An Interview with Japanese Brontë Scholar, Seiko Aoyama

Abstract

Abstract Like many accomplished Japanese, Seiko Aoyama, pioneering professor of English literature, author, and translator, is disarmingly modest and soft-spoken. Her thirty-nine-year career, in which she has specialized in the work of the Brontë sisters, has led her to a respected position internationally among scholars of English literature. I first met Professor Aoyama in 1994, when I had the honour of working with her, editing her English-language speeches and correspondence, and helping her maintain her elegantly fluent English conversation. Since I returned to the US in 1996, I have enjoyed a warm correspondence with her. This interview was conducted by post; Professor Aoyama preferred to answer my questions in Japanese, and I have translated them into English. Through her commitment to Brontë scholarship as well as to her students, and through her astute connection of contemporary feminism with the meaning that women's literature of the nineteenth century can have for young Japanese on the brink of the twenty-first century, Seiko Aoyama has made invaluable contributions to young Japanese scholars, to international literary scholarship, and to women's history. As a woman in a country in which women's rights, including education and employment, have been — and still remain today — severely limited, her accomplishments are all the more extraordinary.