運命の悪戯 unmei no itazura Whim of Fate
運命の悪戯 (unmei no itazura), a trick of fate, has its own headword in the Japanese dictionary. It is in print by 1896, when a critic used it for what Chikamatsu's plot does to his heroine. This study follows it to Ueda Bin's translation of 1901, and asks whether it began as a rendering of irony of fate.
Abstract
運命の悪戯, a trick of fate, has its own headword in the Japanese dictionary and no date there. The oldest pages the National Diet Library's full-text searches find for it are Japanese criticism, not translation: in 1896 a critic in 坪内逍遥's Chikamatsu circle wrote that the heroine of 槍の權三重帷子 bears the name of adulteress by a trick of fate. Five years later Ueda Bin used it in a translation, for Alarcón's Spanish ironía de mi destino, the irony of my fate. Whether the phrase began as a rendering of the Western irony of fate the record does not say, and from its first page it is written as Japanese prose.
Overview
The sense. A dictionary phrase, fate toying with what it should leave alone, in Japanese print from the 1890s.
The words. 悪戯 itazura, mischief, is derived by the dictionary from 徒, idle, vain, and runs from a prank through a child's meddling to a euphemism for indecent assault; in 運命の悪戯 it is the first sense and a little of the third, fate toying with what it should leave alone, and the dictionary defines the phrase whole as 人知の及ばないものにもてあそばれているかのような、奇妙な巡り合わせ, a strange turn of circumstance, as though one were being toyed with by something beyond human knowing [1][2]. 運命 itself is old, cited from 1093, and the 精選版日本国語大辞典 notes that it came to mean what it means today when it met the Western idea of fate: 西洋からもたらされた運命論と結び付き、現代では、「宿命」か「行く末」の意味で用いられる [3].
The text in English. A trick of fate is the nearest English, since 悪戯 is a prank, and Kenkyusha's English-Japanese dictionary of 1980 renders a trick of Fate as 運命(の神)のいたずら [4].
The historical record
1896. In a reading of Chikamatsu. The dictionary gives the phrase a headword and no date [1]. The oldest dated page the National Diet Library's Digital Collections full-text search finds for it is in 早稲田文学 of September 1896, where the library's full text reads おさゐが、今や運命の惡戯によりて不義の名を蒙りながら [5]. The same sentence stands in 近松の研究 (1900), the readings of Chikamatsu by 坪内逍遥's circle, in its section on 槍の權三重帷子, in a comment headed ◎巴千曰: Osai, who had perhaps been jealous even of Gonza's betrothal to her daughter, now by a trick of fate bears the name of adulteress, yet is able to go with Gonza [6]. This is a critic's own Japanese, not a translation.
1901. In a translation. Ueda Bin's 『みをつくし』 of 1901, a book of translations from Western literature, has it in a castaway's monologue signed Alarcón, as a whaler rounds the cape without seeing him: 消えにけり、噫、消えにけり。甚しき運命の惡戯よ, gone, ah, gone; what a cruel trick of fate [7]. Alarcón's Spanish, El año en Spitzberg, which he calls a monólogo, reads at that point ¡Desaparecieron!… ¡Ay!… ¡Desaparecieron! ¡Tremenda ironía de mi destino! [8]. So in 1901 the phrase renders ironía de mi destino, the Spanish of irony of fate. That is one translator's choice, five years after the critic's use, and it does not show where the phrase came from.
The count. The library's next-generation full-text search finds the phrase in 316 books [9]. Its Digital Collections full-text search also reads magazines and books open only inside the library, and it returns 8,223 items. The oldest three hundred, from 1896 on, are in criticism, fiction, translation, journalism and economics [10]. The kana spelling 運命のいたづら appears there from 1911 [10].
Today. What a rendering must keep is the mischief, benign as often as cruel.
A reading
運命の悪戯 wears no sign of translation, and its earliest pages read here do not make it one: the first is a Japanese critic's sentence about Chikamatsu, and only the second is a translator's, where it stands for ironía de mi destino. I read it as a phrase of the Meiji literary world, which wrote its own criticism and its translations in the same years and with the same words. If the phrase owes something to irony of fate, as 運命 itself owes its modern sense to the Western idea of fate, it came in through that world, and it was writing Japanese with it from its first page.
References
- 「運命の悪戯」, デジタル大辞泉, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/運命の悪戯-1824659
- 「悪戯」, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/悪戯-423326
- 「運命」, 精選版日本国語大辞典, 語誌 (3), at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/運命-35734
- Kenkyusha's New English-Japanese Dictionary, 5th ed., ed. Koine Yoshio, Kenkyusha, 1980, p. 630, s.v. fate.
- 早稲田文学, September 1896, NDL pid 2313387, snippet view, National Diet Library. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2313387
- 坪内逍遥, 綱島梁川 共編, 近松の研究, 春陽堂, 1900, scan 29 (the section 『槍の權三重帷子』; the comment headed ◎巴千曰 begins on scan 28). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/991478/1/29
- 上田敏, みをつくし, 文友館, 1901, scan 90; the signature (アラルコン) and the note on Alarcón on scan 91. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/876471/1/90
- Pedro Antonio de Alarcón, El año en Spitzberg, in Novelas cortas, 1882, at Wikisource. https://es.wikisource.org/wiki/El_año_en_Spitzberg
- National Diet Library, next-generation full-text search on 運命の悪戯, 316 books. https://lab.ndl.go.jp/dl/
- National Diet Library Digital Collections, full-text search on 運命の悪戯 and on 運命のいたづら, sorted oldest first, all access tiers. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/