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Introductory Note
- University of Hawai'i Press
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… 123 … The following selections from Emile Guimet’s Promenades japonaises (two volumes published in 1878 and 1880) and Pierre Loti’s 1887 Madame Chrysanthème exemplify the precedents Régamey had in mind when he composed The Pink Notebook of Madame Chrysanthème. To understand why Loti’s novel so provoked Régamey, it is useful to compare his account with that of Guimet, Régamey’s traveling companion , focusing not only on what these authors said of Japan, but on how they presented themselves as Westerners in the East. Guimet was eager to distinguish himself from the general run of Westerners in Japan, as is clear from his “Little Dialog by Way of Advice for the Reader,” which appeared thirty pages into the first volume of Promenades japonaises. The texts reproduced here allow readers to assess these claims for distinction by comparing the first chapters of Guimet’s and Loti’s accounts of travel to Japan. Because both begin by describing their arrival by ship, the comparison highlights first the common range of references in Western visions of Japan and then the attitudes toward those references that distinguish Guimet. Like other nineteenth-century visitors to Japan, Guimet and Loti see the same things (Japanese harbor craft, naked sailors) and draw upon the same associations with the imagery on Japanese decorative objects, which had become a standard element of European interiors. Both authors, moreover, strive to see vestiges of Japanese traditions that IntRoDUCtoRY note … 124 … introduCtory note are quickly disappearing under the influence of modernization. For Guimet, this nostalgia is focused on the look of the people (the beautiful old-fashioned servants), whereas Loti focuses on the look of the place (the “pagodas” lurking behind the modern industrial waterfront with its American bars). Beyond these initial similarities, however, crucial distinctions emerge in the attitudes of these Europeans toward the modernizing Japan that they see. Loti, the imperial soldier, uses the impersonal French un (one) to identify both the agent of the modern corruption that makes the world the same all over and the put-upon traveler who is disappointed by this uniformity (my translation uses the passive voice as the smoothest English equivalent to the French impersonal pronoun). Loti’s phrasing assumes that change comes—without imputation of blame or any other form of analysis—from the same people who are disappointed not to find Japan the “Eden” it first appeared: the West is both agent and observer, and Japan is essentially passive. Guimet’s text, in contrast, recognizes that the changes sweeping Japan are reactions to the situation of imperialism. Both the profusion of Japanese objects flooding Western markets and the young Japanese engineers returning from study abroad are responses to the invasion of Japan by “peoples who claim to be civilized.” If the young Japanese engineers are less beautiful—less Homeric—than their servants in kimonos, that is something for which European visitors bear some responsibility.1 Despite their nostalgic disappointment with the look of the modern Japanese among their fellow passengers on board the Alaska, moreover , Guimet and Régamey forged relationships with one of these young men, Soïchiro Matsmoto. “Twenty-three days on the ocean helps to bond men,” Guimet commented, “so it happens that this foreigner whom luck threw into our room on board ship is our friend.”2 During the Pacific crossing, Matsmoto worked with Régamey (as mentioned in the Introduction) to translate a Japanese story, which Régamey published in a lush illustrated edition in 1882. Régamey dedicated this volume to his Japanese collaborators, beginning with Matsmoto: “Without you, I would still not know the strange romantic adventures of the unfortunate Okoma, for it was during our crossing from San Francisco to Yokohama that I read with you in this very text this celebrated tale of the land of the Rising Sun.” Once in Japan, Régamey and Guimet visited Matsmoto at his home in Tokyo, and he became their guide when they visited the temples and parks of the city. Guimet and Régamey’s other translators were provided by Léon [3.87.209.162] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 11:54 GMT) … 125 … introduCtory note Dury, the French consul in Nagasaki between 1860 and 1866, who had returned to Japan in 1867 as a professor of French. Dury drew his students from the upper echelons of Japanese society, and several went on to high-level careers in the Japanese government. Several others followed Guimet when he returned...