The Twain Shall Meet

Rudyard Kipling coined the phrase "Oh East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet." This referenced the gulf of understanding between the British and the peoples of the Indian subcontinent. Kipling was perhaps blissfully ignorant of the falsehood he helped to fuel for in the case of Japan nothing could be further from the truth. It is self-evident how Japanese culture has significantly impacted on the world. This ranges from sushi, California and otherwise to origami and anime or judo and karate to beatniks crafting haiku Zen poetry. The reverse is also true. British diplomats had already concluded by the early 1970s that most Japanese were, in many respects, leading essentially Western lifestyles. When Melvil Dewey devised the Dewey Decimal System for classification of library books in 1876, he grouped history, geography and biography together in one section. He was acknowledging that the three are almost invariably linked together. History without geography or biography is little more than a tedious and meaningless list of dates; biography minus history has no context. Europeans had known of Japan for over two hundred years before they set foot on its shores. "People on the Island of Zipangu (Japan) have tremendous quantities of gold. The King's palace is roofed with pure gold, and his floors are paved in gold two fingers thick." So wrote the Venetian merchant Marco Polo (1254-1324). Because of his book, The Travels of Marco Polo, Europeans believed that "Zipangu" was a land of gold, and Columbus later sailed across the Atlantic in search of it." However, the first known contact with Europeans on Japanese soil had to wait until around 1542 when the Portuguese adventurer Fernão Mendez Pinto sailed to Japan from mainland Asia in search of riches. Over the next five centuries countless numbers of people headed off to Japan for reasons as varied as the individuals themselves. Some were missionaries, intent on proselytizing their faith. Others like Pinto were motivated by dreams of monetary gain. Then there were those who came purely to fulfill contracts, or who arrived by chance and ended up staying for a lifetime. There were others who never actually set foot in Japan but nevertheless impacted greatly on its history, or helped to introduce its culture to the wider world. Everybody has a story to tell, so it is said. The collated tales of nearly 200 men and women together relate the bigger picture of how Japan at first welcomed European visitors only to almost completely seal itself off from the outside world a few decades later. Compelled by the threat of naval bombardment by the United States in the mid-nineteenth century, Japan grudgingly at first, reopened its doors. Less than a decade later it embarked on an unprecedented program of modernization and development. Forty years on it had been transformed from what was essentially a feudal police state into a naval power capable of defeating the Russian fleet. The biographies of people who contributed to the history of meetings between Japan and the outside world are listed in approximately chronological order. Some have been grouped, such as with science or sports, when they are roughly contemporary in an attempt to make for a more cohesive reading experience. Cross-referencing is provided so the reader can witness the interactions and influences from contemporary figures whose stories are connected in some fashion. The book is best read in sequence. Although each story is complete in itself, people with little or no prior knowledge of Japanese history are recommended to begin at the beginning as they will find it more coherent and easier to follow. This is the fifth edition which includes corrections updates and additional information.