Overview

This is a collection of journals written by Japanese men and women--from samurai and other government officials to novelists and poets--who journeyed to America, Europe, and China between 1860 and 1920. The diaries faithfully record personal views of the countries and their cultures and sentiments that range from delight to disillusionment. At once an intimate account of the travellers' lives and a testimony to the greater struggles and advances of their cultures, Donald Keene's eloquent translation and commentary invites the reader to partake in the world as each person experienced it.

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9780231114431

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Reviews

"""A collection of thirty essays that Mr. Keene originally published in Japanese in the Tokyo newspaper ""Asahi Shimbun."" The book begins where his earlier volume on pre-modern diaries, ""Travelers of a Hundred Ages,"" leaves off. There may be few people in Japan, a nation of diarists, who have not kept private records at some time in their lives. The aims of individual diarists, however, differ widely; so do their styles, ranging from the severely objective to the confessional.... In each chapter, Mr. Keene provides a narrative of the events in the diarist's life that the work illuminates, with quotations from that work in passing."" -- ""New York Times Book Review"""

Westerners have long complained about the enigmas of Japanese culture. Now comes proof that the puzzlement cuts both ways. Noted Japanoiogist Keene (On Familiar Terms, 1993, etc.) here interprets 30 Japanese diaries dating from 1860 to 1920, around the time of the Meiji Restoration of 1868, when for the first time in over two centuries the West affected Japanese society on a large scale. At that time, he writes, it was as natural for those people to keep diaries as it is for Japanese today to take group photographs as souvenirs of an occasion, and from these rich accounts Keene shows that Japanese attitudes toward Western culture ranged from intense curiosity and excitement to complete disdain. Some early travelers found foreign lands to be utterly perplexing, even inscrutable. Complaining of his English hosts' constant attempts to convert him to Christianity, Natsume Sooseki writes: I wonder who could have invented such a straitlaced society. (Keene notes that the Japanese who were most successful abroad were those who had already converted or who did so later.) Provincial governor Muragaki Norimasa, traveling aboard the American warship Powhattan on a goodwill tour of the United States, confesses his hatred for sea chanties and is appalled at the sight of plebeian-looking President James Buchanan: He wears no decoration whatsoever...not even a sword. Other Japanese found that they hardly recognized their own country after the Meiji Restoration. Keene excavates the plaintive diary of a bedridden young man named Masaoka Shiki, who yearns to see wonderful things that he has only read about in the newspapers: lions and ostriches in the zoo and automatic telephones and red postboxes. The diary of Higuchi Ichiy?? a learned woman, reveals sadness that in the face of such changes, the women of the upper class still expect her to pretend to rejoice over things that do not please me. These are the luminous details - not curiosities, thanks to Keene's careful analysis, but real finds - of which the best histories are made. (Kirkus Reviews)

A collection of thirty essays that Mr. Keene originally published in Japanese in the Tokyo newspaper Asahi Shimbun. The book begins where his earlier volume on pre-modern diaries, Travelers of a Hundred Ages, leaves off. There may be few people in Japan, a nation of diarists, who have not kept private records at some time in their lives. The aims of individual diarists, however, differ widely; so do their styles, ranging from the severely objective to the confessional.... In each chapter, Mr. Keene provides a narrative of the events in the diarist's life that the work illuminates, with quotations from that work in passing. -- New York Times Book Review

Author Information

DONALD KEENE is Shincho Professor of Japanese Literature and University Professor Emeritus at Columbia University.

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