Eri Muraoka - Annes Cradle: The Life and Works of Hanako Muraoka, Japanese Translator of Anne of Green Gables

Text copyright Eri Muraoka, 2021

Originally published in Japan as An no yurikago Muraoka Hanako no shogai by Shinchosha, 2008.

Editor: Whitney Moran
Design: Heather Bryan
NB1535

L.M. Montgomery is a trademark of Heirs of L.M. Montgomery Inc.
Anne of Green Gables and other indicia of Anne are trademarks and Canadian official marks of the Anne of Green Gables Licensing Authority Inc.

All photos, as well as all documents from which excerpts have been used, such as Hanako Muraokas letters, diaries and texts, are owned and managed by the Toyo Eiwa Jogakuin Archives or the Muraoka family unless otherwise stated. Use or reproduction of photos and written archival materials in this book without permission is prohibited.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: Anne's cradle : the life and works of Hanako Muraoka, Japanese translator of Anne of Green Gables / by Eri Muraoka ; translated from the Japanese by Cathy Hirano.

Other titles: An no yurikago. English | Life and works of Hanako Muraoka, Japanese translator of Anne of Green Gables

Names: Muraoka, Eri, 1967- author. | Hirano, Cathy, translator.

Description: Translation of: An no yurikago.

Identifiers: Canadiana 2021009818X | ISBN 9781771089241 (softcover)

Subjects: LCSH: Muraoka, Hanako, 1893-1968. | LCSH: TranslatorsJapanBiography. | LCSH: Authors, Japanese20th centuryBiography. | LCSH: Montgomery, L. M. (Lucy Maud), 1874-1942. Anne of Green Gables. | LCGFT: Biographies.

Classification: LCC P306.92.M87 M8713 2021 | DDC 418/.04092dc23

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Some expressions used in this book are no longer considered appropriate but have been used because they are direct quotations from texts written during an earlier time.

Illegible words in excerpts from letters and other written documents quoted in this text have been marked with [].

Wherever possible, permission was obtained from people shown in the photographs and from the photographer. In some cases, however, people could not be identified. If you recognize any of the people in the photos or know who the photographer is, please contact the author through the publisher.

Translating Anne of Green Gables
in the Midst of War, April 1945

Although it was already mid-April, a cold snap had turned the day chilly and overcast. Here and there, cherry blossom petals fluttered from branches that were already leafing out.

In the Muraoka residence in Omori, Hanako had finished cleaning up after dinner and was in the study, writing in the dim light of a small lamp shaded with air-raid blackout cloth. She had begun polishing her translation of Anne of Green Gables, a novel set in Canada, and was going over the section at the beginning where the orphan Anne arrives in Prince Edward Island and is captivated by its beauty.

Riding down an avenue of apple trees in a horse-drawn buggy, Anne gazes raptly at the canopy of snow-white blossoms arching overhead. As she does for everything she likes, she gives the road a new name: White Way of Delight.

What words, Hanako wondered, would convey to Japanese readers the inner world of this young girl endowed with such a rich imagination?

White Way means shiroi michi, she thought. Delight could be yorokobi. Or what about kanki? Kanki no shiroi michi.

Hanako closed her eyes, conjuring up an image of trees adorned with pure white blossoms. The voice of a man singing as he passed by on the street reached her ears.

Cherry blossoms fall.

Those left on the branch

will soon be falling too.

These words from a haiku by Zen Buddhist poet Ryokan Taigu (17581831) were sung by Japanese soldiers when they sent their comrades off to the front. The war situation was rapidly deteriorating. Cast into a conflict they had no hope of winning, young men were perishing in foreign lands. Even in Tokyo, air-raid sirens whined frequently, followed by American bombers that sowed destruction. Three and a half years earlier, at the start of the Pacific War, no one had anticipated such devastation.

Canada, the birthplace of the book Hanako was furtively translating, was now an enemy. Slogans denouncing the Allied forces were used to whip up popular sentiment, and distorted accounts of Japanese military exploits had intensified the nations militaristic fervour with each passing day. What condemnation would society heap upon Hanako should it catch her translating a book from an enemy nation?

In 1942, three years earlier, Canadian missionaries from Hanako Muraokas alma mater, Toyo Eiwa Girls School, had been interned despite having committed no crime. In the same year, the leaders of the United Church of Christ in Japan had all been arrested for violating the Peace Preservation Law. Hanako and her husband, Keizo, Christians since their parents generation, were no longer allowed to go to church. Even if Hanako succeeded in finishing her translation, would it ever be published in Japan?

Trying to shake off her gloom, Hanako reached for the porcelain cup on her desk and took a sip of pungent, twiggy bancha tea. Lucy Maud Montgomerys story brimmed with hope for the future. Hanako longed to see the book published in Japan to cheer the hearts of Japanese readers. With fresh resolve, she picked up her pen and focused once more on revising the manuscript.

A little over a month earlier, on March 10, a fleet of American Boeing29 Superfortress heavy bomberswhat the Japanese referred to as B-29shad launched a massive air raid on Tokyo, pummelling the city centre with firebombs and razing the densely populated Shitamachi area. Rather than relocating to the country for safety, residents stayed behind to defend their homes. Their efforts, however, were futile. Gusts of wind whipped the flames into an inferno, leaving in its wake a gruesome wasteland dotted with endless mounds of charred corpses.

Although the number of casualties exceeded that of the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, government reports carried by the radio and newspapers claimed the raid had only caused a small fire in the government department responsible for the imperial stables. That night, however, the crimson sky blazing over the northeastern part of the city had been visible even from Hanakos house in Omori, about ten kilometres away.

A few days later, a poet Hanako knew well came and told her the shocking truth. When he related that the cheerful, hardworking housewives belonging to the womens associations in those areaswomen who had cared for the elderly and cooked for those who had lost their homeshad all perished, Hanako shut her eyes, overcome with anguish. Desperation tinged her friends face, and he looked haggard and worn from wandering the blackened streets. For years, they forced me to write things against my will, he said bitterly. And now look at me. Im too broke to send my wife and children to the countryside where theyd be safe. The rich all flee while the poor are left to die in the city, unable to escape this catastrophe.