Read e-book online Journeys to the Japanese, 1952-1979 PDF

By Morton White, Lucia White

ISBN-10: 0774802316

ISBN-13: 9780774802314

Morton White, one in all America's such a lot distinctive and highbrow historians, was once one of the first Western teachers invited to Japan after the Pacific warfare. together with his spouse and co- writer Lucia, he first went there in 1952 and to that end made 4 extra journeys, the final one in 1979. in the course of those visits the Whites turned pleasant with many eastern intellectuals and their households and have been capable of notice Japan and eastern lifestyles in the course of a very important a part of this century.

Through own memories in accordance with their journals and correspondence, the Whites introduce the reader to the nice highbrow, social, and financial adjustments that came about in Japan through the approximately thirty-year span in their visits. they supply penetrating sketches of the personalities and attitudes of an enormous staff of eastern lecturers -- leaders who acted opposed to the existing opinion to introduce recognized intellectuals from the U.S. to aid holiday down the stereotypes created via global warfare II. Reflecting at the altering tendencies and practices of the japanese philosophers, the Whites observe the sluggish shift in orientation from the ecu to the yankee culture in philosophy and touch upon how this produced tensions within the eastern philosophers who lived via it -- problems with nice curiosity either for college students of the historical past of philosophy and for somebody drawn to the unfold of yank influence.

Outside the precincts of the colleges, the Whites are willing observers of a tradition they've got come to admire and appreciate. The delicacy of jap social preparations, the significance of 'face,' the self-consciously troublesome place of ladies in jap society, in addition to the difficult net of courtesy are given existence via many insightful examples.

In the book's ultimate bankruptcy, the Whites consider upon issues eastern they've got but to appreciate and the way their visits have made them extra aware of their very own cultural culture and what they understand as its deficiencies.

Journeys to the Japanese either entertains and informs approximately an immense interval and important contributors in eastern historical past. it really is an affecting account of ways lasting foreign sympathy and figuring out will be nourished via encouraging cultural alternate and private friendship.

Show description

Read Online or Download Journeys to the Japanese, 1952-1979 PDF

Similar ethnic & national books

Download PDF by Nathaniel Hawthorne: True Stories from History and Biography (Illustrated

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) was once a nineteenth century American novelist and brief tale author. he's visible as a key determine within the improvement of yankee literature for his stories of the nation's colonial background. Nathaniel Hawthorne was once born on July four, 1804, in Salem, Massachusetts, the place his birthplace is now a museum.

Download e-book for kindle: A Mouth Sweeter Than Salt: An African Memoir by Toyin Omoyeni Falola

"A well suited coming-of-age tale so jam-packed with bright colour and emotion, the phrases appear to dance off the web page. yet this isn't purely Falola's memoir; it's an account of a brand new country entering being and the tensions and negotiations that consistently ensue among urban and kingdom, culture and modernity, women and men, wealthy and negative.

Download e-book for iPad: Archbishop Theodore: Commemorative Studies on his Life and by Michael Lapidge

Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury (668SH90), formed the English Church right into a constitution it has retained for a millennium. but till lately he has remained a shadowy determine, whose early profession within the close to East and at Rome has been unknown. during this ebook, which builds at the 1994 e-book of formerly unprinted Biblical commentaries from Theodore's Canterbury institution, the world over distinct students offer a clean account of the profession and writings of a different character who dropped at Anglo-Saxon England the cultural background of Syria, Byzantium and Rome.

Extra info for Journeys to the Japanese, 1952-1979

Example text

One of them was asked how he regarded some of the new modern buildings then rising in Tokyo and how he would compare them with some of the ancient Japanese structures that he had seen in Kyoto. He was asked this by a Japanese leftist who, the American professor reasoned correctly, would damn him whatever his answer might be. If he said that he preferred the new Americanized skyscrapers, he would be put down as an insensitive American barbarian, unable to appreciate the values of old Japan. But if he said that he preferred the old temples, he would be said to be patronizing the Japanese by implying that they were incapable of erecting modern structures, symbols of the new industrial world that Japan was entering.

It therefore encouraged the study of pragmatism, mainly under the influence of Shunsuke Tsurumi and his sister Kazukuo, whom we shall presently meet again. They were children of a Japanese politician, and both of them had been educated in the States—the brother at Harvard, the sister at Columbia. Their institute dealt with many different problems and announced itself in a fervid way as an opponent of traditional Japanese philosophy. " Some of its members were actively interested in symbolic logic; others in the study of Peirce.

There we dined and talked late until the feline Chinese hostess began to hover around us and chatter after all the other patrons had departed. Kishimoto and Mayeda finally went running off into the darkness to find another elusive taxi for themselves after having pushed the Millers and us into one that they had previously caught at the restaurant door. We have tried in this chapter to present our impressions of tensions and conflicts that we saw in the Japan of 1952, but while we were observing what we thought of as disparate elements within Japanese life, our Japanese colleagues were noticing certain contrasts within ours.

Download PDF sample

Journeys to the Japanese, 1952-1979 by Morton White, Lucia White


by Edward
4.2

Rated 4.05 of 5 – based on 35 votes