Mirror in the Shrine: American Encounters with Meiji Japan

By Robert A. Rosenstone

Book Overview

In the last third of the nineteenth century, three Americans with diverse purposes sailed to Japan--the missionary William Elliot Griffis, the scientist Edward S. Morse, and the writer Lafcadio Hearn. They were to become part of the first generation of American experts on Japan, regularly quoted and widely read. More significantly, their own lives were vastly changed, broadened and enriched in unexpected ways, so that their thoughts dwelt as much on what Americans could learn from the pagan Japanese as on what Americans could teach them.

In telling these stories, Robert Rosenstone evokes the immediacy of daily experience in Meiji Japan, a nation still feudal in many of its habits yet captivating to Westerners for the gentleness of the people, the beauty of the landscape, the human scale of the unspoiled old towns, and the charm of arts and manners. He describes the odyssey of the ambitious and strong-minded Christian minister Griffis, who won few converts but, as a teacher, assisted at the birth of modern Japan. He portrays the natural scientist Morse, a born collector who turned from amassing mollusks to assembling comprehensive collections of Japanese folk art and pottery. He recounts Lafcadio Hearn's fourteen years in Japan. Hearn, who married a Japanese, became a citizen, and found in his new homeland ideal subject matter for exotic tales of ghosts, demons, spectral lovers, local gods and heroes, spells, enchantments.

Rosenstone recreates the sights and textures of Meiji Japan, but Mirror in the Shrine brings to the reader much more than a traditional rendering. Rather, through the use of some of the techniques of modernist writing, the book provides a multi-voiced narrative in which the words of the present and the past interact to present a fresh view of historical reality. While charting the common stages of these three Americans' acculturation--growing to like the food, the architecture, the spareness, the mysterious etiquette--the work also highlights the challenges that Japan issues to American culture, in this century as well as in the last: Is it possible to find human fulfillment within the confines of a hierarchical, even repressive, social order? Is it possible for our culture to find a place of importance for such qualities as harmony, aesthetics, morals, manners?

This is a book for anyone who is at all interested in Japan or in the meeting of East and West. The "old Japan hand" will reexperience the freshness of an early love; the newcomer will find it equally evocative and fascinating.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 067457642X
• ISBN13: 9780674576421
• Release Date: April 1991
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 1.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.6" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

A New Way of Telling the Past

This story is about three Americans (Willie Griffis, Edward Morse, and Lafcadio Hearn) who visited Japan in the 1800s and had their lives "altered greatly" by the experience. Unconventional in both style and form, and explicitly subjective - even self relexive - the book is nevertheless interesting, informing, and challenging. Moreover, it is exactly what Rosenstone purports it to be -- a new way of telling the past. His aim is to "break with some of the conventions of narrative history, and to move beyond the 'realistic' nineteenth-century novel as a paradigm for the historian's 'art'." Yet despite this new approach, the author keeps 'reality' in check by combining stylistic innovation with sound research.Rosenstone writes in the present tense - both in the first and second person - and as the 'Biographer', whose comments appear much like side takes in television documentaries. A & E anyone? In any case, the technique, scorned by most conventional historians, is quite successful. Instead of reinforcing the dichotomy between 'true' history and film, Rosenstone establishes a truce between them - one might even say a 'relationship'. In short, 'Mirror in the Shrine' is thoughtful, entertaining, and highly recommended -- and certainly not dry.

Very interesting, but also very dry...

A book about how Japan was changing Americans NOT just on how America (and the West) was changing the Japanese. It focuses on William E. Griffis, Edward S. Morse, and Lafcadio Hearn (whose names you will find many times within history books about Japan). Their different writings (with their different ideas, backgrounds and view points) allow us to see how Americans responded to visiting and living within Japan.I have to warn you, the book is somewhat dry(the other review compared it to A & E) but worth reading for those of us who love Japanese history.

A New Way of Telling the Past

Essentially, the 'story' was about three Americans (Willie Griffis, Edward Morse, and Lafcadio Hearn) visiting Japan in the 1800s who had their lives permanently changed by the experience. Unconventional in both style and form, and explicitly subjective - even self-reflexive - the book was nonetheless interesting, informing, and challenging. Moreover, it was exactly what Robert Rosenstone purported it to be: a new way of telling the past. His aim was to "break with some of the conventions of narrative history, and to move beyond the 'realistic' nineteenth-century novel as a paradigm for the historian's 'art'." While the technique itself was effective, the author kept 'reality' in check by combining this unorthodox approach with sound research.The author's interest in historical fims was evident from the outset. Clearly, his "notion of writing as a motion picture camera" was carried through to the fullest extent. Rosenstone wrote in the present tense, both in the second person (addressing the reader and, less frequently, the characters) and in the first person (of the characters). No use of 'proper' quotations was made, and the characters' comments were injected - yes, from documentation, not guesswork - into italicised words, sentences, and even entire paragraphs. In addition, a person called "The Biographer' crept in once in a while to explain methodological and historical problems. Such comments appeared much like side takes in television documentaries. A & E anyone? In any case, the method, scorned by most conventional historians, was quite successful. Instead of reinforcing the dichotomy between 'true' history and film, Rosenstone established a truce between them - one might even say a 'relationship'. That traditionalists are likely to question the author's technique is undeniable, but they have no grounds for criticising his honesty. By that is simply meant that he had a straightforward thesis. He looked not at how his three American subjects changed Japan, but at how Japan changed them, about their lives having been "altered greatly...in ways they did not fully understand." Having lived in Japan himself, albeit almost a century later, Rosenstone undoubtedly experienced some of the same 'feelings' and 'alterations' as Griffis, Morse, and Hearn. Sound relativistic? That choice was entirely deliberate. Probably, the author's stay in Japan resulted in a new attitude about historical studies. Maybe, it was the result of seeing things differently, 'unconventionally'. Regardless, he is very aware of the change, and it was reflected in his historical writing, which showed that the use of new techniques AND traditional modes of research can indeed result in new ways of telling the past. For that reason alone, 'Mirror in the Shrine' was enjoyable and provocative, and is certainly highly recommended.