“The History of the Armenian People” in Japanese

Posted: 2016-01-21

Perhaps the most widely spread book written about the history of the Armenian nation is the English volume “A Concise History of the Armenian People” written by American-Armenian grateful historian George Burnutyan. After the original six editions and the translations into Spanish, Turkish, Arabic, Armenian and Russian, Burnutyan’s book was also published in Japanese (“Arumenia-jin no rekisi”).

The Publisher is “Fujihara-shoten” publishing-house in Tokyo; it comprises 528 pages and is already available in the Japanese version of Amazon web site. The translation is done by Daisaku Vatanabe in cooperation with Komaki Shohe.
George Burnutyan was born in 1941, in Isfahan (Iran). His father was an Armenian from Baku and his mother was a Polish. He got his PhD in 1976, at the University of California in Los Angeles as a specialist of Armenian, Persian and Russian history. He has taught Armenian and Persian history at the University of California in Los Angeles, Columbia University, Tufts University, three campuses of the University of Connecticut, New York University, State University of California, Rutgers University, State University of California in Fresno, Ramapo College and Glendale Community College. Since 1989, he is a senior lecturer in the history of Eastern Europe and Middle East at New York Iona College.  He is fluent in the Armenian, Russian, Persian and Polish languages. He has delivered lectures in the cities and towns of the USA, Canada, Iran and Australia.

The scientific interests of Burnutyan include the history of the Armenian nation of the 17-19^th centuries, particularly the history of the Eastern Armenia.  He is the author of English monographs published in separate books: “Eastern Armenia in the Last Decades of Persian Rule, 1807-1828” (1982), “Khanate of Erevan under Qajar Rule, 1795-1828” (1992), “The History of the Armenian People I: from Prehistory until 1500” (1993, three editions until 2000), “The History of the Armenian People II: from 1500 until the present” (1994, three editions until 2000), “The History of Karabagh” (1994, the same in Persian: (2003), as well as of numerous articles and reviews, which were published in the journals of the USA and Great Britain on the Armenian, Iranian, Caucasian Studies.

He has compiled and published the collections “Russia and the Armenians of Transcaucasia, 1797-1889: a documentary record” (1998) and “The Armenians and the Russians, 1626-1796: a documentary record” (2003). He has translated into English the important works of the Armenian historiography of the 17-18^th centuries: “The Chronicle of Abraham of Crete” (1999), “The History of the Wars by Abraham of Erevan” (1999), “The Journal of Zakaria of Agulis” (2003), “The Chronology of Zakaria of Kanaker” (2004), “The History of Arakel of Tabriz” (in two volumes 2005-2006, in one volume2010), “The Travel Accounts of Simeon of Poland” (2007), “Jambr of Simeon of Erevan” (2009), “A Brief History of the Aghuank Region of Yesai Hasan-Jalalyan” (2009), from Russian “The 1823 Russian Survey of the Karabagh Province” (two editions, 2011-2012).

Burnutyan’s other interests include classical piano music and movie, on which he has written articles in different Armenian and non-Armenian newspapers and magazines.

A few years ago, when delivering lectures in Tokyo, Burnutyan signed a contract with “Fujihara-shoten” publishing-house to publish his work in Japanese. He was acquainted with the translator, ayoung Armenologist Daisaku Vatanabe in 2012 in Yerevan. The graduate of Tokyo University of Foreign Languages Daisaku Vatanabe has attended courses of the Armenian language in Tokyo, Venice and Yerevan. The title of his Diploma Paper was “The Armenian Society in the book “The Crazy” by Raffi”. He has also published an article about Raffi in Japanese. In 2011-2013 Vatanabe continued his study in Armenia.

On our request, he has translated from English into Japanese the Armenian poem “A Seascape of my Mother’s Day” by Hovhannes Pilikyan, which was included in the multilingual edition of this work in 2012, in Yerevan. On our request Daisaku Vatanabe has also translated from Japanese into Armenian the materials kept in the archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan on the public figure and writer Diana Abgar, who had lived in Japan.

Let’s also add that the last, the sixth edition of “A Concise History of the Armenian People” by George Burnutyan was sold in more than twenty thousand copies. In many institutions of higher education of the USA, it is used as a textbook. The Persian translation of the book will be published this year.

translated from Armenian into English by M.Vardanyan