Nobori Shomu
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 Nobori Shomu |
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| Born: | 17 July 1878 Amami Ōshima, Japan |
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| Died: | 22 November 1958 Tokyo Japan |
| Occupation: | Translator |
| Genres: | Russian literature |
- This is a Japanese name; the family name is Nobori.
Shomu Nobori (昇曙夢 Nobori Shomu?) (17 July 1878 - 22 November 1958) was the pen-name of a noted translator of Russian literature in Taisho and Showa period Japan. His real name was Nobori Naotaka.
Shomu was born in Amami Ōshima, one of the Nansei islands in Kagoshima prefecture. His father was also a scholar of Russian literature. He attended a school run by the Russian Orthodox Church in Tokyo, and later worked as a teacher at the same school. Recruited into the Imperial Japanese Army during the Russo-Japanese War for his Russian language abilities, the war came to an end before he graduated from the Imperial Japanese Army Academy. Despite the unpopularity of things Russian after the war, he contributed articles on Russian culture and literature to magazines and newspapers, and worked on the first comprehensive survey of Russian literature in Japanese, Roshia Bungaku Kenkyu (Studies on Russian Literature, 1907).
In 1928, he traveled to the Soviet Union on the occasion of the 100th birthday of Tolstoy, and on his return to Japan was the acknowledged Japanese expert on Soviet literature and culture. His translations of various Russian authors from the 1930s and onwards was prolific.
He died in 1958, and his grave is at the Tama Reien, outside of Tokyo.
