Mirror in the Shrine: American Encounters with Meiji Japan

by Robert A. Rosenstone

Cross-cultural contacts between America and Japan in the nineteenth-century are typified in the stories of three visitors--missionary William Elliot Griffis, scientist Edward S. Morse, and writer Lafeadio Hern

Genres: Japan, Nonfiction

315 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Robert A. Rosenstone, who was born in Montreal, Canada, but has lived most of his life in Los Angeles, is the author of a dozen books in various genres, including history, biography, criticism, and fiction. The latter has been his major focus in recent years. Among his fictional works are the novel, King of Odessa (2003), a book of stories, The Man Who Swam into History : The (Mostly) True Story of My Jewish Family ( 2005), and the recent novel Red Star, Crescent Moon: A Muslim Jewish Love Story (2010).

Rosenstone’s scholarly works include Romantic Revolutionary: A Biography of John Reed (1975), one of the sources for the Academy Award winning film, Reds, on which he served as historical consultant; Mirror in the Shrine: American Encounters in Meiji Japan (1988), an experimental, multi-voiced biography of three American sojourners in nineteenth century Japan; Crusade of the Left: The Lincoln Battalion in the Spanish Civil war (1969, reprinted 2009), and two works about historical film: Visions of the Past: The Challenge of Film to Our Idea of History (1995), and History on Film / Film on History (2006).

He has also been active in visual media projects, including time spent as consultant or writer for the following dramatic features and documentaries: Reds (1982), The Good Fight (1983), Darrow (1991), and Tango of Slaves (1999), and he has appeared on screen in several documentaries, including Screening Histories: The Filmmaker Strikes Back. (BBC, 1998), Rebels. (CBC, 1999), and Emma Goldman: A Troublesome Presence (PBS, 2004)

He is married to Nahid Massoud, a photographer, who is at once his best friend and his muse.

Reviews

[Shawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reviews of the Mirror in the Shrine heralded its unconventional approach to the study of history but questioned whether it was really a historical work. I will leave this question for later after we have had a chance to take a closer look at the work. However, before we do, I think it is important to ask the question: Who is Robert Rosenstone?
Rosenstone is a professor of history at the California Institute of Technology. He is a prolific writer, whose earliest published works recounted the experience of American communists. His first book on the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War and a biography of John Reed established him as a historian of the American left. He wrote a number of other journal articles dealing with specific topics within these larger works. Incidentally, as he was working on his biography of John Reed he began a discourse with Warren Beatty that eventually contributed to the factual basis of the movie Reds. Rosenstone goes to great lengths in his 1982 article Reds as History to distance himself from involvement, but he also initiates a growing interest in the effectiveness of film in historical representation. He has since published the book we are looking at tonight Mirror in the Shrine and subsequent work on the challenges of film to the idea of history. The Mirror in the Shrine, as well as a number of journal articles in the early eighties, saw Rosenstone begin to explore the notion of extra-national influences on individual’s psyche. For the last quarter of a century, his work has been dedicated to exploring the ways in which history is presented. His most recent journal articles, as well as his co-founding and continuing editing of the journal Rethinking History, the “...sole historical journal that welcomes innovation
and experimentation.”1. In his latest articles, he has focused on the ways in which modern representation lends veracity to history, but at the same time threatens to overwhelm its objectivity.
Mirror in the Shrine appears to be a turning point in his professional life. Through an exploration of personal influences, Rosenstone questions the way in which such experiences can be conveyed.
So, let’s look at the book: Mirror in the Shrine
In 1974, Robert Rosenstone traveled to Japan to teach history at two universities. In Mirror in the Shrine, he offers an exercise in experimental writing to present a three-subject historical narrative in search of an explanation for his own modern-day experience. The subjects of his book all traveled to Japan in the late Nineteenth Century, much in the same way as the author himself did in the late Twentieth Century. On returning from Japan, Rosenstone found himself seeing western culture through different eyes. He describes a feeling of discontent, uneasiness and dislocation2 when he returned from his time in Japan. His own culture was made to feel a bit alien3 He discovered that his worldview had been altered by his experience in Japan and in Mirror in the Shrine he provides a commentary on his journey of exploration of others who he feels shared this view altering experience.
This change of perspective is a very personal metamorphosis for Rosenstone and during the writing process, Rosenstone discovered that conventional narrative techniques left him feeling too distant from his subjects and unable to represent this deep personal change. To more effectively express his subjects’ experiences and relate their stories, he appropriates techniques used by cinematic screenwriters. As a result, Mirror in the Shrine could properly be identified as a film presented on paper rather than celluloid. His subsequent works, exploring the effectiveness of the filmmakers to represent history, provides a useful counterpoint to his self-admitted exploratory work in this book.
Mirror in the Shrine tells the parallel stories of three Americans who travel to Japan in the late Nineteenth Century. Japan at this time has only recently been opened to foreigners as a result of Admiral Perry’s visit and a subsequent treaty signed between the United States and Japan. Japan is just emerging from the feudal rule of the shogunate and has witnessed the restoration of an emperor. Although coming from different backgrounds, the subjects of Rosenstone’s book all undertake teaching assignments in Japan as the country reacts to the impact of exposure to western ideals on traditional Japanese society. William Griffis, a theology student, sought to bring Christianity to the ‘pagan’ Japanese. Edward Morse was a world-renowned zoologist looking to add to his catalogue of brachiopods, something you may think more as shellfish. The last subject, Lafcadio Hearn, an itinerant author, came to Japan with the hope of being inspired in his writing by distancing himself from his own culture.
All of the travelers felt that they would bring their own little bit of western civilization to the Japanese. The author contends that although they did, in fact, have significant impact on Japan at the time, they were more affected by Japan than Japan by their presence. This is not to say that these men were not influential. All three are remembered to this day and were the subjects of writing both inside and outside Japan following their stays. However, ultimately, what Rosenstone wants to examine is how his subjects were altered by their journey to Japan.
In this regard, he seeks to write a psychohistory of these three men. As he crafts their stories, he comes the conclusion that he cannot relate this transformation using traditional forms of historical writing. Instead, claims Rosenstone, he was struck at one point that he should have his writing follow more of the form of a movie. He feels that with a third person narrative, he cannot satisfactorily get “close enough” to his characters. In his colourful language, he feels the narrative form “...did not let me see the world through their eyes, smell it through their noses.”
Rosenstone is a very personal historian. Much in the way in which he seeks to get close to his subjects in this book, which leads him to perhaps get too close to their experience. While his own experience can allow him to better explain others’ experiences, this situation also threatens his objectivity. At times the reader senses that he lacks the detachment to separate the experiences appropriately to examine where his experience may differ from his subjects’.
By the way, you may ask, why is the book entitled as it is?
In a sequence from Lafcadio Hearn’s memoirs, he visits a shrine and passing through layers of partitions, he finds himself in the centre of the shrine. There, expecting to find some great emblem of the ethereal foreignness of the society he is in, or at least a high priest, he instead finds a mirror embedded in the shrine itself and sees his own face staring back at him. Hearn, definitely the most literary of the sojourners cannot resist the symbolism and ponders whether “...the Universe exists for us solely as a reflection of our souls? Or the Old Chinese teaching that we must seek the
Buddha only in our own hearts?”5. Through the book, however, this motif is constantly reinforced. In another sequence,
Lafcadio Hearn recognizes himself in one of the ornamental masks that is worn by a dancer6. In another, it is the reflection in water, or in a highly polished sword. Eventually, it is the looking into Japanese faces to see some reflection of reception or acceptance.
The characters constantly seek to gain some reflection of where they are at. It is quite telling that he uses this metaphor for all his subjects when at times the reader looks at the book and sees it more as a reflection of the author than of its subjects.
The book is carefully structured thematically into six sections:
1. Before – a little background information about the opening of Japan
2. Landing – The initial glimpses, the initial shock of the cultural difference – an expected
difference
3. Searching – The crucial point, the longing for home, but detaching from one’s own
culture, making discoveries
4. Loving – Coming to a realization that civilization is not a western ideal
5. Learning – Actively pursuing specific new ideas and in many ways finding
disenchantment where there was initial amusement
6. Remembering – In Edward Morse’s case a return to Japan, in all subjects an examination
of how they wrote about Japan and it’s culture.
So, you have to ask, why is it structured this way?
I think that Rosenstone adopts this thematic presentation to allow for a narrative unity of time that did not exist if he pursued a particularly chronological presentation.
Rosenstone very skillfully builds his screenplay. The Americans that he chooses to follow make their way to Japan at ten-year intervals and experience the country at very different junctures in its own development and exposure to western influences. Willis shows up just as Japan is opening up to the west. It is a time of timid interest, wariness, but curiosity. A time when the emperor has very strict rules to be followed and exposure to traditional Japan is slight. At the same time, Japan has not been changed yet and Japan viewed through Morse’s eyes is virginal. Ten years later, when Morse shows up, Japan has already begun to change dramatically, there are western encampments and those westerns residents in the country have rapidly asserted their influence and traditional Japan has begun to eagerly seize upon the opportunity to progress down a western trajectory. The gloves are off and the thirst of the Japanese for Western influence is strong. By the time that Hearn arrives, the Japanese have begun to realize the effect of this westernization on the traditional ways and there has been a huge cultural backlash. The country has once again started to become restrictive with the allowances for westerners and we see this in Hearne’s experiences. In fact, he feels so threatened at one point to lose any privileges in Japan, that he himself adopts Japanese citizenship for fear of the consequences of remaining American in this foreign land. As Koizumi Yakumo, he spends the next twenty-five years being increasingly drawn into Japanese society, but always remaining the observer (despite his near blindness).
This structure also has the important time-bridging ability to apply to Rosenstone’s own experience nearly one hundred years later. Clearly, this same path can be applied to his own experience. However, all too often the reader gets the impression that the voice that one hears is his and not that of his subjects. When gaps appear in the information available to himself as the historian, he laments, “Now the difficulties begin. Not for Morse, but for his biographer. Then the problem is sources – the journal he kept in Japan, the letters written home. Neither reveal what you really want to know; neither give enough detail, or the right kind of detail, to fill out the story that lies behind the words, the story that the biographer wishes to tell, of how and why Japan caused this American scientist to switch from a lifelong interest in the natural world to a passionate interest in the artefacts and customs of the human world. Easy enough to speculate on
causes.” Especially if you are Robert Rosenstone and have experienced this for yourself. What Methodologies does Rosenstone employ?
A catharsis leads him to realize that only by adopting cinematic techniques in his writing can he be satisfied with
his work. To this end, he delineated four techniques that he chose to employ to gain this closeness both on his part and the readers to the historical subjects:
The use of different voices
The author freely employs the words of the subjects in the book. He attempts to get closer to the subjects by skillfully weaving their words amongst his own. He avoids the use of quotation marks and merely uses italics when his subject words are being spoken. Intertextual notes are non-existent, however, he explains in advance that he will not be providing in-text references. The italics are the only trigger to let the reader know that these are the subjects’ words and not the author’s creation. The author wants to maintain fluidity of prose. The text itself is very much a direct conversation with the reader and the subjects. This technique is further supplemented by writing the entire work in the present tense, which minimizes the effect of the time shifts.
We are treated to an ongoing discourse by the author that features the voices of
the subjects themselves throughout the work.
The cinematic techniques of montage, moving camera and quick takes
The cinematic feel of the work is evinced by the use of short choppy sentences, montages and moving camera techniques, especially during the first two chapters of the book. Rosenstone was seized by the realization that he could
only convey the distinctive Oriental way of life through something more vivid than conventional historical narrative9. Therefore, the author seeks to present his narrative as if he were both writing, directing and narrating a historical film.
When it comes to a paper film, Rosenstone has his moments. “Twelve horseback figures in a late winter landscape. From afar, dark shapes along a dirt road through valleys, across low streams, in hills where the naked branches of trees are frosted white. A heavy sky droops with clouds. Bursts of hail, flurries of snow angled by sharp wind, an occasional shaft of sunlight. Close up, the sweating flanks of horses, mud splattering the camera lens, a flashing view of wooden stirrups, eleven with sandals, the twelfth with heavy boots. Pull back and you see warriors in dark robes, faces set in the blank look of samurai on duty. The expression of the twelfth figure, clad in a western coat, blue eyes squinted
against the weather, is hidden in the folds of a muffler.”10 Rosenstone does not get this detail from a diary. He sees it in the screenplay that he is constantly writing.
The direct address to readers and characters
Self-reflexive moments
Throughout the book, Rosenstone employs a floating you. He addresses the subjects and the readers
simultaneously, at time creating some confusion, but maintains this feeling of an ongoing discourse. In one instance, Rosenstone directly addresses Edward Morse: “...Suddenly it is enough. You are tired of smiling, polite people with exquisite manners, tired of children who never fuss or cry, tired of honest merchants, helpful rickshaw men, graceful waitresses, skillful carpenters, fearless firefighters, jolly vendors, smiling priests, elegant ladies; you are tired of street festivals, actors in masks, beautiful gardens, colorful kimonos, weathered shrines, elaborate coiffures, clever toys, immaculate rooms, artful shop signs, unique designs for umbrellas, baskets, pottery, tools, and flower holders done in bamboo, wicker, ceramic, and wood; tired above all of hearing that chopsticks are efficient and economical and should be
usedaroundtheworld.”11 WheredoesRosenstonegettheevidencethatallowshimtounderstandandempathizewith his subject? Well, not from Morse, Rosenstone actually goes on to complain that “...from Morse you won’t get them...to
ask why he [Morse] does not make more of the darker side of society is to ask him to be a different man.”12 Yet, as author he feels that there is grounds for conjecture. It remains to the reader to judge whether this conjecture is valid. In a subsequent contribution to a work on Oliver Stone, Rosenstone admits that outright invention is sometime necessary to fill in the grey area of history. Rosenstone constructs a spectrum of historical representation: fact, near-fact, displaced fact
and finally invention13. While he is applying this model to the use of film to relate history, it seems clear that he has his own work in mind as well. Using this schema, it is helpful to see that what Rosenstone accomplishes in this banter about feelings with his subject is not displaced fact, but instead fact from displacement. The lacunae become important facts in their own right.
In short, Rosenstone suggests that past historical narrative experimentation has remained rooted in the era of late Nineteenth century novelists. Rosenstone feels that he is pulling the profession forward with a work that attempts “To achieve the density, specificity and ease of temporal movement of a novel without sacrificing the integrity of data on which any work of history must be based; to create, in short, a piece of historical writing suited to the literary sensibility of at least
the middle, if not the late twentieth century.”
What questions does the author ask?
The author asks many questions of the evidence that he has. He directly asks the
following of his subjects:
1. What were the subjects upbringings – create an impression of disparity
2. Why did his subjects choose to go to Japan?
3. What were their early impressions?
4. What was their original judgment of the country?
5. When did their judgment begin to evolve?
6. Why did it evolve?
7. Why did they leave the country?
8. Were their objectives in coming achieved?
9. What did they write after their experience?
10. How were they changed by their experience in Japan?
Rosenstone’s questions are those that he would ask himself. He was changed by his
travels and teaching in Japan and he wants to know why. I think though that he is really asking two larger questions, one personal and one professional:
The personal : “How and what we can learn from other traditions”
Rosenstone states this question in his introduction, suggesting that by the end he will have provided an answer. However, in his conclusion, Rosenstone admits that the sources left by his subjects did not provide an answer to this question. In fact, he suggests that the readers must seek to answer this question for themselves and perhaps his experiment may provide some contribution to that end. From my standpoint, Other than the vivid scenes of pottery appreciation by Edward Morse, which in themselves do not approach a depth that we too feel we can judge Japanese pottery, I am left empty and
without the detail, I feel I would need as a reader to answer the question.
The professional : “Is it important to write history in new and innovative ways?”
The author makes a very adept distinction in the introduction to film reviews in his magazine when he states that dramatic film can broadly be separated into two camps, those that seek to wrestle with serious historical issues (such as the Return of Martin Guerre) as opposed to those that simply use the the past as an exotic setting for spectacle orromance (such as Gladiator). He admits that some try to do both and cites Reds in this regard. Although this book remains a book, the author has begged some discussion of the validity of his filmic technique, especially in light of his own subsequent writings. He intends, I believe, to discuss historical questions, but to employ the backdrop of cinema in a new and innovative way, to augment the personal experiences related. To make them truly personal.
He creates a vivid screenplay that he feels is necessary for the reader to appreciate the smells, the touch, the feel, the environment and the atmosphere that his subjects felt. On an intellectual level, this is explained as supporting the need to appreciate the deeply personal experience. This can only be accomplished through a cinematic presentation.
At the same time, he is responding to a newer generation of audience that requires visual stimuli to gain an appreciation. There has been desensitization to description, history to an extent must be brighter, more colourful, more immediate. He is in effect responding to a changed audience. Is he writing for a professional audience, no. He truly seems to be writing for a popular audience.

[Ligeia · Rating 4 out of 5]

"la risposta è dentro di te, però è sbagliata" (cit)

ci sono fondamentalmente due modi di parlare di questo libro, il primo è quello dei contenuti, l'altro della sua forma espressiva

in questo il tutto risulta molto giapponese, nel senso che il "formale" precede la sostanza, la quale in alcuni casi appare ridondante, perchè le impressioni sono grosso modo simili, dopotutto "quando accetti che non capirai mai davvero i giapponesi, sei sulla buona strada per cominciare a capire"

I personaggi di cui si parla sono tre uomini, ciascuno a suo modo, inconsueti per l'epoca storica di cui si parla, il Giappone Meiji (1868/1912) fu un periodo di grandi cambiamenti e attirò, al tempo, tutte le persone curiose su quel mondo lontano e molti avventurieri di professione, i quali avevano da tempo desiderato dare un'occhiata a quel popolo così chiuso e misterioso, di cui durante lo Shognunato Tokugawa (1600/1868) si riportavano storie crudeli e agghiaccianti

le fonti sono storiche, lettere e diari in prevalenza, poi anche articoli e libri, questi però riportavano le impressioni destinate al pubblico, quindi epurate delle delusioni e dello "sporco" che per decisione unanime i tre cronisti decisero di tenere per sè. L'incanto della scoperta e il dolore per la delusione quando questa svanisce, come lentamente scompare il "vecchio Giappone", sono argomenti delicati e non si possono consumare alla luce del sole.
Le cronache entusiaste del periodo hanno ovviamente la spinta del mistero che ti si svela davanti, ma a scavare il tutto ha un sapore di perduto, già mentre lo si osserva. Forse il solo contatto con l'occidente ha iniziato a corrompere questo oriente misterioso e conservato nei secoli dalla chiusura ostinata verso le contaminazioni.

Dei tre quello che meglio incarna lo spirito inquieto dell'esploratore affascinato dall'oriente misterioso è Lafcadio Hearn (nome giapponese Koizumi Yakumo) il solo che prese la cittadinanza e sposò una giapponese prendendone il cognome e dedicò la vita allo studio di questo popolo e delle sue tradizioni. Gli altri si possono definire dei "pionieri involontari" entrambi coltivavano illusioni di conquista e civilizzazione e finirono conquistati e civilizzati a loro volta dallo spirito giapponese.

L'autore prende le mosse dalla sua esperienza di "nostalgia giapponese" (una specie di mal d'Africa ispirato dal ricordo dei luoghi giapponesi, che provoca per contrasto l'osservazione critica dello squallore delle città occidentali, sporche e caotiche) e ne deduce che si tratta di un fenomeno condiviso, da qui alla lettura dei diari e le lettere dei suoi predecessori è un attimo.
Mette quindi mano a una sorta di libro storico, ma la forma consueta non lo soddisfa e ne scrive diverse stesure fino a trovare la voce che gli sembra adatta. Ovviamente questo ibrido tra lettere, passi in corsivo tratti dagli scritti dei suoi soggetti, cronaca storica e impressioni condivise, con tanto di passaggio dalla prima persona al tu, rivolto al lettore e al personaggio crea non poche perplessità tra i suoi editori, il primo dei quali lo rifiuta perchè "non si scrive così un libro storico"
ma alla fine riesce a farlo stampare.
Ovviamente si tratta di un libro inconsueto, ma proprio per questo trascinante e affascinante.

[Lucas Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first heard of this book in an intro/historiography class my first semester in grad school at Baylor. This volume was mentioned as an exemplar of "post-modern history" in a book that no one in the seminar like except me.

There was a real slow down about 200 pages in. The whole point is that you can't write history and especially biography with a sense of closure or completion in mind. That's not how the subjects of the book lived their lives, so you can't write their story that way, but at some point, I long for something to happen or an argument to be made. I think that in the end this very ambitious, if narrow project pays off. I'm most struck by the idea that as a Westerner and particularly as an American I can't really expect to learn about Japan or Japanese history, except through the history of the American encounter with Japan in the 19th century illustrated by men like Griffis, Morse, and Hearn.

Not sure how much this is going to be able to figure into my lecture on the historical context of Rashomon, but I'm glad to have finally read it after a decade of it languishing on my shelves.