JAPAN: Nippon’s Shakespeare

Fierce spading and shoveling by Japanese students began in the courtyard of Waseda University last week—all because beloved Professor Yuzo Tsubouchi has finished, after 43 years labor, a translation of the complete works of William Shakespeare into Japanese.

The fiercely spading students were assisting with the excavating of foundations upon which it is proposed to erect the Tsubouchi-Shakespeare Memorial Library.

Sly Professor Yuzo Tsubouchi writes popular dramas under the nom de plume Shoyo Tsubouchi, an alias which remained impenetrable for many years.

To correspondents Professor Tsubouchi beamingly confided, last week, that the Library which will honor himself and Shakespeare will be the only one in Japan devoted exclusively to books of the drama, and will contain a stage upon which students will enact from time to time the whole cycle of Shakespeare-Tsubouchi plays.