Japanese literature in the Portuguese translation system: publications in book form from the 1850s to the 1950s

The present article addresses the reception of Japanese literature in Portugal between the 1850s and 1950s by analysing book translations and translations published in anthologies. This segment of the Portuguese translation system will be contrasted with Portuguese-language book production on Japan as an object of study or an instance of literary writing. Portugal and Japan’s centuries-old history makes it possible to hypothesise periods of accumulation of literary capital in translation. The time frame selected – from the end of the sakoku policy (c.1639–1854) to Japan’s involvement and defeat in the Second World War – is expected to correspond respectively to periods of growth and decline of interest in Japanese literature and culture that have an impact on translation flows. Formally, the article is divided into four main sections: presentation of the methodology and sources used for corpus-building; quantitative analysis of the literary transfers between Japan and Portugal (book translations and translations in anthologies), which were predominantly mediated by vehicular languages of indirect translation; analysis of the main languages of mediation; and analysis of the Portuguese-language book production on Japan as evidence of interest in its cultural capital to be contrasted with the low importation of Japanese literature via translation. The article concludes that if translation is an indicator of a literature’s visibility abroad, then Japanese literature was hardly visible in the Portuguese market of symbolic goods between the 1850s and 1950s. Reasons are put forward to explain this lack of visibility.