THE JAPANESE WORLD

The
First Japanese Delegation to America. This is a Japanese
account of the first Japanese delegation to visit the United
States in 1860, with illustrations taken from prints and
photos that appeared in local media in the United States.
Shown here is a print of the delegation being received
at the White House by President Buchanan. (Japanese
Rare Book Collection, Asian Division)
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One of the Library's earliest visitors from East Asia predates
our Civil War. In May 1860, a Japanese diplomatic delegation
came to Washington to exchange instruments of ratification for
the 1858 Treaty of Commerce between the two countries. During
a call on the House of Representatives, two members of the delegation
were escorted to the Library of Congress, then located inside
the Capitol. According to newspaper reports of the time, the
delegation was especially surprised to find a Japanese grammar
text, translated from a Portuguese Jesuit book printed in Nagasaki
in 1604.
Despite this early visit and a limited exchange of government
publications, the Library's first important effort at building
its Japanese collection came much later, in 1907 and 1908, with
the purchase of some nine thousand volumes (over three thousand
titles) of important works on Japanese history, literature, Buddhism,
Shinto, geography, music, and the arts. This fine collection
came to the Library through the efforts of Asakawa Kan'-ichi,
a Japanese scholar who received a B.A. from Dartmouth and then
a Ph.D. in history with a specialty in Japanese feudalism from
Yale in 1902. Asakawa was commissioned by Yale and the Library
of Congress to acquire books during an eighteen-month stay in
Japan in 1906 and 1907. Upon his return to the United States,
Asakawa began a long teaching career at Yale that stretched until
1942, when he retired as Professor Emeritus.

Hokusai, Hyaku Monogatari (Ghost
Stories). One of Hokusai's five prints in his Ghost Stories,
this is Laughing Hannya, a demon that usually
symbolizes the envy of woman. In this unusual portrayal,
Hannya has just claimed a victim. Hokusai apparently intended
to produce a larger set of prints, since the title of his
work is literally "100 Stories." The prints were engraved
by Kakuki and published circa 1830. (Japanese Rare
Book Collection, Asian Division)
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Asakawa's collection came on top of an important gift of Japanese
art work that the Library received in 1905 from Crosby Stuart
Noyes, journalist and editor of the Washington Evening Star.
Initially drawn to Japanese art by its impact on nineteenth-
century European artists, Noyes made frequent trips to Europe
and Japan, where he acquired a large collection of Japanese art
and books. His gift to the Library included watercolors, drawings,
woodblock engravings, lithographs, and illustrated books, all
of which were produced between the mid-eighteenth and the late
nineteenth centuries. While the Asian Division holds most of
the Noyes collection, his single prints are in the Prints and
Photographs Division. Among the latter is a fascinating series
of over a hundred colored woodblock prints, essentially political
cartoons, on the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895 and the Russo-Japanese
War of 1904-1905.
With the acquisitions from Asakawa and Noyes, the Library might
have been expected to make rapid progress in strengthening its
Japanese collections. This was not to be. Over the next two decades,
only a limited number of volumes was added, mainly through the
efforts of Dr. Walter Swingle. Why? The answer apparently lies
in the general lack of interest in Japanese studies among American
academics, with the exception of a handful at universities such
as Yale, where Asakawa was teaching. In 1930, however, the Library
hired its first Japanese specialist, Dr. Sakanishi Shiho, who
pioneered the development of the Library into a first-rate resource
for scholars of Japan.

Elements
de la Grammaire Japonaise. In 1860 members of the
first official Japanese delegation to visit Washington
stopped by the Library of Congress. Among the books they
saw, this one especially attracted their attention. The
book is an 1825 French translation from Portuguese of
a Japanese grammar text, written by Father Rodriguez
in Nagasaki in 1604. (Japanese Rare Book Collection,
Asian Division)
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Today's Pre-Meiji Printed Books and Manuscripts collection consists
of some 4,200 titles, with most dating from the early seventeenth
century to 1867. Among its items is a rare edition of the Japanese
literary masterpiece Genji Monogatari (The Tale of the
Genji), published in Kyoto in 1654. The "monogatari" is a type
of literature developed in Japan that combines elements of the
short novel, the historical novel, the fairy tale, and even the
morality play. There is no exact counterpart in Western literature.
Written in the first decade of the eleventh century by Lady Murasaki
Shikibu, Genji Monogatari is considered to be the world's
earliest novel. It consists of some fifty-four long chapters
that tell of the life and loves of Prince Genji and vividly bring
to life the personalities and elegance of Japanese court society.
The collection also holds a rare volume of Heike Monogatari,
written during the Kamakura period (1185-1333), which represent
a new type of monogatari--the war tale. Heike Monogatari tells
the story of the Taira Clan's rise and fall and was carried around
the country by minstrels who recited the work accompanied by
a "biwa," or lute. The Library's volume is especially valuable
because it indicates how the text should be chanted during a
performance.
Yet another rare book in the Pre-Meiji collection is the Yoshitsune
Azuma Kudari Monogatari, printed with movable type between
1624 and 1643. Bronze movable type was brought to Japan from
Korea at the end of the sixteenth century. In Japan, it was
often combined with wooden movable type to print books for
a short period between 1600 and 1650. This form of printing
gave way to woodblock printing until the end of the Edo period
when wooden movable type came into use again.

Cherry
Blossoms. This watercolor is from a set of drawings
of the leading varieties of Japanese cherry blossoms that
grow along the embankment at Arakawa, near Tokyo. The City
of Tokyo collected buds from these trees to send to Washington,
D.C., where they were planted around the Tidal Basin and
are a major attraction each spring. The watercolors were
done by a Japanese artist in 1921 for Dr. Walter T. Swingle,
who presented them to the Library of Congress. (Japanese
Rare Book Collection, Asian Division)
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The Yoshitsune Azuma Kudari Monogatari tells part of
the story of Japan's foremost tragic hero, Minamoto noYoshitsune.
After defeating the Taira Clan in a series of battles known as
the Genpei Wars (1180-1185), Yoshitsune rebelled against his
powerful brother Yoritomo, founder of the Minamoto Shogunate.
Facing military defeat, Yoshitsune killed his wife, his daughter,
and himself in 1189. This volume tells the story of Yoshitsune's
flight from Kyoto three years before his death and his retreat
to northern Honshu. The poignant tale of Yoshitsune has given
rise to many literary works, mixing history with legend so thoroughly
that the two are now inseparable. The Yoshitsune Azuma Kudari
Monogatari closely follows volume seven of the Gikeiki that
tells the full story of Yoshitsune. It uses fewer kanji (Chinese
characters), however, and differs somewhat in text. The Library's
copy is one of only two known to exist. The other is in Japan.
In the West, perhaps the best-known Japanese poetic form is
the "haiku," an extremely short poetic expression consisting
of only seventeen syllables, often preceded and followed by descriptions
and observations designed to make the haiku more accessible to
the reader. The haiku reached its peak during the Tokugawa period
(1615-1868) with the poetry of Matsuo Basho. But it was not necessary
to have the literary talent of a Basho to compose haiku, because
a unique feature of this art form was that fine poems could be
created by ordinary Japanese. The Japanese Pre-Meiji collection
holds many haiku anthologies by common people such as merchants,
shopkeepers, women, and artisans.

Japanese Views of Commodore Perry. Commo.
Matthew C. Perry's expeditions in 1853 and 1854 stirred
tremendous excitement in a Japan that had been largely
closed to Westerners for over two hundred years. Japanese
artists made sketches of the Americans, their ships,
and their strange possessions. To meet strong popular
demand, the original drawings were quickly copied and
circulated. These illustrations are from the Library's
collection of Japanese scrolls and sketchbooks of the
first Americans in Japan. It also includes drawings of
the first American commercial ship to visit in 1855 and
the newly appointed American Consul, Townsend Harris,
who arrived in 1856. (Prints and Photographs Division)
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Another unique Japanese art form is the "kabuki" theater, one
of Japan's three major classical theaters together with "noh" and "bunraku." Starting
in the early seventeenth century, kabuki became a very popular
form of entertainment in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
and, of course, is still performed today. The Library's Pre-Meiji
collection includes a rare manuscript, "Kabuki Sugatami," written
by kabuki actor Nakamura Nakazo in 1776. The actor's manuscript
is a valuable source for the study of kabuki and its history.
Washington Evening Star editor Crosby Noyes was far
from alone in his fascination with Japanese art. American and
European collectors have had an especially strong affinity for
Japanese woodblock prints, an art form that began in the 1660s
during the Tokugawa period, and many fine collections can be
found in the West. The prints, called "ukiyo-e," or "floating
world pictures," began as depictions of kabuki actors and courtesans
and were primarily produced for Japan's growing merchant class.
The subject matter later expanded to include scenes of daily
life and landscapes. With Japan's increasing exposure to the
West following Commodore Perry's missions in the 1850s, printmakers
began to portray the strange foreigners coming to their shores
and the exotic nations they represented. This fascination with
foreigners is well illustrated by the Chadbourne collection of
Japanese prints in the Prints and Photographs Division. A gift
to the Library from Mrs. E. Crane Chadbourne in 1930, the collection
consists of 187 late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century prints,
the majority showing American and European visitors in Japan
and imagined scenes of foreign cities.

The Bible as Calligraphic Art. Unaided by any magnification,
Yoshikawa Mototake spent eight years copying the Old and
New Testaments in miniature calligraphy on these two scrolls,
one in Japanese and one in English. The scrolls, which
can be read only with a magnifying glass, were presented
to the citizens of the United States in 1948 through Gen.
Douglas MacArthur. The copying of the Bible may be compared
to the ancient Japanese custom of copying Buddhist sutras
as a means of mental and physical discipline and as a pious
act for salvation. (Japanese Rare Book Collection,
Asian Division) |
The Geography and Map Division holds many early Japanese maps.
These include the Shannon McCune collection of scrolls, atlases,
woodblocks, and fan maps of Japan and Korea from the fifteenth
to the nineteenth centuries.

Flourishing Nihonbashi Section
of Tokyo.
This print is one panel of an 1861 triptych by UtagawaYoshitora. (Chadbourne
Collection, Prints and Photographs Division)
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The Library's Japanese collection also contains the world's
second oldest example of printing that is still in existence
and that has a date of printing recorded in contemporary historical
documents. It consists of three printed strips of Buddhist sutras
used as prayer charms, printed between 764 and 770 A.D.. The
prayers were placed in one million wooden pagodas that were distributed
equally to ten temples throughout Japan to mark the end of the
eight-year civil war. The project involved the work of 157 people
over a six-year period, making it one of the earliest examples
of mass production.

Traditional Map of Japan on Blue
and White Porcelain. Produced about 1830 during the late
Tokugawa Period, this porcelain
plate is decorated with an early "gyoji" type of map of
Japan. It was made at the Mikawachi kiln under the patronage
of the Matsura family, the feudal lords of Hirado. At the
center are Japan's three main islands, Kyushu, Honshu,
and Shikoku. Of the four other "countries" depicted at
the edges of the plate, two are real places (Korea and
the Ryukyus) and two are mythological (the Country of Dwarfs
and the Women Protected Country). Already long eclipsed
by more accurate maps, this old map was probably reproduced
by the potter because of its antiquarian interest to early
nineteenth-century Japanese. (Shannon McCune Collection,
Geography and Map Division)
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Dharani Prayer Charms. The Buddhist
hierarchy exercised strong influence over affairs of state
in eighth-century Japan, especially during the reign of
Empress Shotoku. Between 764 and 770 A.D., the empress
had a million copies of Buddhist prayers printed, placed
in
wooden pagodas, and distributed to ten Japanese temples.
These printed prayers, consisting of four passages from
Buddhist sutras (dharani), are considered to be the world's
second oldest examples of printing. (Japanese Rare
Book Collection, Asian Division)
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