Revisions Revisions

 Happy Halloween!

After a busy Halloween weekend (I was a cop), it is time once again to do a blog post, this time, revising my essay from before. I really didn't change much because I think that the appositives and other brush strokes were effective as is. I do have a question though or rather, more of a comment. In real life, I do not think that I would have edited this paper at all to include some of the appositives, especially the appositive using parentheses. This is a formal paper, and I feel like putting the parentheses in it makes it too informal. However, I did add them for the blog just as an example for how they could be used although in this situation I would not use them.

Japan as Viewed by a Westerner: Recorded and Reflected on in Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan by Lafcadio Hearn

         Traveling to Japan originally to fulfill a job as a newspaper correspondent, Lafcadio Hearn spent more than four years fully immersed in Japanese culture [PRESENT PARTICIPLE PHRASE]. In 1894, Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan was published in two volumes, Hearn’s reflections upon his experiences in Japan [APPOSITIVE]. Japan is described as a mystical place where everyone is courteous, full of gratitude, and less serious than in the West. And Hearn certainly has the perspective of a Westerner coming to Japan, being born in Greece in 1850, living in Ireland for almost twenty years and then the United States. In the preface to his novel, Hearn sets the tone by stating that even though he spent four years in Japan, he has still learned little in terms of adopting Japanese habits and customs. This is significant. As much as Hearn familiarizes himself with Japan, by ultimately marrying a Japanese woman and becoming a citizen, he is still distinctly a foreigner looking in, and Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan reflects his Western viewpoints. Most importantly, Hearn stresses that Japanese culture cannot be understood in terms of what is “normal” to Westerners. Thus, Hearn attempts to put his Western pre-conceived notions and perceptions aside and regards Japan with the utmost respect, as a land different and unique, and Hearn greatly appreciates these different qualities.

In Japanese culture, a smile is a sign of respect, and to smile is often seen as a social duty. During the 1890s when Hearn was in Japan and even today, Westerners viewed smiling and being happy in all circumstances as odd and as signifying insincerity. At the beginning of Glimpses in Unfamiliar Japan, Hearn talks about his first day: “Everybody looks at you curiously; but there is never anything disagreeable, much less hostile in the gaze: most commonly it is accompanied by a smile or a half smile.” In Japan, Hearn was never met with hostility but rather with generosity. He did not quite understand this at first. After being in Japan for three years, Hearn went to the port of Kobe and was able to interact with Englishmen again and hear actual Englishmen speak English. It was this return to Western interaction that allowed him to realize that he had changed and had begun to act Japanese, face smiling and waist bowing [ABSOLUTE]. The reason Westerners do not respond well to the smile is because it is hard to understand, and it is hard to interpret it according to Western notions:

“It [the way Hearn was out of touch with his Western side/was acting Japanese] also seemed to me a fair illustration of the difficulty of mutual comprehension between the two races, — each quite naturally, though quite erroneously, estimating the manners and motives of the other by its own.”

There is a miscomprehension that can sometimes lead to unpleasant results. For example, Hearn tells the story of a Yokohama merchant, “T,” who one day became very angry with an old samurai. The old man continued to bow and smile and be polite, but this only made T angrier, and he finally hit the old man. So the old man, upset, pulled out his sword and could have killed T but did not [PAST PARTICIPLE If "upset" serves as a verb not an adj]. This showed Westerners that Japanese people should not be treated poorly in response to their smiles, which are out of politeness, and also that Japanese are not submissive under injustice. To be serious or unhappy is to be rude; Hearn says that the East is happier and less serious than the West, and the West is unaware of its seriousness. When trying to understand this cultural obligation, one must view it in terms of a completely different culture than that of a Western society.

In Japan, Hearn acquired a teaching position teaching English at Shimane Prefectural Common Middle School and Normal School in Matsue (a town in western Japan) [APPOSITIVE]. Once again, it was important for him to comprehend the Japanese education system in regards to Japanese culture, not relating it to education in the West. There were significant differences between Japanese and the European education system. Hearn explains the relationship of the teacher to the pupil as like the relationship of an older brother to a younger brother. The teacher is just considered a “teacher,” not a master of a particular topic. The students have more power in the Japanese classroom as well. For instance, the students can expel the teacher if he is not doing a sufficient job, instead of the other way around as seen commonly in the West and today. In this aspect, “the instructor’s success is not guaranteed by a degree, but by his practical knowledge and his capacity to how he can communicate it simply and thoroughly.” There is little punishment in the Japanese classroom, no copying lines over and over, because the severity of teachers would not be tolerated by the students. The biggest difference that Hearn perceives in Japanese and Western education is that Westerners “associate emotional sensibility with intellectual expansion” whereas Japanese do not. Emotionally, a Japanese child is closer to us than a Japanese college student would be. A teacher would gradually feel his pupils drifting away from him as they learned more. This can be hard to comprehend without placing oneself in Japanese society with a culture and ideals diverse from our own.

Throughout Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan, Hearn describes the country with admiration and awe; he sees the beauty around him in the nature, scenery, and little quirks that make Japan unique. It is interesting how after living in Japan for some time, he can go back and reassess European artwork and design and sees how it lacks uniqueness when compared to, for example, Japanese gardens, both simple and beautiful [ADJECTIVE OUT OF ORDER]. Hearn particularly notices the lack of mass-produced, expensive, and ugly products—houses and dishware—in Japan, something that is common in Europe and elsewhere [APPOSITIVE]. From a European or Western perspective, the Japanese houses are flimsy and cheap, but by looking past that, one would see as Hearn sees: beautiful décor and on the inside a combination of new technology with traditional craftsmanship [APPOSITIVE]. 

In general, Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan is focused more on descriptions of the places that Hearn has visited than on his opinion of Japan. When considering differences between the West and Japan, he does not say that one is better than the other or even compare them directly; rather, he explains them in relation to each other. Of course, this is not to say that Hearn’s reflections on his experiences in Japan are unbiased because every work is biased, at least to some extent. He clearly loved the country and went on to teach English literature at Tokyo University after Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan was published. Did Hearn describe Japan as a more exotic land than it was at the time? Some critics say that he did, and he did have a great passion for Japan, so it is possible that he romanticized it. Regardless, Hearn’s novel was published at the turn of the twentieth century, a time when Westerners were becoming increasingly interested in this mysterious land of Japan. Hearn stresses that in order to fully comprehend Japanese culture, one must do so without adhering solely to Western ideals. In Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan, Hearn does just that, and at the time, his novel offered unique insight into a mystical culture and was a success.