Beschreibung
31 vols. Various formats, stitched & sewn bindings, some with ms. titles on upper covers. Japan: ca. 1840-62. An impressive trove of manuscripts documenting one of the most consequential eras in modern Japanese history. Beginning with accounts of encounters with foreigners in the 1840s and concluding in the turbulent years before the Meiji Restoration, this collection consists of important manuscript copies of top-secret reports, journals, and memos compiled by Japanese officials who witnessed pivotal events. It concerns early and significant meetings between the Japanese and the American and Russian expeditions. Some of them include diplomatic communiqués, including several from American presidents; hand-drawn maps; detailed portraits of foreigners and their equipment; lists of Japanese and American dignitaries; renderings of defenses and troop defenses; Japanese attempts to piece together the written and spoken language of the interlopers, etc., etc. Intelligence reports such as these were preserved exclusively in manuscript because of strict controls and censorship enforced by the state on information regarding foreign encounters; as a result, contemporaneous printed materials on the subject are exceedingly scarce. The government often succeeded in shielding the public from hearing about incidents that would have caused great unrest in a society that was in the throes of an existential debate on whether to end its policy of isolationism (sakoku). One of the manuscripts (no. 3), however, preserves a very rare text by a dissenting samurai pleading for an open mind to foreign influence. The manuscripts also relate the tense months when both Russia and the United States raced to establish trade relations with Japan. The Americans, led by Commodore Matthew Perry on two expeditions, in July 1853 and February 1854, ultimately prevailed. The later manuscript documents evince the ways in which the Japanese learned about foreign cultures. We have ordered the manuscripts chronologically by the events they recount (to the best of our ability; some are undated). Nearly all the documents must have been composed shortly after the events to circulate vital intelligence among elite decision-makers. We have neither seen nor handled a comparable collection of manuscript material from these eventful decades in Japanese history. A list of the manuscripts is below, with our translated titles, noting the dates of the events (or when a document was copied), the number of leaves, and any illustrations or salient features found within: 1. "Journal of a Shipwreck," January 1840 & 1852. [10] leaves. Copy of a source manuscript on John Manjiro. 2. "Large Flood [in Edo] and the Appearance of American Ships," 1846. [15] leaves. Drawing of American flags and equipment; the text includes a Japanese translation of President Polk s letter to the Japanese "king." 3. "Theory of Strategic Defense," copied 1847. [11] leaves. Complete ms. copy of Watanabe Kazan s controversial pamphlet Shinkiron (1838), exhorting Japan to gradually open itself to the rest of the world, with comments by the copier. 4. "Report on American Ships Arriving at Uraga and Shimoda," April 1849. [26] leaves. 5. "American Ships Stay at Uraga," 1849. [24] leaves. 6. "Coastal Defense Organized by Many Fiefdoms," May 1850. [5] leaves. 7. "Copy of Letters from the American President to Japan," 8 June 1850. [11] leaves. 8. "Foreign Ships Arrival," 1852, copied in 1853. [5] leaves. 9. "Rumors of the Arrival of Foreign Ships," June 1853. [34] leaves. One hand-drawn map, two full-page ms. illus. 10. "Rumors about the Arrival of Foreign Ships," June 1853. [7.5] leaves. 11. "Journal of Receiving the American Landing Party," 1853. [34] leaves. Small map of the reception hall set up for the American representatives and a drawing of an American and a Japanese facing each other; Japanese recreations of American names; list of frequently used American phrases; and a list of American representatives in th. Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers 10494
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