BD. Edmund Blunden

21. ‘Japan, Ancient and Modern’. Review of An Outline History of Japan, by Herbert Gowan, and Modern Japan and its Problems, by G. C. Allen. Nation & Athenaeum 42 (February 1928): 758.

Finds Gowan’s work ‘a plain, well-proportioned, and benevolent record’ and Allen’s ‘a capital companion or continuation’. Includes notes about the ‘double life’ of Japan, explained in a series of parallel constructions emphasising modernity and Westernisation on the one hand and the traditional culture on the other. Refers to Brinkley’s history of Japan (D14), William Adams (Ap), Tokugawa Iemitsu (third Tokugawa shogun), Toyotomi Hideyoshi (Ap), and the Great Buddha at Kamakura.