Negotiating Asymmetry

Natsume Sōseki &s;s 1891 English translation of Hōjōki , produced under his professor James Main Dixon, illuminates Japan&s;s negotiation of asymmetrical global power during the Meiji era. By appropriating Wordsworth, Shakespeare, and Goldsmith, Sōseki framed Chōmei &s;s medieval text through familiar Western categories, projecting Japanese culture while resisting Orientalist hierarchies. His strategy secularised and reframed a Buddhist classic as a Romantic work of nature, a move that paradoxically advanced both recognition and distortion. Pradhan situates Sōseki &s;s translation within the global circulation of ideas, showing how unequal world orders shaped subjectivity, cultural production, and the contested claims of Japanese exceptionalism.