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In 2017, I published a new translation of Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year (1772) under the title Pesuto-no Kioku [Memories of the Plague] (Kenkyusha). It was shortly after I started working on the translation in 2010 that the Great East Japan Earthquake and the Fukushima nuclear accident occurred in 2011. I was certain that the book, which described the panic that gripped residents and the response of municipal authorities to the plague that struck London in the seventeenth century, would be read by contemporary Japanese readers, who had to live in a post-3.11 world, with a sense of empathy and resonance. I made the translation accessible to as many readers as possible and included a map of London that I created so that it can be understood by those without specific knowledge of Defoe or the layout of seventeenth-century London.
 
My goal, so to speak, was to revive an eighteenth-century classic as a modern literary work (see the synopsis of this translation on the 春雨直播app BiblioPlaza website for more details). However, I had no inkling at the time that, three years later in 2020, the book would attract attention for a different reason.
 
The wave of the new coronavirus that spread globally soon swept over Japan. A similar pandemic caused by the influenza virus known as the “Spanish flu” occurred worldwide at the beginning of the twentieth century, but most people have no memory of that time. The unprecedented circumstances caused by the unknown virus dramatically transformed the lives of ordinary citizens and greatly impacted politics and the economy. As we approach the end of 2023, reflecting on the turmoil of those days, I am filled with various emotions. It was at a time when vaccinations had not yet started and people were still trying to figure out a new way of life that Memories of the Plague started to receive attention along with Albert Camus’ The Plague (1947). Whereas Camus’ The Plague is a masterpiece of absurdist fiction set in a North African village beset by a plague that allegorically represents the author’s war experiences, Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year is a mixture of fact and fiction based on an actual plague that struck London in 1665 and caused many deaths. Many of the behaviors depicted by Defoe match up exactly with those that we experienced in 2020.
 
It is perhaps partly for this reason that NHK’s program “100 Pun de Meicho [Great Books in 100 Minutes]” took up Memories of the Plague in September 2020, with me as the navigator. The program, which is hosted by TV personalities Hikaru Ijuin and Michiko Abe, introduces one world-famous philosophical or literary book each month. Incidentally, there is a textbook that I prepared for this program (NHK Publishing), which has already been introduced on the 春雨直播app BiblioPlaza website.
 
The book introduced here, Talking about Great Books: Both Basho and I Exaggerate, consists of conversations between Ijuin and selected navigators who appeared on the “100 Pun de Meicho” program with whom Ijuin wanted to have further discussions. A previous volume of this book series titled Meicho-no Hanashi—Boku to Kafuka-no hikikomori [Talking about Great Books: Kafka and I, Recluses] was published in 2022 and included discussion on Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, Kunio Yanagita’s Tono Monogatari [The Legends of Tono], and Mieko Kamiya’s Ikigai-ni Tsuite [On the Meaning of Life].
 
The second book of the series titled Both Basho and I Exaggerate (2023) features a discussion between Ijuin and myself on Defoe’s Memories of the Plague alongside discussions with two other navigators on Matsuo Basho’s Oku no hosomichi [The Narrow Road to the Deep North] and Collodi’s The Adventures of Pinocchio. We were able to delve deeply into topics that could not be adequately covered on the “100 Pun de Meicho” program, including Daniel Defoe’s fascinating contradictory personality (the coexistence of religious passion and a greed for money and fame, his various non-fictional works, etc.); the relationship between Defoe’s writings and modern fiction; and the relationship between his other famous book, Robinson Crusoe, and Memories of the Plague.
 
I also provided more detailed analyses of some famous and unusual scenes from Memories of the Plague than I was able to do in the “100 Pun de Meicho” program. These will enhance the enjoyment of those who have seen the program or have read the textbook.
 
Ijuin’s solid reading of the text and skill at vicariously experiencing the world of a novel by relating it to his personal experience allows even those unfamiliar with literary studies or literary criticism to fully immerse themselves in the world of the famous book as if listening to the Ijuin’s radio show. Some “Corona gags” that Ijuin has collected related to both negative and positive episodes in Memories of the Plague are also included. In the chapters other than the one on Memories of the Plague, Ijuin overlays Pinocchio’s reaction after becoming a human boy and seeing the wooden doll that was his original self with his own reaction to re-listening to his old radio shows. In the Afterword, Ijuin describes an episode in which he, overcome by a sense of powerlessness upon the passing of his rakugo master San'yūtei Enraku VI, takes a trip to Kanazawa and encounters a stone slab engraved with a haiku by Basho. One cannot help but be moved when savoring this scene in conjunction with the text.
 
This is a book that should be read, not so only to reflect on the COVID-19 pandemic but also to witness the resurrection of a literary classic in modern life.
 

(Written by TAKEDA Masaaki, Professor, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences / 2023)