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JAPAN THROUGH WESTERN EYES
Manuscript Records of Traders, Travellers, Missionaries and Diplomats, 1853-1941

Part 2: The William Elliot Griffis Collection from Rutgers University Library -
Journals & Student Essays

"Griffis stands as an intellectual landmark in the history of the early scholarship on Japan, not only by his writing and speaking, but by his collecting as well.... Scholars of early Japanese - U.S. interaction visit the Griffis Collection regularly to consult and cull information on missionaries such as Brown, Hepburn, and Verbeck, the yatoi, and on Japanese in the United States. It is a rich trove of information on much of Meiji and Taisho Japan, and shows Griffis to be one of America’s leading and first ‘Old Japan Hands’."
David Heinlein in 'The New Brunswick-Japan Connection: A History'
(in The Journal of the Rutgers University Libraries, Vol LII, No 2, December 1990)

The William Elliot Griffis Collection at the Alexander Library, Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, is an outstanding source for the study of Japan - US relations, Western perspectives on Japan and Japan’s views of the West. As well as documenting Griffis’s own life-long involvement with Japan as an author, educator and a yatoi, it gains added importance as a result of the material collected by Griffis documenting contacts with Japan from 1853 through to 1928.

After Commodore Perry’s visits to Japan in 1853 and 1854 which ended the policy of seclusion, interaction between Japan and America grew steadily. In 1868 the Emperor Meiji in the Charter Oath declaration called on the Japanese to seek knowledge from around the world. Many young scholars went abroad and New Brunswick was probably second only to London in attracting Japanese students.

Both as a student at Rutgers College (graduating in 1869) and as a teacher at the local Grammar School, William Elliot Griffis (1843-1928) met and was profoundly influenced by the large influx of Japanese students in New Brunswick between 1866 and 1870. As a result of these contacts and through the intermediary of Guido Verbeck - a pioneer missionary in Japan - Griffis signed a contract in 1870 to teach science in Fukui.

Griffis was one of the first oyatoi gaikokujin, or foreign employees of the Japanese government. After nearly a year in Fukui working at the behest of Matsudaira Shungaku, the forward-looking leader of the domain of Echizen, Griffis was called to Tokyo to help establish the first official schools along western lines. From 1872 to 1874 he taught at the Kaisei Gekko, the forerunner of the present Tokyo University and travelled widely as a freelance worker, meeting missionaries, educators and other Yatoi as well as with the elite of the Meiji government. Griffis maintained a series of detailed journals recording his experiences and also retained his correspondence and papers relating to his teaching in Japan. He also became an assiduous collector of materials relating to US - Japanese relations, including original manuscript materials relevant to Millard Fillimore, Matthew Perry, Guido Verbeck, James Ballagh, J C Hepburn and Samuel Robbins Brown. These sources all form part of the Griffis Collection.

In 1872 he was joined by his sister, Margaret Clark Griffis, who obtained a position teaching in a newly-formed school for girls (the Tokyo Government Girl’s school, later to become the Peeresses’ School). Her papers are also included in the Griffis Collection.

After returning to the United States in 1874, Griffis embarked on a career writing and lecturing on Japan and related subjects. His 1876 volume The Mikado’s Empire was for decades the authoritative reference in the West on Japanese culture and history and Griffis was regarded at America’s foremost interpreter of Japanese culture. He also published important works on Korea, such as Korea: the Hermit Nation in 1882. In 1926 he returned to Japan to receive the Order of the Rising Sun. He died in 1928.

The William Elliot Griffis Collection forms Parts 2-5 of our ongoing series entitled Japan Through Western Eyes. It fully reflects his life and interests and provides valuable insights into the political, commercial and cultural history of Japan.

Part 2 covers both Griffis’s own Journals, 1859-1928, and a series of essays written by Griffis’s students at Kaisei Gekko. There are 31 Journals in total. The first seven cover his involvement in the Civil War and his own educational experiences. Volume 8 records his journey to Japan via Omaha and San Francisco and also includes important records of the classes that he taught in Japan, those attending, their comments and contributions. There are also notes on Japanese subjects such as historic sites, legends and religion. Volumes 9-12 also cover his experiences in Japan and are a hybrid between diaries (recording his travels, meetings, classes and reading) and commonplace books (storing nuggets of information that he has gleaned on subjects as diverse as the tea ceremony, necrology, sugar-milling and yatoi).

The Student Essays are one of the highlights of the collection. The 319 essays were written in English for Griffis by his students at the Kaisei Gekko in Tokyo and date from 1872 to 1874. They are organised by topic in 20 sub-series and cover:

 - Ainos
 - Art
 - Autobiography (the students describe their own background and upbringing)
 - Burial customs
 - Children’s play
 - Cultural miscellany (from Japanese paper and castle gates to the differences between the minds of women and men)
 - Dreams
 - Fairy tales and other stories
 - Fans
 - Foreigners (first impressions of)
 - Geography
 - Historical styles
 - Household superstitions
 - Journal entries
 - Kakke (beri-beri)
 - Marriage
 - Money
 - Shop signs, street shows and characters
 - Sin
 - Theatre

These original manuscript essays provide a valuable quarry for information on Japanese life and culture, written in English but from a Japanese perspective. The essays on 'Foreigners' show how cultural stereotypes existed on all sides and were a major stumbling block in developing close relations.

The William Elliot Griffis Collection will be a great asset to scholars exploring topics such as the contribution of the yatoi to the modernisation of Japan; Japanese views of the West, 1850-1875; Japanese Culture & Society, 1850-1900; Pioneer doctors, educators, engineers and missionaries in Japan, 1850-1875; Japanese in the United States; and Western views of Japan, Korea and China. It will be welcomed by those working in East Asian Studies and World History.



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