On a summer morning in 1865, the steamship Delhi dropped anchor in Southampton. On board were 17 young students from Satsuma, who had come to England in quest of the "essence of the West." Actually, there were 19 of them, but since the other two were not from Satsuma (they came, respectively, from Tosa and Nagasaki) they were left out of the official accounting, devoted as it was to "the Spirit of Young Satsuma." Thus, from the very first, the quest was to harbor parochial interests, and the group soon dispersed in various directions.
There was also disagreement as to just what the searched-for essence consisted of. The men (and boys, the youngest being 13 years old) all came from various disciplines, if their assigned interests may be so described, and they were going to a world that was strange indeed to them. Which among the varied impressions were essential?
In Singapore, one of many stops during the two-month voyage, they had discovered the pineapple and one of them wrote in his diary that it tasted like a peach but it looked like an egg. Something even more exotic awaited when they witnessed traditional Western leave-taking. "They were not content with just one embrace [but] their lips met again and again . . . there were even parents kissing their children. I was quite astonished, as I had never before seen anything like this."
At Aden, another stop, they found that the place looked like Sakurajima "without the trees and grass." There they also witnessed their first camel -- a creature "with a neck like a crane's and feet shaped like hands."
But nothing had prepared them for the rank exotica of Southampton, alien London or the strangeness of the house on Bayswater Road where they were domiciled. As one of them complained, even their weapons had been taken away from them. "Both my swords have been put in a chest and from this day forth I am totally unarmed."
Unarmed and at the mercy of the natives. Earlier, their perfectly proper Japanese samurai kimono had invited colonial mirth, particularly the haircut that went with it. Western clothing hastily acquired in Hong Kong no longer sufficed, so they remained Bayswater-bound until English tailors came to measure and fit. They then had their picture taken.
The photo is included in this edition and so we see eight of them with frock coats, vests, foulards and even a watch-chain or two, now ready to go and search for the essence of the West. In this they were aided by the kindness of their various British (and French and American) hosts.
Though usually disinterested, this kindness sometimes had reasons of its own. The French, for example, having backed the wrong horse in their support of the Tokugawa shogunate, were now trying to get in with the winning team -- which included Satsuma. A visionary American preacher, constructing a utopia ("The Brotherhood of the New Life") in upper New York, managed to snare and carry off a few of their number. There they discovered that "private property was prohibited and all personal effects were entrusted to the father figure of the colony."
Was this also the essence of the West? Perhaps not. The Satsuma students were learning. "We have come to realize that, while there are few ideas here that would merit adoption in Satsuma, there are numerous features that we should avoid." Like the earnest, zealous, busybody boy samurai in Kurosawa's "Sanjuro," they realized that, though quests are all very well, actually finding anything is something else.
But I see that I have made this book sound more diverting than it actually is. It is a sober, steady recitation of the facts and if these are sometimes colored ("they were fascinated by the countless rows of buildings, the large shipyard, the mass of modern factories,"), the hues are only the most expected.
Among the incentives for such sober-sided accounting is, of course, the demands of academia. The main reason, however, may be that the author has "closely followed" a Japanese account -- Professor Takaaki Inuzuka's "The Satsuma Students in Britain," published in 1974 -- a fact stated in the preface and on the jacket of this edition but not, oddly, on the title page.
Inuzuka, being both a Japanese and an academic, has his own agendas and among these is a certain seriousness of purpose.
Was the essence discovered? The author(s) think so. Those who went to the American utopia found it "when they at last succeeded in casting off the Confucian moral fabric of their former samurai selves, emerging as men with an entirely distinct outlook, informed by Western ideas and imbued with a spirit of Christian rationalism."
With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories. However, before writing your first comment, please create a display name in the Profile section of your subscriber account page.