By the late Meiji period Japanese were venturing abroad in great numbers, and some of those who traveled kept diaries and wrote formal travelogues. These travelogues reflected a changing view of the ...West and changing artistic sensibilities in the long-standing Japanese literary tradition of travel writing (kikoobungaku). This book shows that overseas Meiji-period travel writers struck out to create a dynamic new type of travel literature, one that had a solid foundation in traditional Japanese kikobungaku yet also displayed influence from the West.
Musashino in Tuscany specifically examines the poetic imagery and allusion in these travelogues and reveals that when Japanese traveled to the West in the mid-nineteenth century, the images they wrote about tended to be associated not with places initially discovered by the Japanese traveler but with places that already existed in Western fame and lore. And unlike imagery from Japanese traveling in Japan, which was predominantly nature based, Japanese overseas travel imagery was often associated with the manmade world.
By the late Meiji period Japanese were venturing abroad in great numbers, and some of those who traveled kept diaries and wrote formal travelogues. These travelogues reflected a changing view of the ...West and changing artistic sensibilities in the long-standing Japanese literary tradition of travel writing (kikoōbungaku). This book shows that overseas Meiji-period travel writers struck out to create a dynamic new type of travel literature, one that had a solid foundation in traditional Japanese kikōbungaku yet also displayed influence from the West. Musashino in Tuscany specifically examines the poetic imagery and allusion in these travelogues and reveals that when Japanese traveled to the West in the mid-nineteenth century, the images they wrote about tended to be associated not with places initially discovered by the Japanese traveler but with places that already existed in Western fame and lore. And unlike imagery from Japanese traveling in Japan, which was predominantly nature based, Japanese overseas travel imagery was often associated with the manmade world.
This article examines the handling of a contract between the Shogunate of Japan and private agents in the United States for the construction of three ships of war in 1862. Robert H. Pruyn, the U.S. ...minister, received the original order and down payment from the Japanese government and assigned the contract to two private citizens in Albany, New York. Over the course of the next three years, complications from the U.S. Civil War and fluctuations in the currency markets made it impossible for the U.S. builders to fulfill the order in full; the Japanese received only one ship. Historians consistently have accused Pruyn of mishandling the contract and of using the funds as investment capital for his own personal gain, but evidence shows that Pruyn was scrupulously careful with the contract and the payment, and that he averted a disastrous result which could have soured U.S.-Japan relations.
In 1902, Mori Ōgai and Anesaki Chofu briefly engaged in a public debate on the importance of study abroad and Western learning in general. Chofu was cautionary about Japan following foolishly in the ...steps of Germany; Ōgai countered with the argument that the West (and Germany in particular) offered intellectual riches as long as the Japanese student chose his subjects carefully. Neither man "won" the debate, but their arguments reveal how German philosophy influenced modern Japan and how variably that philosophy was interpreted.
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