Au Japon. Amedee Baillot de Guerville
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Название: Au Japon

Автор: Amedee Baillot de Guerville

Издательство: Ingram

Жанр: Биографии и Мемуары

Серия: Writing Travel

isbn: 9781602356818

isbn:

СКАЧАТЬ life in the Far East, in the spirit of Sir Edwin Arnold (whom de Guerville admired and with whom he once shared a jinrikisha) and Lafcadio Hearn (who first arrived in Japan a year before de Guerville). Au Japon echoes both Arnold’s Japonica (1891) and Hearn’s Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan (1894). Although de Guerville certainly indulges in some of the sentimental exocitizing of Japan—best manifested by Pierre Loti’s Madame Chrysanthemum—de Guerville’s is also a sympathetic and progressive pen. Though he may poke fun at aspects of the Japanese and life in Japan, he does so in a spirit of good-naturedness and not out of condescension or a sense of superiority, moral or otherwise. De Guerville is as interested in the nation’s modern transformation as he is in its traditions. He sees value in Japan’s modernization, in the education of women, and in the rise of Japan to equality with the industrialized nations of the west—rather than simply its perpetual relegation to “enchanted bamboo land” of geishas and tea houses. He also takes issue with the then prevalent idea that Japan was, through industrialization and Western influence, only then emerging out of barbarity into civilization.

      One should not lose sight of the fact, and indeed it is hard to, that Au Japon is foremost a comical look at Japan from a Westerner’s perspective. With its risqué and irreverent outlook, Au Japon is very much a French book of travel writing. Au Japon simply does not take itself too seriously, and this in itself is endearing. To be sure, de Guerville records several dialogs that he certainly did not witness, and quite likely never took place. The confusion over the meaning of “Teikoku,” for instance, would only be plausible if the Japanese in question had been conversing with de Guerville in French, not something very likely to have occurred. But even these “imaginary” conversations serve not to mislead so much as to entertain. In the end we are to trust in the Japan Weekly Mail’s assertion that, delightful as Au Japon may be, “to take it seriously from cover to cover would be imbecile.”79

      Au Japon is also simply a humorous account of a foreigner’s misadventures in Japan. De Guerville’s obvious delight in recounting the creaking of western ladies’ corsets as they sat down to an uncomfortable tea à la Japonaise, or the flatulence of his Korean “coolies”; his racy account of foreign scandal in the pleasure district of Tokyo, or humorous take on everything from Japanese bathing to firefighting; all these reveal the book’s comic quality. One might be reminded of Thomas Raucat’s L’Honorable partie de campagne (1924), or, even racier still, that same author’s De Shanghai à Canton (1927).80 But whereas Raucat’s humor is delivered in more of a deadpanned manner, one can almost hear de Guerville laughing out loud, or regaling an audience at New York’s Lotus Club, as he recounts his experiences. Indeed, it would come as little surprise for a reader to learn that before his success as a writer de Guerville was an accomplished and popular lecturer during a time when public speaking was a much lauded talent.

      Au Japon should also be viewed in the context of the period trend towards travel books in general and Japan in particular. At the time, writing about Japan sold well. Besides de Guerville, there were legions of aspiring authors ready to feed a seemingly insatiable Western curiosity for this intriguing and modernizing island nation. “True it is, ‘and pity ’tis ’tis true,’ with reference to Japan, that ‘of making many books there is no end,’” intoned one period editorial.81 In the last quarter of the nineteenth century travel books on Japan had become a virtual cottage industry. Between 1875 and 1900 no fewer than two hundred books of travel impressions on Japan appeared in Western languages. Many were the products of journalists like de Guerville, but their authorship ran the gamut from diplomats to adventurers, educators to engineers, and from missionaries to sailors, doctors, general misfits, and the odd man or woman of leisure. In regards to their treatment of Japan, certain trends can be discerned in such works.

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