The translator who introduced Japan to Anne
One woman’s dedication to L.M. Montgomery’s classic a story of its own
All you have to say is Green Gables. Across Canada and around the world, those words conjure up an irresistible mythology.
Beyond the raspberry cordial and Gilbert Blythe crushes, Anne Shirley and her P.E.I. homestead are also intertwined with a devoted Japanese readership. In Japan, where Lucy Maud Montgomery’s books have been on school curriculums for decades, Anne has inspired manga and TV series. For a time, there was even a theme park. Each summer, Prince Edward Island usually welcomes thousands of Japanese fans who make the long journey to tour Avonlea and smell the apple blossoms.
All of this would not exist if it weren’t for the bravery of Hanako Muraoka, whose own astonishing story is recalled in the new Nimbus Publishing biography “Anne’s Cradle,” written by her granddaughter, Eri Muraoka. The 2014 Japanese bestseller, which draws on letters, diaries and other personal ephemera, is available for the first time in English through a translation by Canadian-born Cathy Hirano, best known for her work on another global blockbuster, Marie Kondo’s “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up.” (She also translated this interview.)
Eri Muraoka grew up surrounded by books, many of which had been translated into Japanese by her grandmother, who died in 1968, shortly after Eri was born. Although the Muraokas are a literary family, reading was never forced on her.
“I just picked up books that I liked and read them at my leisure, like a sheep grazing in a pasture,” says Eri. Around the age of 11, she discovered “Anne of Green Gables.” Later in high school, Eri devoured the rest of Montgomery’s series, by which time she was aware of her familial connection to the world’s most famous redhead. Her grandmother’s translation of “Akage no An” (“Redhaired Anne”) is considered the seminal Japanese edition for its gentle, hopeful take on the 1908 classic novel.
“Anne’s Cradle” is a complex story about the human trauma of colonialism and war, but at its centre it’s about a young girl who loved books. In 1903, nineyear-old Hanako Muraoka left home to attend a Christian girls’ school run by Canadian missionaries. She was naturally studious, drawn in particular to the work of tanka poet Sasaki Nobutsuna. After graduation, Hanako became a teacher and translator devoted to books for young women and children, which were not considered culturally important at the time. As beloved Aunty Radio for a decade, she also read the news to children until the beginning of the Second World War.
“One special characteristic of my grandmother’s translations is that the conversations are very lively. Even though Japanese is very different from English, the rhythms of Anne’s speech in Japanese really suit Anne’s character,” says Eri. “My grandmother was very good at bringing the characters’ personalities to life in the lines they spoke, an ability that requires a fine sensitivity to the sound and rhythm of a language. Her work in radio, speaking to an audience through a microphone, may also have helped her.”
“Anne of Green Gables” originally entered Hanako’s life as a parting gift from a favourite missionary. That formative relationship, and her kinship with Anne Shirley, may have been why, in 1945, Hanako packed up the manuscript as she fled to the family’s bomb shelter during the air raids, vowing to complete the translation despite the fact it would be impossible to publish. Or worse — she could be imprisoned if caught.
“What did it mean to protect a book from an enemy country during the war? And what had compelled my grandmother to do it? As an adult, I always wondered about that,” says Eri, who turned Hanako’s study into a memorial centre, which she runs with her sister, Mie, who is also a translator.
“‘Anne of Green Gables’ gave me the opportunity to learn more about my grandmother’s life,” says Eri, who also found that writing the book animated a deeply emotional side of modern Japanese history that she had never encountered in her school textbooks.
“The horror and grief of war pressed against my heart, and my grandmother’s story made me acutely aware that the social environment, systems and rights we take for granted today were only gained through the tears and earnest prayers of many people,” she says. “Knowing the past, our history, makes us think about how we should live our lives and about the future. For me, this was a meaningful experience.”
For a girl who started her life unwanted and alone, Anne Shirley boasts many kindred spirits like Eri around the world. In 2019, when co-producers Netflix and CBC cancelled the adapted TV series “Anne With an E” (spelling her name with an E “looks so much nicer”), angry viewers tweeted more than 13 million times in protest. Billboards appeared in Toronto and New York rallying around the spirited orphan, with more than 1.5 million superfans signing a petition demanding another season.
Anne Shirley may be a fictional character whose misadventures were born in the soil of Prince Edward Island. But Anne’s wicked smarts and fierceness — as well as her outsider insecurities and tendency to gush on about romantic affairs — are so relatable she remains a real childhood pal alive in our collective memories, regardless of when or where we grew up.
“What did it mean to protect a book from an enemy country during the war? And what had compelled my grandmother to do it? As an adult, I always wondered about that.”
ERI MURAOKA
TRANSLATOR AND GRANDDAUGHTER OF HANAKO MURAOKA