Translating the concept of representation: daihyo (代表) and daiki (代議) in the late 19th century Japan

In East Asian languages (Japanese, Korean, and Chinese), representation/représentation/Repräsentation in the political contexts translates into two distinct yet adjacent words: 代表 and 代議. The former refers to the generic meaning of the terms and is being used in the various contexts from ‘the elected representatives’ to ‘national sports team’ and ‘representative sampling.’ Exceptionally, it has a usage as the technical term when it comes to legal representation. On the other hand, the latter refers to the specific meaning and is only being used in the contexts of politics and constitutional law. It reduces the meaning of the words into the single meaning of ‘to deliberate on the national affairs by the elected officials on behalf of the electors.’ This paper proposes to consider those words (代表 and 代議) not only as just concepts but also as translated concepts. When we consider the words as concepts, the relationship between the original (representation/representation/Repräsentation) and the translated, or the referents and the words, is understood as direct, transparent and given. On the other hand, if we consider the words as translated concepts, the relationship between the original and the translated is understood as indirect, opaque and historically constructed. I argue that this approach contributes to the polysemy of the concepts of representation in two different ways. On the one hand, it opens the discursive and theoretical spaces for the polysemy of the concepts with the western origins in East Asia by rendering the meaning of the translated words plural and contestable. At the same time, it extends the idea of polysemy to the global history of the concept. This paper focuses on the late 19th century Japan where the two words (代表 and 代議) were born, during the process of reading and translating the writings of the modern western political thinkers such as François Guizot, John Stuart Mill, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Hobbes, and Herbert Spencer. In this paper, I will examine the earliest translated works by these authors.