Overview
This book is open access, which means that you have free and unlimited access.
It contains 41 articles and 42 discourses on Japan seen through the eyes of non-Japanese authors.
Works range from those in the mid-1850s to those in the mid-1980s.
Appropriate for diplomats, business people and students interested in Japanese history and culture.
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Table of contents (41 chapters)
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Front Matter
Keywords
- Ivan Aleksandrovich Goncharov
- Sir Rutherford Alcock
- Ernest Mason Satow
- William Elliot Griffiths
- Percival Lowell
- Basil Hall Chamberlain
- Lafcadio Hearn
- Ludwig Riess
- Erwin von Balz
- Mustafa Kamil Pasha
- Ernest Francisco Fenollosa
- Edward Sylvester Morse
- Rabindranath Tagore
- Donald Keene
- Edwin Oldfather Reischauer
- Edward Seidensticker
- Maurice Pinguet
- Open access
About this book
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.
Editors and Affiliations
About the editors
Shōichi Saeki
Shōichi Saeki was born on April 26, 1922 (Taishō 11) and graduated from the Department of English Literature at the University of Tokyo in 1943. He was a professor of Liberal Arts at the University of Tokyo, a professor at Chūō University, and professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo (specializing in American and Japanese literature). He died on January 1, 2016 (Heisei 28). His major works include Nihonjin no jiden (Autobiography of the Japanese) (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1974), Monogatari geijutsu ron (Narrative Art Theory) (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1979), winner of the Yomiuri Literature Award, and Jiden no seiki (Century of Autobiography) Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1985), awarded the Art Encouragement Prize.
Tōru Haga
Tōru Haga was born in 1931(Showa 6), and graduated from the University of Tokyo with a B.A. in Liberal Arts and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and Culture. He specialized in comparative literature and modern Japanese comparative cultural history and was president emeritus of Kyoto University of Art and Design, director of the Okazaki City Museum of Art, and director of the Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art. He died in 2020 (Reiwa 2).His writings include Taikun no shisetsu (Mission of the Tycoon) (Tokyo: Chūkō Shinsho, 1968); Watanabe Kazan (Tokyo: Asahi Sensho, 1974); Hiraga Gen’nai (Tokyo: Asahi Hyōdensen, 1981), awarded the Suntory Prize for Arts and Letters; Kaiga no ryōbun (The Domain of Art) (Tokyo: Asahi Shimbun, 1984), winner of the Osaragi Jirō Prize; Yosa Buson no chiisana sekai (The Little World of Yosa Buson); (Tokyo: Chūokōron Shinsha, 1984); Shiika no mori e (To Forest of Poetry) (Tokyo: Chūkō Shinsho, 2002); and Geijutsu no kuni Nippon: Gabun kōkyō (Japan—The Land of the Arts: A symphony of painting and literature) (Tokyo: Kadokawa Gakugei Shuppan, 2010).
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Masterpieces on Japan by Foreign Authors
Book Subtitle: From Goncharov to Pinguet
Editors: Shōichi Saeki, Tōru Haga
Translated by: Takiro Terasihta
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-9853-9
Publisher: Springer Singapore
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: Kreab K.K. 2023
License: CC BY-NC-ND
Hardcover ISBN: 978-981-19-9852-2Published: 24 March 2023
Softcover ISBN: 978-981-19-9855-3Published: 24 March 2023
eBook ISBN: 978-981-19-9853-9Published: 23 March 2023
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XI, 246
Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations
Topics: Asian Literature, Philosophy, general, History of Japan, Diplomacy, History, general