The Chrysanthème Papers: The Pink Notebook of Madame Chrysanthème and Other Documents of French Japonisme by Christopher Reed (review)

a thoroughly fascinating study where all literary scholars, not just those of French Romanticism, will find much to appreciate. One important additional aspect deserves mention here. I would also recommend this book to undergraduates beginning their study of literature, above all for its limpid writing. Prasad incorporates theories of various types with ease, but she carefully avoids jargon. She guides her readers with useful signposts, defining her terms (e.g. miscegenation), signaling transitions to future sections of a chapter, or justifying her choices. Because a reviewer must consider even minor questions, however, I should point out some inconsistencies in the capitalization of both English and French titles in the bibliography. Such quibbling aside, this splendid essay cannot but be considered exemplary. Occidental College (CA) Annabelle M. Rea REED, CHRISTOPHER. The Chrysanthème Papers: The Pink Notebook of Madame Chrysanth ème and Other Documents of French Japonisme. Honolulu: UP of Hawai’i, 2010. ISBN 978-0-8248-3345-9. Pp. vii+165. $35. In this book, the author juxtaposes for the first time Félix Régamey’s The Pink Notebook of Madame Chrysanthème (1893) with a selection of texts by Pierre Loti (author of the original Madame Chrysanthème, 1888) and texts by art collector Émile Guimet. This juxtaposition, well contextualized in Reed’s introduction, offers a new perspective on Madame Chrysanthème and on Loti’s influence on nineteenth-century opera and painting. In Loti’s semi-autobiographical novel, Chrysanthème is a young Japanese woman who marries a French naval officer. The marriage is never consummated because of the narrator’s disinterest for her; she only represents an amusing and exotic object for him. Régamey, a talented illustrator and famous Japoniste, challenges Loti’s Eurocentric, bourgeois, and masculine perspective and retells the story from Madame Chrysanthème’s point of view in the form of a fictional diary, of which Reed offers here the first English translation. In Régamey’s text, Loti is presented as a pretentious character who deeply misunderstands Chrysanthème. Reed’s erudite introduction explains how the text is a result of Régamey’s travel to Japan with the renowned collector Émile Guimet; on this trip, he first conceived the idea of writing Chrysanthème’s diary during the days she was married to Pierre Loti. Reed also describes thoroughly the fame generated by Loti’s novel upon which Puccini based his opera Madama Butterfly (1904). Reed uses his broad knowledge of Japonisme to highlight the differences between Loti and Régamey’s writings. According to Reed, Régamey was truly interested in learning about Japanese culture, whereas Loti’s interest was merely touristic while visiting the country. Loti was a conservative Japoniste whereas Régamey was an avant-garde Japoniste: while Loti was concerned about the rapid westernization of Japan, revered the old Japan, and had a nostalgic vision of it, Régamey, on the contrary, had a modern vision of Japan. Régamey’s fascination for Japanese culture was so profound that “on the boat from San Francisco, he convinced Soïchiro Matsumoto, a young Japanese engineer returning from his studies in America, to translate with him an illustrated Japanese story” (21). Unlike Loti, Régamey’s visit to Japan was principally motivated by his desire to explore its culture, its art, its religion, and its people. In juxtaposing Régamey’s Reviews 563 story “which did not find a large audience” (30) at the time with selected pages from Loti’s successful Madame Chrysanthème, Reed reveals Loti’s use of clichés, his misunderstandings, as well as his self-indulgent treatment of Japan. In the second part of the book, Reed provides an excellent translation of Émile Guimet’s Promenades japonaises (1880) and mentions the two different encounters between Régamey and Kiosaï, a famous Japanese painter: “Guimet in Promenades japonaises pits Régamey in a man-to-man contest against a Japanese artist who is very much his equal” (125). Reed also adds that “Guimet’s description of the Japanese artist Kyosai (Kiosaï) constantly offering examples of his accomplished and provocative work” (125) might shed some light on the question often asked by art historians regarding...