Abstract
One of the most conspicuous ideas about Japan which dominated the reviews of Laurence Oliphant’s Narrative was the simple one that the amiable nature of the Japanese had not changed for centuries. Henry Reeve, in his review published in the Edinburgh Review,1 quoted extensively the accounts in Narrative which seemed to emphasise this point:
Universal testimony assures us that in their domestic relations the men are gentle and forbearing, the women obedient and virtuous …2 Upon no single occasion … did I ever see a child struck or otherwise maltreated … Kaempfer, Charlevoix and Tit-singh, agree in saying that the love, obedience, and reverence manifested by children towards their parents is unbounded; while the confidence placed by parents in their children is represented to be without limit.3
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Notes and References
H. Reeve, ‘Lord Elgin’s Mission to China and Japan’, Edin. Rev., vol. cxi(1860), pp. 96–118.
C. W. Russell, ‘Oliphant’s Japan’, Dub. Rev., vol. xlviii (1860), p. 405.
S. Osborn, ‘A Cruise in Japanese Waters’, Blackw., vol. lxxxv (1859), p. 408.
F. M. Drummond-Davies, ‘Japan’, Westmin. Rev., vol. xvii, new series, (1860), p. 540.
J. M. Tronson, Personal Narrative of a Voyage to Japan, Kamtschatka, Siberia, Tartary, and Various Parts of Coast of China; in H.M.S. Barracouta (London, 1859), p. 256. When Tronson visited Japan, he was Assistant Surgeon of the Barracouta, The Navy List (London, 20 September 1854), p. 139.
M. P. Ljindo, ‘Our New Treaty with Japan’, Fraser, vol. lviii (1858), p. 658.
A. W. Habersham, My Last Cruise: or, Where We Went, and What We Saw; being an account of visits to the Malay and Loo-Choo Islands, & C. (Philadelphia & London, 1857).
Katsu Kaishu, Rikugun rekishi (reprint edn, Tokyo, 1967), vol. I, p. 65: ‘… migi o motte eikan no chô sôgei no rei koto no hoka teatsuku, isu mo jôseki ni suhete toriatsukai kata ika ni mo teichô ni kore ari sôrô’,
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© 1987 Toshio Yokoyama
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Yokoyama, T. (1987). Britain, the Happy Suitor of a Fairyland. In: Japan in the Victorian Mind. St Palgrave Macmillan Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-08372-5_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-08372-5_3
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