This open access book includes forty-one chapters about foreign observers’ discourses on Japan. These include a wide range of perspectives from the travelogues of curious visitors to academic theses by scholars, which offer us a broad spectrum of contents, reflecting a variety of attitudes toward Japan. The works were written during the period from the 1850s to the 1980s, a timespan during which Japan became, in stages, more open to the outside world after a long isolation under the Tokugawa shogunate. From the perspective of “Japanology,” one can discern three distinct periods of rising interest in the country from abroad. The first tide of such interest came shortly after the opening of Japan, when various foreign travelers, including those who could not be included in this book, came over and wrote down their impressions of the country―which was, for them, a land of mystery and mystique, which had just opened its doors to them. The second wave arose at the beginning of the twentieth century, just after the Russo-Japanese War, when Japan again generated a remarkable surge of interest as a “miracle” in Asia that had pulled off the wondrous feat of defeating a white superpower. The third wave was more recent, which took place from the late 1960s to the 1980s, a period of high economic growth when the “miracle” of Japan’s remarkable economic recovery from the defeat of World War II attracted enthusiastic and curious attention from the outside world once again. It is not the intention of this book to directly highlight such historical transitions, but these forty-two brilliant mirrors (forty-one chapters, including forty-two discourses), even when looked in casually, provide us with unexpected insights and various perspectives.
Shōichi Saeki (1922–2016) was Professor Emeritus, the University of Tokyo. Tōru Haga (1931–2020) was Professor Emeritus, International Research Center for Japanese Studies.
Author(s): Shōichi Saeki, Tōru Haga
Publisher: Springer
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 229
City: Singapore
Prologue
Contents
Editors
Ivan A. Goncharov ``A Voyage to Japan´´ (Included in The Frigate Pallada) (1858)
Rutherford Alcock The Capital of the Tycoon (1863)
Ernest Mason Satow A Diplomat in Japan (1921)
William E. Griffis The Mikado´s Empire (1876)
Émile E. Guimet Promenades Japonaises: Tokio-Nikko (1880) and Félix Régamey Japon (Nihon sobyo kiko) (1903)
Huang Zunxian Riben zashi shi (Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects from Japan) (1879)
Isabella Bird Unbeaten Tracks in Japan (1880)
Percival Lowell The Soul of the Far East (1888)
Pierre Loti Japoneries d´Automne (Autumn Japaneries) (1889)
Basil Hall Chamberlain Things Japanese (1890)
Lafcadio Hearn Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan (1894)
Lady Fraser A Diplomatist´s Wife in Japan: Letters from Home to Home (1899)
Ludwig Riess Allerlei aus Japan (Miscellaneous Things from Japan) (1905)
Erwin von Bälz (Baelz) Das Leben eines deutschen Arztes im erwachenden Japan (Awakening Japan: The Diary of a German Doctor) (...
Mustafa Kamil al-Shams al-Mushriqa (The Rising Sun) (1904)
Ernest F. Fenollosa Epochs of Chinese and Japanese Art: An Outline History of East Asiatic Design (1921)
Edward S. Morse Japan Day by Day, 1877, 1878-1879, 1882-1883 (1917)
Rabindranath Tagore Nationalism (1917)
Wenceslau de Moraes Ó-Yoné e Ko-Haru (OYoné and Koharu) (1932)
Paul Claudel L´Oiseau noir dans le Soleil levant (The Black Bird in the Rising Sun) (1927)
Dai Jitao Theory of Japan (1928)
Zhou Zuoren ``A Personal View of Japan´´ (I-IV) (1935-1937)
Katharine Sansom Living in Tokyo (1936)
Eugen Herrigel Zen in der Kunst des Bogenschiessens (Zen in the Art of Archery) (1936)
Bruno Taut Das japanische Haus und sein Leben (The Japanese House and Its Life) (1936)
Joseph C. Grew Ten Years in Japan (1944)
Ruth Benedict The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (1944)
Leocadio de Asis From Bataan to Tokyo, Diary of a Filipino Student in Wartime Japan 1943-1944 (1944)
Reginald H. Blyth Haiku (1949-52)
George B. Sansom The Western World and Japan (1950)
Ronald P. Dore City Life in Japan (1958)
Donald Keene The Japanese Discovery of EuropeHonda Toshiaki and Other Discoverers (1952)
Earl Miner The Japanese Tradition in British and American Literature (1958)
Marius B. Jansen Sakamoto Ryoma and the Meiji Restoration (1961)
Roland Barthes L´empire des signes (1970)
Carmen Blacker The Catalpa Bow (1975)
Edwin Reischauer The Japanese (1977)
Kim So-oon Ten no hate ni ikuru tomo (Even Though I Live at the End of the Sky) (1968)
Lee O-young Smaller Is Better: Japan´s Mastery of the Miniature (1982)
Edward Seidensticker Low City, High City: Tokyo from Edo to the Earthquake: How the Shogun´s Ancient Capital Became a Great Mo...
Maurice Pinguet La mort volontaire au Japon (Voluntary Death in Japan) (1984)
Epilogue
Afterword by the Principal Advisor
Publisher´s Notes
Bibliography
