Japanese Fairy Tales

Autorenportrait

Yei Evelyn Theodora Kate Ozaki (1870 ¿ 1932) was a Japanese translator of Japanese short stories and fairy tales. Her translations were fairly liberal but have been popular, and were reprinted several times after her death. Ozaki was born in London 1871 to Baron Sabur¿ Ozaki, one of the first Japanese men to study in the West, and an English woman, Bathia Catherine Morrison (1843-1936), daughter of William Mason Morrison (1819-1885) and Mary Anne Morrison. Bathia was one of Ozaki's tutors in London, and they married in 1869. According to Mary Fraser, in the extract "A Biographical Sketch", from Warriors of old Japan, and other stories, Bathia lived separately from Ozaki. Bathia gave birth to two further daughters, Masako Maude Mary Harriett Ozaki (b. Jan. 1872) and Kimie Bathia Alexandra Ozaki (1873-1964). Baron Ozaki returned to Japan in 1873 to fulfill an arranged marriage to a Japanese noblewoman, Toda Yae, to continue the upper-class family name of Toda. He eventually moved to a post in Saint Petersburg in an attempt to reconcile with Bathia, who was entered into his family registry (koseki) in 1880, until further issues arose and Bathia returned from Russia in December 1880. They eventually divorced in London, perhaps as Ozaki had fathered multiple children, one with Toda Yae and seven (later totalling 14) with his Japanese mistress Fujiki Michi, creating such a situation as which "her English friends could hardly advise her [to] go."

Weitere Details