cetera-Wlodarczyk (University of Warsaw), Lipika Das (IIIT Bhubaneswar, India), Stephanie Mercier (independent scholar, France), and Nidhi Verma (Lingaya's Vidyapeeth, India).
I translated subtitles for the Tokyo-based Studio Life's all-male musical adaptation of Twelfth Night (2009) for the online Asian Shakespeare Intercultural Archive (A|S|I|A) (July 2021). You can watch the adaptation by registering for free at A|S|I|A and typing 'twelfth night' in the search box.
My article, 'Four-character idioms and the rhetoric of Japanese Shakespeare translation', was published in Multicultural Shakespeare 23 (38) (June 2021).
On 23rd May, 2021, I took part in a special online symposium organized for the annual conference of the English Literary Society of Japan on the reception of Shakespeare of Japan since the Meiji era. The other participants were Kawai Shoichiro (chair, University of Tokyo), Kondo Hiroyuki (Tokyo Gakugei University), Nomura Mansai (kyogen actor), and Suematsu Michiko (Gunma University).
My review of translations of recent Japanese plays (Engeki: Japanese Theatre in the New Millennium 1-4, Japan Playwrights Association, 2016-9) was published in the online
English journal of the Japan Society of Theatre Research 2: 1 (March 2021).
My article, 'The rhetoric of rubi in Tsubouchi Shoyo's translation of Henry IV, Part 1 (1919)', was published in the Journal of the Society of English and American Literature, Kwansei Gakuin University (March 2021).
My translation of Furukawa Takeshi's play, Chiten no kimi (2013) (Will of Heaven), was published in Engeki: Japanese Theatre in the New Millennium 6 (Japan Playwrights Association, 2021).
My article, 'Canonising Shakespeare in 1920s Japan: Tsubouchi Shoyo and the translator's choice', was published in Critical Survey 33: 1 (special issue on 'Shakespeare and Japan', ed. Graham Holderness, March 2021).
On 19th November, 2020, I gave an online presentation at the Trinity Centre for Literary and Cultural Translation, Dublin, entitled 'Tsubouchi Shoyo: A Voice for Shakespeare in Modern Japan'. A video of my presentation is available for viewing on YouTube.
On 5th November, 2020, I presented an online paper entitled '‘Strange’ and ‘wonderful’: the politics of mystery (fushigi) in the Shakespeare translations of Tsubouchi Shoyo' at the 4th Biennial Conference of the Asian Shakespeare Association (Sejong University, Seoul).
On 17th October, 2020, I read some of my unpublished poems and from my translation of Tsubouchi Shoyo's Shinkyoku Urashima at an online session of Authors Live, Kobe.
updated November 2024