Currently reading Matsudaira Senshu 松平千秋's prose translation of the Odyssey for Iwanami Bunko.

Being unable to read the original, I can't comment on the quality of the translation per se, but I'm not in love with the way the dialogue reads in Japanese so far — the content is fresh and powerful, but it's hobbled by unremarkably modern verb endings and particles. I suppose this is a kind of Occidentalism, craving the archaic, but I would happily settle for cod bungo rather than a painstaking recreation of Old Japanese, and it isn't as if the modern syntax makes the work all that accessible — the sentences are still plenty long and complex.

Anyway, this made me wonder about earlier translations of Homer into Japanese, and I actually found one online: the Iliad, translated into non-metrical verse by Doi Bansui 土井晩翠. Here are Doi's opening lines, with Pope and Butler's for comparison:

神女よ歌へ、アキリュウス・ペーレーデース凄まじく
燃やせる瞋恚——その果はアカイア軍におほいなる
禍来たし、勇士らの猛き魂冥王に
投じ、彼らの屍を野犬野鳥の餌と爲せし
アートレデース、民の王、および英武のアキリュウス、
猛けり爭ひ別れたる日を吟詠の手はじめに。

Pope:
Achilles' wrath, to Greece the direful spring
Of woes unnumber'd, heavenly goddess, sing!
That wrath which hurl'd to Pluto's gloomy reign
The souls of mighty chiefs untimely slain;
Whose limbs unburied on the naked shore,
Devouring dogs and hungry vultures tore.
Since great Achilles and Atrides strove,
Such was the sovereign doom, and such the will of Jove!

Butler:
Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans. Many a brave soul did it send hurrying down to Hades, and many a hero did it yield a prey to dogs and vultures, for so were the counsels of Jove fulfilled from the day on which the son of Atreus, king of men, and great Achilles, first fell out with one another.

That's what I'm talking about! Doi also did the Odyssey but his version doesn't yet seem to be online. (I did find a Meiji-period book claiming to be a translation of the Odyssey, but it was really more of a paraphrase, and it skipped the Telemachy altogether.)

Final note about Iwanami's edition: if you look closely at the photograph on the cover you can see newsprint dots. This is not as far as I know an artifact of their cover printing process (I have Iwanami books of similar vintage with perfectly smooth cover images), so it was probably a case of simply not having access to any suitable high-res photographs of Greek art. But whatever the reason, I like the effect. It reminds me of cheaply printed schoolbooks and the stubborn democratization of the classics that they represented.