Edwin O. Reischauer and the American Discovery of Japan

Edwin O. Reischauer and the American Discovery of Japan PDF Author: George R. Packard
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231512775
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
In 1961, President Kennedy named Edwin O. Reischauer the U.S. Ambassador to Japan. Already deeply intimate with the country, Reischauer hoped to establish a more equal partnership with Japan, which had long been maligned in the American imagination. Reischauer pushed his fellow citizens to abandon caricature and stereotype and recognize Japan as a peace-loving democracy. Though his efforts were often condemned for being "too soft," the immensity of his influence (and the truth of his arguments) can be felt today. Having worked as Reischauer's special assistant in Tokyo, George R. Packard writes the definitive and first biography of this rare, charismatic talent. Reischauer reset the balance between two powerful nations. During World War II, he analyzed intelligence and trained American codebreakers in Japanese. He helped steer Japan toward democracy and then wrote its definitive English-language history. Reischauer's scholarship supplied the foundations for future East Asian disciplines, and his prescient research foretold America's missteps with China and involvement in Vietnam. At the time of his death in 1990, Reischauer warned the U.S. against adopting an attitude toward Asia that was too narrow and self-centered. India, Pakistan, and North Korea are now nuclear powers, and Reischauer's political brilliance has become more necessary and trenchant than ever.

Edwin O. Reischauer and the American Discovery of Japan

Edwin O. Reischauer and the American Discovery of Japan PDF Author: George R. Packard
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231512775
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 377

Get Book Here

Book Description
In 1961, President Kennedy named Edwin O. Reischauer the U.S. Ambassador to Japan. Already deeply intimate with the country, Reischauer hoped to establish a more equal partnership with Japan, which had long been maligned in the American imagination. Reischauer pushed his fellow citizens to abandon caricature and stereotype and recognize Japan as a peace-loving democracy. Though his efforts were often condemned for being "too soft," the immensity of his influence (and the truth of his arguments) can be felt today. Having worked as Reischauer's special assistant in Tokyo, George R. Packard writes the definitive and first biography of this rare, charismatic talent. Reischauer reset the balance between two powerful nations. During World War II, he analyzed intelligence and trained American codebreakers in Japanese. He helped steer Japan toward democracy and then wrote its definitive English-language history. Reischauer's scholarship supplied the foundations for future East Asian disciplines, and his prescient research foretold America's missteps with China and involvement in Vietnam. At the time of his death in 1990, Reischauer warned the U.S. against adopting an attitude toward Asia that was too narrow and self-centered. India, Pakistan, and North Korea are now nuclear powers, and Reischauer's political brilliance has become more necessary and trenchant than ever.

Japan

Japan PDF Author: David John Lu
Publisher: M.E. Sharpe
ISBN: 9780765600363
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 420

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Book Description
Covering the full spectrum of political, economic, diplomatic as well as cultural and intellectual history, this classroom resource offers insight not only into the past but also into Japan's contemporary civilization. This volume (the second of two) covers from the late 18th century up to 1995.

Who Discovered America?

Who Discovered America? PDF Author: Gavin Menzies
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062236776
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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Book Description
Greatly expanding on his blockbuster 1421, distinguished historian Gavin Menzies uncovers the complete untold history of how mankind came to the Americas—offering new revelations and a radical rethinking of the accepted historical record in Who Discovered America? The iconoclastic historian’s magnum opus, Who Discovered America? calls into question our understanding of how the American continents were settled, shedding new light on the well-known “discoveries” of European explorers, including Christopher Columbus. In Who Discovered America? he combines meticulous research and an adventurer’s spirit to reveal astounding new evidence of an ancient Asian seagoing tradition—most notably the Chinese—that dates as far back as 130,000 years ago. Menzies offers a revolutionary new alternative to the “Beringia” theory of how humans crossed a land bridge connecting Asia and North America during the last Ice Age, and provides a wealth of staggering claims, that hold fascinating and astonishing implications for the history of mankind.

A Patriot's History of the United States

A Patriot's History of the United States PDF Author: Larry Schweikart
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101217782
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1373

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Book Description
For the past three decades, many history professors have allowed their biases to distort the way America’s past is taught. These intellectuals have searched for instances of racism, sexism, and bigotry in our history while downplaying the greatness of America’s patriots and the achievements of “dead white men.” As a result, more emphasis is placed on Harriet Tubman than on George Washington; more about the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II than about D-Day or Iwo Jima; more on the dangers we faced from Joseph McCarthy than those we faced from Josef Stalin. A Patriot’s History of the United States corrects those doctrinaire biases. In this groundbreaking book, America’s discovery, founding, and development are reexamined with an appreciation for the elements of public virtue, personal liberty, and private property that make this nation uniquely successful. This book offers a long-overdue acknowledgment of America’s true and proud history.

The Japanese Discovery of Chinese Fiction

The Japanese Discovery of Chinese Fiction PDF Author: William C. Hedberg
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 023155026X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
The classic Chinese novel The Water Margin (Shuihu zhuan) tells the story of a band of outlaws in twelfth-century China and their insurrection against the corrupt imperial court. Imported into Japan in the early seventeenth century, it became a ubiquitous source of inspiration for translations, adaptations, parodies, and illustrated woodblock prints. There is no work of Chinese fiction more important to both the development of early modern Japanese literature and the Japanese imagination of China than The Water Margin. In The Japanese Discovery of Chinese Fiction, William C. Hedberg investigates the reception of The Water Margin in a variety of early modern and modern Japanese contexts, from eighteenth-century Confucian scholarship and literary exegesis to early twentieth-century colonial ethnography. He examines the ways Japanese interest in Chinese texts contributed to new ideas about literary canons and national character. By constructing an account of Japanese literature through the lens of The Water Margin’s literary afterlives, Hedberg offers an alternative history of East Asian textual culture: one that focuses on the transregional dimensions of Japanese literary history and helps us rethink the definition and boundaries of Japanese literature itself.

Rediscovering America

Rediscovering America PDF Author: Peter Duus
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520950372
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 357

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Book Description
In this extraordinary collection of writings, covering the period from 1878 to 1989, a wide range of Japanese visitors to the United States offer their vivid, and sometimes surprising perspectives on Americans and American society. Peter Duus and Kenji Hasegawa have selected essays and articles by Japanese from many walks of life: writers and academics, bureaucrats and priests, politicians and journalists, businessmen, philanthropists, artists. Their views often reflect power relations between America and Japan, particularly during the wartime and postwar periods, but all of them dealt with common themes—America’s origins, its ethnic diversity, its social conformity, its peculiar gender relations, its vast wealth, and its cultural arrogance—making clear that while Japanese observers often regarded the U.S. as a mentor, they rarely saw it as a role model.

The Literary Utopias of Cultural Communities, 1790-1910

The Literary Utopias of Cultural Communities, 1790-1910 PDF Author: Marguérite Corporaal
Publisher: Rodopi
ISBN: 9042029994
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
This volume of essays by scholars in the field of English and American studies brings together a variety of perspectives on the utopian literature originating from cultural communities from 1790-1910. Ranging from the Lunar society to the Nationalist movement, and from the Transcendentalists to the Indian Monday Club the fifteen peer-reviewed articles examine a wide range of contexts in which utopian literature was written, and will be of interest to scholars in the field of cultural and literary studies alike. Moreover, the volume presents the reader with a unique overview of developments in Utopian thinking and literature throughout the long nineteenth century. Specific attention is paid to the transatlantic nature of cultural communities in which utopian writings were produced and read as well as to the colonial contexts of nineteenth-century utopian literature. As such, the collection offers a novel approach to a tradition of utopian writing that was essentially transcultural. Marguérite Corporaal (Radboud University Nijmegen) and Evert Jan van Leeuwen (Leiden University) are lecturers in English and American literature in the Netherlands.

Japan and the Pacific, 1540–1920

Japan and the Pacific, 1540–1920 PDF Author: Matsuda Koichiro
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351925555
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 462

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Book Description
This volume seeks to capture the rich array of images that define Japan's encounters with the Pacific Ocean. Contemporary Japanese most readily associate 'Pacific' with the devastating war that their country fought over a half century ago. The ensuing occupation realized a situation that this people had striven to avoid ever since the Portuguese first arrived in 1543 - their subjugation by a foreign power. But the Pacific Ocean also extended Japan's overseas contacts. From antiquity Japanese and their neighbours crossed it to trade ideas and products. From the mid-16th century it carried people from more distant lands, Europe and America, and thus expanded and diversified Japan's cultural and economic exchange networks. From the late 19th century it provided the highway to transport Japanese imperial expansion in Northeast Asia and later to encourage overseas migration into the Pacific and the Americas. The studies selected for inclusion in this volume, along with the introduction, explain how the Pacific Ocean thus nurtured images of both threat and opportunity to the island nation that it surrounds.

Ulysses S. Grant and Meiji Japan, 1869-1885

Ulysses S. Grant and Meiji Japan, 1869-1885 PDF Author: Ian Patrick Austin
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000022382
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 394

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Book Description
Ulysses S Grant, besides being the General-in-Chief of the Union armies at the time of the Union victory in the American Civil War, was also President, 1869–1878, at a time when the United States was undergoing significant transformations, both economically and strategically, and growing in confidence as a world power. At the same time, Japan, following the Meiji Restoration of 1868, was seeking to join the ranks of the developed, read exclusively Western, states. This book explores the interaction of Grant with Meiji Japan, compares and contrasts developments in the two countries and assesses the impact each country had on the other. It discusses the travels of the Iwakura Mission in the United States, considers Grant’s 1879 visit to Japan and examines the personal relationship between Grant, the Meiji emperor and the other leaders of the Meiji government. The book argues that Grant’s thoughtful consideration of the key issues of the day, issues common to many countries at the time, and his suggested policy responses had a huge impact on Meiji Japan.

Interracial Intimacy in Japan

Interracial Intimacy in Japan PDF Author: Gary P. Leupp
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 9780826460745
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
Gary Leupp describes and analyzes intimate relationships between Western men and Japanese women throughout the entire early modern period and into the first few decades of the modern period, when Westerners came to reside in the Treaty Ports. This subject has been largely overlooked by Western scholars, until now.