Biography
Father William Farge, SJ, has published on topics related to Jesuit history in Japan, including The Japanese Translations of the Jesuit Mission Press, 1590-1614, an in-depth study of the Buddhist terminology used to translate European Catholic texts into Japanese and A Christian Samurai: The Trials of Baba Bunkō, published by Catholic University Press.
He holds a Master of Arts (1995) and doctorate (1997) in Japanese language and culture. During his Jesuit formation, Fr. Farge studied philosophy at Spring Hill College and Loyola University New Orleans, and Japanese at the Jesuit Language School in Kamakura, Japan.
Father Farge served as associate professor of Japanese at Loyola University New Orleans, and at Georgetown University from 2006 to 2008. He served for one year in the Ateneo de Manila Jesuit Community in Quezon City in the Philippines, where he was a formation staff member and spiritual director to Jesuit scholastics from Asia.
After spending much of his Jesuit life teaching English and religion at Jesuit high schools in Japan and teaching Japanese at Jesuit universities in the United States, Fr. Farge is now a spiritual director for seminarians in Louisiana.
Publication List
Books:
A Christian Samurai. The Trials of Baba Bunkō. Washington DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2016.
The Japanese Translations of the Jesuit Mission Press, 1590-1614, New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, Ltd., 2003.
Book Chapters:
“Adapting Language to Culture: Translation Projects of the Jesuit Missions in China and Japan,” in Michal J. Rozbicki and George O. Ndege, eds. Cross-Cultural History and the Domestication of Otherness. New York, Palgrave-Macmillan, 2011. pp. 67-81.
“Translating Religious Experience Across Cultures: Early Attempts to Construct a Body of Japanese Christian Literature,” in Wu Xiaoxin, Christianity and Cultures: Japan and China in Comparison, 1543-1644. Rome: Institutum Historicum S.I., 2009.
Articles:
“The Japanese Translations of the Jesuit Mission Press,” Bibliotheca Instituti Historici S. I. Volume 68 (2009) 83-106.
“The Japanese Fear of Christianity in the Diplomacy of Commodore Matthew C. Perry,” Japanese Studies Review, Vol. 11 (2007) 3-22.
“History of Early Modern Japan,” in Clive Carpenter, ed. The World and its Peoples Encyclopedia, London: Brown Reference Group (forthcoming)
Book Reviews:
Christian Sorcerers on Trial: Records of the 1827 Osaka Incident translated and with an introduction by Fumiko Miyazaki, Kate Wildman Nakai, and Mark Teeuwen. New York: Columbia University Press, 2020, in Contemporary Japan, published online December 17, 2020.
Gerald Groemer, The Land We Saw, the Times We Knew: An Anthology of Zuihitsu Writing from Early Modern Japan (University of Hawaii Press, 2019), in Japanese Studies, vol. 41, issue 1 (2021), pp. 133-135.
Jan C. Leuchtenberger, Conquering Demons: The “Kirishitan,” Japan and the World in Early Modern Japanese Literature (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2013), in Journal of Japanese Studies, pp. 239-242.
Fuminobu Murakami, The Strong and the Weak in Japanese Literature: Discrimination, egalitarianism, nationalism (London and New York: Routledge, 2010) in Journal of Japanese Studies Winter 2011, pp. 217-222. (1950 words)
Haruko Nawata Ward, Women Religious Leaders in Japan’s Christian Century, 1549-1650: Women and Gender in the Early Modern World. By. (Surrey, Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Company. 2009) in The Catholic Historical Review, Jan. 2011, Vol. 97, Number. 1, pp. 191-193.
Kiri Paramore, Ideology and Christianity in Japan (London: Routledge, 2009); in Journal of Japanese Studies, Vol. 36, Number 1. Winter 2010, pp. 210-214.
Translations:
“One Hundred Monsters in Edo of Our Time,” in Watanabe Kenji, Sumie Jones, eds., An Edo Anthology: Literature from Japan’s Mega City, 1750-1850 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2013), pp.103-113.
“Aged Geisha and “Young” Kabuki Actors,” Two Lines, A Journal of Translation, June 2006.
Motoyama Yukihiko, “Patterns of Thought and Action of the Common People during the Bakumatsu and Restoration Epoch,” in J.S.A. Elisonas, Richard Rubinger, eds. Proliferating Talent: Essays on Politics, Thought, and Education in the Meiji Era, (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1997).
Nobuhiro Shinji, “Santo Kyoden’s Sharebon: Private Life and Public Art,” in Sumie Jones, ed. Imaging Reading Eros: Sexuality and Edo Culture, 1750-1850 (Bloomington: East Asian Studies Center, 1996).
Papers and Presentations:
“A Christian Samurai,” St. Joseph Seminary College, presentation to faculty, October 25, 2018.
“The Tiber Flows into the Sumida: The Fear of Catholicism and the Decline of Confucianism in Tokugawa Japan,” Georgetown University Conference “Confucianism and Catholicism: Reinvigorating the Dialogue,” Washington, D.C. March 4-6, 2016.
“A Hidden Christian and the Women of Yoshiwara,” Association of Asian Studies Conference, Philadelphia, PA, March 29, 2014.
“Adapting Language to Culture,” Perspectives on Cross-Cultural History Conference, St. Louis University, March 19-20, 2010.
“Joao Rodrigues vs. Matteo Ricci: Christian Terminology in China and Japan,” Conference Celebrating the Quadricentennial of Arte da Lingoa de Iapam. Georgetown University, December 12 & 13, 2008.
“Baba Bunkō: Parody as Social and Political Dissent in Early Modern Japan,” Association for Japanese Literary Studies Conference, University of British Columbia, August 18-21, 2008.
“Japanese Christians After the Persecution: The Survivors, 1750-1850,” Jesuit Chair Lecture, Georgetown University, March 27, 2008.
“The Devil of Japan: The Origins of Christophobia in Japanese Myth and Magic,” Jesuit Chair Lecture, Georgetown University, April 24, 2007.
“The Jesuit Mission Press,” Macao Ricci Institute 2006 Symposium: Christianity and Cultures, Macao, November 30, 2006.
“Early History of Professional Exchange between Japan and the West,” International Symposium on Japan-America Professional Exchange 2006, Georgetown University, September 15, 2006.
“Subversive Literature in Early Modern Japan,” Washington, DC-Mid-Atlantic Japan Seminar, Georgetown University. December 3, 2005.
“Hidden Christianity and Commodore Matthew C. Perry,” Southern Japan Conference, Emory University, November 6, 2004.
Critique and commentary for “Pure Lands and Immigrant Deities in Asuka Japan” by Michael Como; and “Beautiful Exit: Preparing for Death in Medieval Japan” by Jacqueline Stone at the Conference on the Aesthetics of Nirvana, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, November 8, 2003.
“Violating Censorship: Humor and Virulence in the Popular Writings of Baba Bunkō (1715-1759),” Midwest Conference of the Associations of Asian Studies, Bloomington, IN. October 8, 2000.
“Historiographic and Literary Problems in Early Modern Satire,” Southern Japan Seminar, Panama City FL. September 23, 2000.
“The Japanese Constitution and Mythology,” The Round Table Club, New Orleans. May 11, 2000.
“The Function of Japanese Mythology in Contemporary Japan,” Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for Teachers. July 27, 1999.
“Japan in the Western News Media,” The Japan Society of New Orleans. November 15, 1998.
“The History and Development of Japanese Cuisine,” East Asian Studies Center lecture series, Fort Branch, Indiana. October 26, 1996.
“Perspectives in Literary Translation: Kontemutsusu munji and Giya do pekadoru” (the Japanese translations made by the Jesuit Mission Press of De Imitatione Christi [1596, 1610] and Guia de Pecadores [1599] University of Leiden, the Netherlands. May 28, 1996.
“The Literary Text as Historical Artifact: The Writings of Baba Bunkō (1718-1759), Indiana University. April 19, 1996.
