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Recently, while playing through Persona 4, I've learned that apparently
Natsume Soseki translated the English phrase of "I love you" into

> 月が綺麗ですね。

and I, wondering if there was a source for this, did some googling. Some seem
to indicate the actual phrase is

> 月がとっても青いなぁ

or

> 月がとっても青いから

Which one of these is it actually? And is there a source for this?

P.S. Apparently, "I love you" is translated as `死んでもいいわ` by 二葉亭 四迷
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translation expressions history
Origin of Natsume Soseki's Translation of "I love you"
It is 月が綺麗ですね.

Apparently Souseki used it to teach the phrase "I love you", because as you
might know saying I love you is considered too bold for many Japanese even
nowadays. Just imagine how hard was it to say that sentence back in the 1900s.

As for the origin of phrase, that is unfortunately not clear, as every written
record of it is dated after the Second World War.

By the way it's Natsume, not Natsumi.
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The most popular version is:

> 月が綺麗ですね。

But it's an unsupported anecdote, which is very close to urban legend.

[A library reference
request](http://crd.ndl.go.jp/reference/modules/d3ndlcrdentry/index.php?page=ref_view&id=1000160743)
was recorded regarding this topic, and the librarians' conclusion was, they
could find no direct source for the story, though many books cite it in
various forms from hearsay.

That said, this episode itself I think makes one of good illustrations about
how translation--or adaptation--was practiced in early modern period where the
East and the West started to communicate.

* * *

By the way, 死んでもいいわ for "I love you" is not strictly true, either.

According to [this article](http://lab.flama.co.jp/archives/398/), the
expression 死んでもいいわ appears in the translation by 二葉亭四迷 of _Asya_ by Turgenev.
The original passage was, however:

> 「 **死【し】んでも可【い】いわ…**
> 」とアーシヤは云【い】つたが、聞【きゝ】取【と】れるか聞【きゝ】取【と】れぬ程【ほど】の小【こ】聲【ごゑ】であつた。  
>  ([『片戀』二葉亭四迷訳](http://kindai.ndl.go.jp/info:ndljp/pid/896766/56) (1896))  
>  — **Ваша...** — прошептала она едва слышно.  
>  ([И. С. Тургенев, _Ася_](http://ilibrary.ru/text/1097/p.16/index.html)
> (1857[1980]))  
>  " **Yours** ". . . she murmured, hardly above a breath.  
>  (["Acia", _A Lear of the Steppes and Other Stories_ , tr. by Constance
> Black Garnett](http://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/ist/lear.htm#acia) (1899))
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