"Representative men of Japan" from Japan and the Japanese
Kanzo Uchimura, 1894 and 1908
代表的日本人
内村鑑三
Read in 2024.4
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🔽 Intro and review summary 🔽
✔ History and biography of Japanese individuals
✔ Nationalism at the turn of the century
✔ Christian Japanese author
★★★★☆ At the turn of the century the wave of Westernisation was unstoppable. This book was a resistance from this Christian Japanese author, to claim that Japan was also great. A bit too subjective but the real value of this book is the intention of the author.
🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
It was originally written under the title of "Japan and the Japanese" in 1894, then released again as "Representative Men of Japan in 1908.
You get the idea how nationalistic the intention was.
Important fact is that he was a Christian evangelist, who founded Non-church Movement, seeking to reconcile Japan and Christianity.
At the turn of the century, the West has ruined Asia and the wave of Westernisation was unstoppable.
This book was a resistance from this Christian Japanese author, to claim that Japan was also great.
As it turns out, a lot in this book is subjective.
Each chapter starts off by introducing how Japan is doing in the particular field, and goes on to say how each man is great and Japanese are wonderful.
The first man in the book is Takamori Saigo, and the book goes a bit extreme to praise his idea that Japan should conquer Korea, Seikanron, which I felt uncomfortable, but then I read in the afterword that Uchimura soon later became anti-war so those comments were just left over from his older belief.
Today he is remembered as a pacifist (so it feels weird he had agreed on seikanron, but there you go people can change)
So, it is a bit too subjective and very specific to this particular period of time in Japan to actually learn any history of Japan or these Japanese men.
However what's more important and interesting, indeed the value of this book, is the intention of the author, why he wrote it in this way, how he wished Japan to be equal to European powers and how that was the aim of many intellectuals from this period.
🔽 Where to buy 🔽
●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●
Representative men of Japan
●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
Representative Men of Japan Kindle Edition
●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
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