The Japanese Discovery of America: A Brief Biography With Documents

by Peter Duus (Editor)

The Japanese Discovery of A Brief Biography with documents.

Genres: History, Japan, Nonfiction, Textbooks

226 pages, Hardcover

First published December 15, 1996

About the author

Peter Duus is William H. Bonsall Professor of History, Emeritus at Stanford University.

Reviews

[Sol · Rating 3 out of 5]

People in the West vie with one another in the pursuit of civilization, but we find only absurd tales if we peruse the Old and New Testaments they respect so much. It would not be wrong to regard [tales about] voices from Heaven and criminals raised from the dead as similar to the delirious ravings of madness. They hold that someone crucified was the son of the Heavenly Lord and they kneel, reverently wailing in lamentation. Where do these tears come from? we wonder to ourselves. In all European and American cities, pictures of crucified criminals, profuse with ruby-red blood, are hung everywhere on building walls and rooms, making one feel as though one is living in a cemetery or staying in an execution ground. If this is not bizarre, then what is? The people in the West, however, think it bizarre that no such things exist in the Orient. Even men of great worldliness and insight continually urged that we display them. What could they have in mind?

-Kume Kunitaki, Report of the Iwakura Mission, 1878

It is recorded in ancient Chinese works written before the birth of Christ that men of the red-haired, blue-eyed white race worshipped women and followed their words blindly. They were of a character weak in self-control, and it was their unseemly custom to give full expression to their lust and emotion. When we departed for Europe from the docks at Boston, the spectacle of three married couples embracing was the most extreme shamelessness that we had encountered so far. We had felt respect for New England as the cradle of American culture and learning, but we sailed away from the continent into the Atlantic feeling distaste for its unseemly and disgraceful customs.

-Memoirs of Professor Kume Kunitaki, 1934

My takeaway: there was a narrow window of time in which actual cultural exchange between Japan and America was possible, before which everything written was pure bullshit, and after which pre-programmed political points took over.

I'm not sure how this book is actually supposed to be read. A 40 page introduction gives an overview of the history of the Tokugawa isolation policy, and subsequent interactions with Western cultures, until roughly the end of the nineteenth century. The rest is all documents, mostly Japanese-authored with some American perspectives. The introduction frequently makes reference to the documents, so read one way it's kind of like the world's biggest endnote section, or another way, the introduction is the cheat sheet if you can't divine the main points from the documents.

I get that with a selection of abbreviated documents like this, the author has a lot of latitude to put focus on particular things, but the Americans appear hilariously simpleminded. They appear to not understand that people sometimes care about things other than money, meanwhile the Japanese are debating moral and political philosophy, which traditions are most vital to society, the ideal course of civilization, etc. Admiral Perry comes off as pretty sharp at least.

One particularly funny observation is Yukichi Fukuzawa's shock that Americans wear shoes indoors. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Japanese visitors seemed to be most shocked by the presence of women at official ceremonies and the way American men treat their wives, with American men being completely whipped in their view. Differences in personality in the response to the waltz: one observer is amused by the spectacle, another is shocked and disturbed.

The selected bibliography gives many avenues for further exploration from books available in English. Unfortunately, the memoirs of Kume Kunitaki haven't been translated into English, and he was among the more interesting commentators. For me, those would be the following:

The First Japanese Mission to America
As We Saw Them: The First Japanese Embassy to the United States
Japan Encounters the Barbarian: Japanese Travellers in America and Europe
Kokai Nikki: The Diary of the First Japanese Embassy to the United States of America
The Autobiography of Yukichi Fukuzawa
The Iwakura Embassy, 1871-1873: A True Account of the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary's Journey of Observation through the United States of America and Europe

[Carlos · Rating 2 out of 5]

While I was rather surprised at the ratio of commentary to primary texts in this volume I was pleased enough with Duus’ introduction to recommend, at least that part, to casually interested readers. In his 40-page introduction Duus discusses the slow “discovery” of American society by the Japanese people in the decades after the Commodore Perry expedition to Japan. Duus gives the context in which Japanese rulers closed their country to outsiders, an alarm at the success of Portuguese Catholic missionaries in converting Japanese villagers to Christianity, as well as that of Perry’s expedition, the product of China’s defeat in the Opium wars and the increasing need of American whaling ships for refueling stations on the eastern Pacific. He then follows the evolving attitudes of the Japanese people and their rulers to the American presence and the political ramifications it caused in Japan. In the end, I found Duus introduction informative enough to read as a treatise interpreting the large number of translated primary documents as an extensive appendix.

[Chelsea Henry · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was very interesting. It is primary sources told from the Japanese perspective on the history of Japan. I had to read this book for my History of Modern Japan class and it was very good. It was a very interesting read and you learn about events in history through a perspective that is not American.

[Reader2007 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Modern Asian History