The Great Wave
Subtitle: Gilded Age Misfits, Japanese Eccentrics, and the Opening of Old Japan
Publisher: Random House
Published: May 6, 2003
Language: eng
Number of pages: 352
ISBN-13: 9780375503276
First sentence: Imagine the following scenario. Two fatherless boys on opposite sides of the earth take to the sea within days of each other, in search of adventure and a livelihood.
Description: When the United States entered the Gilded Age after the Civil War the nation lost its philosophical moorings and looked eastward to "Old Japan," with its seemingly untouched indigenous culture, for balance and perspective. Japan, meanwhile, was trying to reinvent itself as a more cosmopolitan, modern state, ultimately transforming itself, in the course of twenty-five years, from a feudal backwater to an international power. This great wave of historical and cultural reciprocity between the two young nations, which intensified during the late 1800s, brought with it some larger-than-life personalities, as the lure of unknown foreign cultures prompted pilgrimages back and forth across the Pacific. In The great wave, Benfey tells the story of the tightly knit group of nineteenth-century travelers--connoisseurs, collectors, and scientists--who dedicated themselves to exploring and preserving Old Japan. These travelers include Herman Melville, Henry Adams, John La Farge, Lafcadio Hearn, Mabel Loomis Todd, Edward Sylvester Morse, Percival Lowell, and President Theodore Roosevelt. As well, we learn of famous Easterners come West, including Kakuzo Okakura and Shuzo Kuki.