Bibliography
Books Which Help One to Understand the Orient and Its People
In this bibliography no attempt has been made to cover the field of books about the leading countries of the Orient. The aim has been to mention the books which the tourist will find most helpful. Guide books are indispensable, but they give the imagination no stimulus. It is a positive help to read one or two good descriptive accounts of any country before visiting it; in this way one gets an idea of comparative values. In these notes I have mentioned only the books that are familiar to me and which I have found suggestive.
JAPAN
Of all foreigners who have written about Japan, Lafcadio Hearn gives one the best idea of the Japanese character and of the literature that is its expression. Hearn married a Japanese lady, became Professor of English Literature at the Imperial University of Tokio, renounced his American citizenship, and professed belief in Buddhism. He never mastered the Japanese language but he surpassed every other foreign student in his ability to make real the singular faith of the Japanese in the presence of good and evil spirits and the national worship of beauty in nature and art. Hearn's father was Greek and his mother Irish. In mind he was a strange mixture of a Florentine of the Renaissance and a pagan of the age of Pericles. In The West Indies he has given the best estimate of the influence of the tropics on the white man, and in Japan: An Interpretation, In Ghostly Japan, Exotics and Retrospections, and others, he has recorded in exquisite literary style his conception of Japanese character, myths and folk-legends. His work in this department is so fine that no one else ranks with him. He seems to have been able to put himself in the place of the cultivated Japanese and to interpret the curious national beliefs in good and evil spirits and ghosts. He has also made more real than any other foreign writer the peculiar position of the Japanese wife. Hearn was a conservative, despite his lawless life, and he looked with regret upon the transformation of old Japan, wrought by the new desire to Europeanize the country. He paints with great art the idyllic life of the old Samauri and the loyalty of the retainers to their chief.
Sir Edwin Arnold, who in his old age married a Japanese lady, has given excellent pictures of life in Japan in Seas and Lands and Japonica. Religions of Japan by W. E. Griffis gives a good idea of the various creeds. Mr. Griffis in The Mikado's Empire also furnishes a good description of Japan and the Japanese.
In Fifty Tears of New Japan, Count Okuma has compiled a work that gives a complete survey of Japanese progress during the last half century. Among the contributors are many of the leading statesmen and publicists of Japan.
Of fiction, the scene of which is laid in Japan, one of the most famous stories is Madame Chrysantheme by Pierre Loti, a cynical sketch of the Japanese geisha, or professional entertainer. Another good story which lays bare the ugly fate that often befalls the geisha, is The Lady and Sada San by Frances Little, the author of that popular book, The Lady of the Decoration.
Other books that will be found valuable are Norman, The New Japan; Chamberlain, Things Japanese; Treves, The Other Side of the Lantern; Murray, Handbook of Japan; Clement, Handbook of Modern Japan; D'Autremer, The Japanese Empire; Hartshorne, Japan and Her People; Fraser, A Diplomatist's Wife In Japan; Lloyd, Everyday Japan; Scidmore, Jinrikisha Days In Japan; Knox, Japanese Life In Town and Country; Singleton, Japan, As Described By Great Writers; Inouye, Home Life In Tokio.