Japan and American Children's Books
Japan and American Children's Books
A Journey
For generations, children’s books provided American readers with their first impressions of Japan. Seemingly authoritative, and full of fascinating details about daily life in a distant land, these publications often presented a mixture of facts, stereotypes, and complete fabrications.
This volume takes readers on a journey through nearly 200 years of American children’s books depicting Japanese culture, starting with the illustrated journal of a boy who accompanied Commodore Matthew Perry on his historic voyage in the 1850s. Along the way, it traces the important role that representations of Japan played in the evolution of children’s literature, including the early works of Edward Stratemeyer, who went on to create such iconic characters as Nancy Drew. It also considers how American children’s books about Japan have gradually become more realistic with more Japanese-American authors entering the field, and with texts grappling with such serious subjects as internment camps and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Drawing from the Library of Congress’s massive collection, Sybille A. Jagusch presents long passages from many different types of Japanese-themed children’s books and periodicals—including travelogues, histories, rare picture books, folktale collections, and boys’ adventure stories—to give readers a fascinating look at these striking texts.
Published by Rutgers University Press, in association with the Library of Congress.
A comprehensive, reliable, and fascinating guide to the ever-deepening reception of Japan and its people in the minds and imaginations of American children . . . a very readable and rewarding volume.
An exciting story…informative, inspiring, and enjoyable all the way through.
Jagusch’s book aptly illustrates many centuries of wondrous, enduring cultural narratives of Japan. In its shadows, it shows why many Japanese Americans fought especially hard during and after World War II to disassociate from such an 'un-American' standard at the time.
Japan in U.S. Children’s Books: 'A New World'' by Neely Tucker
A comprehensive, reliable, and fascinating guide to the ever-deepening reception of Japan and its people in the minds and imaginations of American children . . . a very readable and rewarding volume.
An exciting story…informative, inspiring, and enjoyable all the way through.
Jagusch’s book aptly illustrates many centuries of wondrous, enduring cultural narratives of Japan. In its shadows, it shows why many Japanese Americans fought especially hard during and after World War II to disassociate from such an 'un-American' standard at the time.
Japan in U.S. Children’s Books: 'A New World'' by Neely Tucker
CARLA D. HAYDEN is an American librarian and the 14th Librarian of Congress.
J. THOMAS RIMER is an American scholar of Japanese literature and drama. He is a Professor Emeritus of Japanese Literature, Theatre, and Art at the University of Pittsburgh. He has served as the chief of the Asian Division of the Library of Congress.
Foreword by Carla D. Hayden
Introduction by J. Thomas Rimer
Note to the Reader
Prologue: Japan in Early Books for Children: From Comenius to Commodore Perry
Part I From Early Children’s Books to the End of the Nineteenth Century
1 They Went to Japan: The Post-Perry Travelers and Their Stories for the Young
2 Fact and Fiction: Travelogues and Adventure Tales about Japan to the Turn of the Twentieth Century
3 Takejiro Hasegawa: The Foreigners’ Publisher
4 Japan in St. Nicholas Magazine
5 The Children’s Book Writers and Their Information Sources: From Marco Polo to Madame Chrysanthème
Part II The Twentieth Century
6 Globetrotting in Children’s Books: From 1900 to World War II
7 Louise Seaman Bechtel: America’s First Children’s Book Editor and Her Books about Japan
8 The Post-World War II Years
9 Three Japanese American Journeys
10 Into the Twenty-First Century
Appendix: The Gatekeepers: Leading American Children’s Librarians and Their Influence on Children’s Books about Japan
Selected Bibliography and Further Reading
Acknowledgments
Notes
Illustration Credits
Index
About the Author
