Author: Keiko TamuraPublisher: National Library Australia
ISBN: 9780642276513
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 110
Book Description
When a 21-year-old medical student from Melbourne, Harold S. Williams, arrived in Japan in 1919 to practice the language over his summer holiday, he never imagined his stay would eventually extend over 60 years. He took up a job with a Scottish trading firm in the cosmopolitan port city of Kobe, but his lifelong passion became collecting records documenting the lives of foreign residents. They are now held at the National Library of Australia as a highly sought-after collection. Keiko Tamura constructs a vivid account of the experience of Williams and three other Westerners, presenting a compelling picture of expatriate experiences and life in Japan in the first half of the twentieth century. Against the backdrop of dramatic social and cultural change, Forever Foreign: Expatriate Lives in Historical Kobe provides a valuable insight into the varying influence of Western residents in Japan. Foreshadowing the irrevocable changes to a unique way of life that was brought by World War II, Tamura pays moving tribute to individuals who, either through a sense of adventure or by the forces of circumstance, lived their lives in a foreign culture.
