Description
Before Japan was 'opened up' in the 1850s, contact with Russia as well as other western maritime nations was extremely limited. Yet from the early eighteenth century onwards, as a result of their expanding commercial interests in East Asia and the North Pacific, Russians had begun to encounter Japanese and were increasingly eager to establish diplomatic and trading relations with Japan. This book presents rare narratives written by Russians, including official envoys, scholars and, later, tourists, who visited Japan between 1792 and 1913. The introduction and notes set these narratives in the context of the history of Russo-Japanese relations and the genre of European travel writing, showing how the Russian writers combined ethnographic interests with the assertion of Russian and European values, simultaneously inscribing power relations and negotiating cultural difference.
Table of Contents
1. Journal of Laxman's Embassy to Japan (Ezo, 1792-3) 2. Voyage Round the World (Nagasaki, 1804-5) 3. Narrative of My Captivity in Japan (Ezo, 1811) 4. The Frigate Pallada (Nagasaki, 1853) 5. News from Japan (Edo, 1859) 6. In the East (Hakodate, 1860) 7. Around Asia (Nagasaki, 1880) 8. On the Japanese Railways (Nagoya, 1890) 9. Around the Islands of the Far East (Nagasaki, 1892) 10. Around Korea, Manchuria and the Liaodong Peninsula (Nagasaki, Yokohama, 1898) 11. The Price of Blood (Kyoto, 1905) 12. My First Day in Japan (Gifu, 1913)
