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

Part 3: The William Elliot Griffis Collection from Rutgers University Library - Correspondence & Scrapbooks

The William Elliot Griffis Collection forms Parts 2-5 of our ongoing series Japan Through Western Eyes. It fully reflects his life as an author, educator and a yatoi, and provides valuable insights into the political, commercial and cultural history of Japan. It 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, it gains added importance as a result of the material collected by Griffis documenting contacts with Japan from 1853 through to 1928.

Part 3 covers the extensive correspondence files and Griffis’ scrapbooks. The correspondence is especially rich and lays bare the entire network of contacts that Griffis built up in Japan, Korea and China and his full range of interests. Consisting primarily of letters to Griffis, it features letters by Amenomori Nobushige, Ando Taro, James Ballagh, Edward Warren Clark, Deguchi Yonekichi, Harada Tasuku, Hayashi Uta, Imadate Tosui, Prince Ito, Prince Iwakura, Iyesato Tokugawa, Katsu Kaishu, Karl Kawakami, Viscount Kuroda Nagaatsu, Matsudaira Yatsutaka, J Low, Edward Morse, Nitobe Inazo, Fred Pearson, Matthew Perry, Baron Shibusawa, Shidehara Kijuro, Arthur Stanford, Takahashi Korekujo, Tanaka Akamaro, Charles Tyler, Uyeda Yoshitake, Guido Verbeck, Booker T Washington, Wing Yung, Wu Ning Nang, Martin Wyckoff, Yokoi Tokino and Yun Ye Cha. Primarily written in English, these letters show that Griffis maintained contact with many of his students. Many of them travelled to, or worked in, America, and many rose to eminent positions. These letters are a valuable record of their experiences.

The scrapbooks are among the most curious and fascinating sources in the Griffis Collection. Typical of nineteenth century practice, they are bound volumes into which have been pasted all types of materials, most especially newspaper and journal clippings and ephemera. There are 29 volumes in total, plus a separate volume containing articles and reviews. Due to the highly acidic paper of the original volumes, these scrapbooks have long been closed to researchers. Now they can be consulted in full via this microfilm edition.

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.