Tales of foreign lands

 I have been pretty well off line due to rain and bad internet connection, but also because the news is so full of propaganda that one doesn't know what is going on. 

Also, here the confusion about getting the vaccine is absurd.

So I am busy reading books on line, old books that are of course out of date and biased, but do give some insight into history.

I began reading Isabella Bird's travel books about the Rocky mountains and then went on to read (actually listen to) her book on Japan (in Manga form here for those who don't want to read through her geological and botanical discussion).

She traveled in the interior of Japan at a time when Japan had only recently opened to the west, and her reports are more like a reporter than a travel writer, with both western bias and sympathy.

Professor Kanasaka has written a book about her travels (in Japanese of course) and has an assessment of her book and prejudices in a lecture about her here, VIDEO, but is so poorly recorded I couldn't get through it.

Ah, but then I looked around for her book on travels in Korea, which were a bit harder to find. Archive has them but pdf and bad epub rip, but I found a good reprint of it on Scribd that I am reading now.

Korea also had been closed to the outside, but she visited several times in the     1890s, and included stories of her travels in nearby Manchuria and Siberia in the books (usually there are several versions published, often the scientific stuff edited out for general interest)... she traveled overland to China after the Japanese coup and after the Japanese/Chinese war in the north of Korea, where the Japanese tried to remove Chinese influence; 

... she did not see the battles, which were over before her travels in Korea, but reported on the horrific debris of war that she found. Her descriptions resemble those of Mrs. John Quincy Adams, who traveled overland through central Europe after Napoleon's defeat: destruction of towns that had not yet recovered, and the bones of the unburied soldiers who died in battles years before. Sigh. most war stories leave such things out.

During her visits to Korea she met the last king and queen, and then later relates the horrific story of the Queen's assassination which she states was at the hands of the Japanese. Not something one expects to read about in a travel log...

She observed the need for reform in Korea at that time: and how the corruption by officials prevented people from working hard (because if you looked rich, the officials would "ask' for a loan or tax you or worse). Her criticisms of poverty, laziness and dirt are often moderated by her observations that the Koreans under the (less corrupt) Russians were hard working and prosperous...observing that Korea needed reform to prosper, because corrupt officials would insist on "gifts:...

I was bemused at her description of a Korean marriage she observed, that actually mirrored the marriage scene in the KDrama Samidang.. a K drama series that we are still in the midst of watching. Ms Bird also mentions the wonderful variations of Korean paper, which was the subplot of Samidang. 

another historical story I read was about Ranald Mac Donald, a Metis Canadian whaler who got off his whaling boat and went to visit Japan, and ended up teaching English to their translators, which was a big help when the US sent in ships to "open" the Japanese ports a year later.

The book (Borrow here) has lots of background on whaling off the coast of Japan, which is why the Yanks wanted access for water and food supplies, and does a good scholarly job on trying to sift the story from the various sources.

more here

And HERE.which has links to the books in Japanese and in English.

 What is missing however is insight into the personality of Mr MacDonald: so why did the Japanese like him, and why did they ask him to tutor the local translators, instead of the more numerous American whalers that they also had in the local jail?

But at the end of the book, it describes him as sitting around telling tales of his adventures in the evening. So the picture of the stoical Native American of "Anglo" stereotype quickly morphed in my mind into the laid back, sardonic and humorous Native American who resembled those I worked with (but who often, to outsiders, kept these friendlier traits hidden, hence the myth of the "stoical Indian"...). 

The story would make a good movie, if they had more input from his family's tribe and the Japanese to get the cultural nuances right... indeed, it might be more "accurate" if it was a novel, because novels and stories change the history to give insight into the reality behind the "facts".... indeed, there is a Japanese novel about his friendship with the students he taught, especially with Moriyama Eintosuke

,,,,,,,

longer version that includes his life as a gold miner and his other travels: