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Lädt ... Kawada Ryōkichi - Jeanie Eadie's samurai : the life and times of a Meiji entrepreneur and agricultural pioneervon Andrew Cobbing
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In the early 1880s, Kawada Ryokichi, a young samurai training at a shipyard on Clydeside, near Glasgow, met and fell in love with a Glaswegian girl - a bookshop assistant - by the name of Jeanie Eadie, and took the many letters she wrote to him (together with a lock of her hair) back to Japan in 1884, where they remained undiscovered for almost a hundred years. Subsequently, Kawada was to have an extraordinary career at the heart of the building of the new Meiji Japan, but it was his period in Scotland which informed everything he later accomplished - from shipbuilding to agriculture, and, at the end of a long life, his conversion to Christianity. It may even have influenced his decision to become the first Japanese owner of a motor car in 1901. Through a detailed reconstruction of Kawada's life and career, the book provides a remarkable case study of a single life impacting on developments in the Meiji period, from the building of the new docks at Yokohama to the planting of seed potatoes in Yokohama. The biography also takes us through different epochs - from the roots of rebellion in the last years of the Tosa domain, to the early days of Mitsubishi, the world of shipbuilding in Glasgow, Yokohama docklands and, finally, the first decades of modern farming in Japan. Not least, of course, it contains the rare account of an East-West love story which unfolds through the eighty-nine letters Jeanie wrote to Ryokichi, all of which are transcribed and republished here. Keine Bibliotheksbeschreibungen gefunden. |
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Google Books — Lädt ... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)952.031History and Geography Asia Japan 1868-1945Klassifikation der Library of Congress [LCC] (USA)BewertungDurchschnitt:
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Although this is the story of an ultimately tragic romance, there is no purple prose. Jeanie's letters are generally matter-of-fact (often no more than short notes, written in snatched free moments) and only occasionally does she mention their feelings and intentions of marriage. It's unfortunate that we only have one side of this conversation - it's apparent from Jeanies responses that Ryōkichi had more time for letter writing and was probably more open.
The author, Andrew Cobbing, is an academic historian, but works well with the scant evidence he has, particularly in fleshing out the political and social backgrounds of both to provide a readable account.
In fact, from a modern reader's viewpoint, one of the biggest problems is that neither Ryōkichi or Jeanie come across as particularly sympathetic, Ryōkichi seemed prone to fits of depression and temper, and Jeanie with her strong religious involvement, somewhat priggish.
Ultimately however, their dreams of marriage came to nothing, and very little is known of Jeanie from here. Ryōkichi however had a prominent career in Japan, eventually retiring to Hokkaido, where he developed a model farm and is credited with introducing the 'Baron Potato', still one of the most popular varieties in Japan.
Today, his farm is a museum, of agricutural equipment, Japan's first motor car and of course Jeanie's letters.
Baron Museum ( )