Deer Cry Pavilion: A Story of Westerners in Japan 1868-1905

Until Mutsuhito ascended to the imperial throne in 1868, the Japanese people, since 1636, had been forbidden to travel abroad and to communicate with foreigners. But Mutsuhito welcomed the technological advances of the West and Western eagerness to trade, and under his reign (1868-1905), Japan emerged as a modern industrialized nation. Barr ( To China with Love: The Lives and Times of Protestant Missionaries in China ) examines the accounts of Westerners who witnessed and participated in this transformation in a variety of roles: as businessmen, as emissaries of Western governments, as teachers or missionaries, as tourists. Isabella Bird, an Englishwoman who had previously explored Hawaii and New Zealand, braved the remoter regions of Japan with the aid of a single native guide; Lafcadio Hearn, an Irishman, wrote 14 books on Japan, married a Japanese woman and became a Japanese citizen. Barr skillfully interweaves the observations of these adventurers to provide an intriguing perspective on tumultuous and fateful changes. Illustrated. (May)