Gulliver's Travels and Japan

NOTES

1 "Japan" appears in Voyage I, 8; II, 4; and III, 1, 7, 9, 10, and 11. All Swift's references are favorable, in a time when the word conjured images of the strange and mysterious-even grotesque, black, outlandish -for most Englishmen. References on "Japan" and "Japanese" in the OED show usages by Arbuthnot, Dampier, and Defoe to be rather objective, but many other references, e.g. Quack's Academy, are to darkening forces and "conjuring Japan."

2 Cyril H. Powles, "The Myth of the Two Emperors: A Study in Misunderstanding," Pacific Historical Review, 37 (1968), 39. Powles says Kaempfer contributes to the misunderstanding but calls Kaempfer's magnum opus the preeminent study of Japan in Swift's day.

3 See James Murdoch, A History of Japan (London, Second Impression, 1925-26), II, xix: "The English Factory in Japan (1613-1623)." While most of the reports of the activities of Englishmen in Purchas are based on the experiences of residents of the English House at the island town of Hirado (usually spelled Firando) in Northern Kyushu, the whole of Kaempfer's great two-volume History (except for the vital two trips he made to Edo/Tokyo), is based on the experiences of residents of this little "factory" in Nagasaki, called "Deshima. "

4 See Ellen Douglass Leyburn, "Swift's View of the Dutch," PMLA, 66 (1951), 734-45. Her well-documented study shows Swift willing to "expose himself to the charge of loving the French" (!) if that is necessary to attack the perfidy of the Dutch "allies." She holds that there is "no artistic warrant" for the Japan sections of Part Three, a comment typical of much of the criticism that has so long overlooked the centrality of Japan for all parts of the book. In J. Kent Clark, "Swift and the Dutch," HLQ 17 (1954), 345-56, the interpretation of Swift's complete reversal from favoring the Dutch to scorning them is further detailed. We suggest that Swift's readings in British-Dutch relations in Japan were important grounds of his hostility, which clearly plays a large part in Gulliver.

5 Our assumptions of how Swift must have created his great fiction from a body of factual/historical materials have been well expressed and illustrated by the essays of Marjorie Nicolson and Nora M. Mohler on Swift's use of Royal Society publications. In their essays, republished in Science and Imagination (Ithaca, 1956), Nicolson and Mohler concluded from their studies of 1937 on "The Scientific Background of Swift's Voyage to Laputa" that "Swift's imagination was eclectic; the mark of his genius lay less in original creation than in paradoxical and brilliant combinations of familiar materials" (p. 111). Stressing historical rather than literary and "scientific" materials, we too feel "Swift himself would have been the last to object to the attempts of `later travellers' to recognize the specific sources of his satire" (p. 152).

6 Samuel Purchas (1575?-1626) was an English author and clergyman, known for his editions of Elizabethan travel literature. His outstanding works are Purchas His Pilgrimage, or Relations of the World and the Religions Observed in All Ages (1613); Purchas His Pilgrim: Microcosmus, or the Historie of Man (1619); and Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas His Pilgrimes, Contayning a History of the World in Sea Voyages and Lande Travells by Englishmen and others (1625). The last-named work was compiled in part from material left by Richard Hakluyt, and in this study we are concerned with this work, abbreviated as Purchas. Its reprint is the 20-volume edition published by Glasgow's James MacLehose in 1905-7. The original 1625 edition is in four volumes, but later on the publisher came to attach the 1617 edition of Purchas His Pilgrimage, or Relations of the World and the Religions Observed in All Ages as Vol.5 of Purchas His Pilgrimes. Thus Harold Williams, Dean Swift's Library with a Facsimile of the Original Catalogue (Cambridge, 1932), gives "Purchas, his Pilgrims, in 5 vol. [London], 1625," as entry 261. Unless otherwise stated, we shall use the Glasgow edition of 1905-7 for quotation. Coleridge also is said "to have used . . . Purchas in. . . The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798) and Kubla Ahan (1816)," according to The Reader's Encyclopedia, William Rose Benet, ed.; New York, 1965, p.827.

7 Harold Williams, in his Introduction to the Herbert Davis edition of Gulliver. noted that "Travellers' tales and voyages of discovery were always favourite reading with Swift" (p. xiv). In the essay interpreting Swift's Library, however, he said that while many critics have thought Gulliver's Travels has "direct sources for the fabric of its narrative and satire," the listing of books in the library shows this is not so! "Books which have been ransacked for close parallelisms are not in the library. . . . Gulliver's Travels owes little to direct hints" (op. cit., pp.88-9). Although he lists the Purchas and Hakluyt volumes, together with half a dozen other works of travel "histories," in a passing note in his 1941 Herbert Davis edition of Gulliver's Travels (p. xiv), he has not changed his views. William A. Eddy, Gulliver's Travels: A Critical Study (Princeton, 1923), one of the most extensive studies in sources, had come to the same conclusion. Arthur E. Case also errs in neglecting the travel literature on Japan in the seventeenth century, to which Swift had access in Purchas and works like Hakluyt and Kaempfer's History. In Four Essays on "Gulliver's Travels" (Princeton, 1945), Case says the pace of Gulliver's trip from Tokyo to Nagasaki was "a practical impossibility (p.66) in the twelve days Swift allowed Gulliver.
The histories, and other sources, tell a different story. The Tokaido, then as now, was already a busy and well-travelled thoroughfare and well-watched by the Tokugawa Bakufu. No bridges were allowed for the several fordings of the various rivers, so that swift movements of questionable numbers of men could not descend on strong points. As is familiar in many prints of the period, fording on the backs of strongmen at the widest, and shallowest, points was the practice. There was a courier service of runners well-organized and recognized by the Bakufu, offering three "speeds" of delivery, at graduated fees, from Edo/Tokyo to Kyoto-three days ("extra-fast"), six days ("fast), and nine days ("regular"). The "extrafast" runner service from Edo/Tokyo to Hakodate in the north, and Nagasaki in the south-west was for both nine days. A dozen days to proceed from Edo/Tokyo to Nagasaki with a favorable wind by sea would be no problem. Using an overland route from Edo/Tokyo to Sakai, the eastern port on the Inland Sea, and then a ship with the help of a favorable tailwind, there would be little difficulty in reaching Nagasaki in less than a fortnight. The current Japan National Railways distance from Tokyo to Nagasaki is 1330.4 kilometers (824-odd miles), doubtless a more direct route than the old, but still a reasonable estimate against which to calculate. (Thanks to historian-editor, Otis Cary.)

8 A short bibliography on Adams appears in Daishi-San by Robert Lund (New York, 1961), one of several book-length studies combining fact and fiction to portray the fascinating figure who first linked England and Japan. Another 5O0-page "historical novel" on Adams, The Needle- Watcher by Richard Blaker (London, 1932), has just been reissued in paperback (Tokyo, 1973). Encyclopaedia Britannica has a good summary article. His Japanese name is Miura Anjin, and Anjin Sama (the Honorable Pilot) is still honored every year in a festival; as a foreigner, his influence is surely unparalleled.

9 Foster Rhea Dulles, Eastward Ho! The First English Adventurersto the Orient (Boston and New York, 1931), p.115.

10 Purchas, II, 332. "Bungo" (today's &ita Prefecture) is also the spelling of the southernmost of the main islands of "Japon" in the Gulliver's Travels map at the beginning of Part III.

11 The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. XI, ed. Herbert Davis (Oxford, 1941; revised 1959), pp.216-17. Subsequent quotations will be from the revised 1959 edition based on Faulkner's text of 1735. For quotations given in the body of the text, this volume will be referred to as GT; this reference, e. g., is "GT, 216-17."

12 The diplomatic blunderings of Saris in his mission would be fit subject for extensive study. He took the stance of cultural superiority at every stage, patronizing at the very best, a position Adams felt ridiculous and irritating in the extreme after knowing Japan.

13 Engelbert Kaempfer, The History of Japan, translated by J. G.Scheuchzer (2 vols., first issue, 1727; second issue, 1728; reprint, 3 vols., Glasgow, 1906; reissue of the Glasgow edn., AMS Press, New York, 1971), I, 328; II, 218; III, 332 in modern edition. The three-volume modern edition will be cited as History, with subsequent references noted in parentheses in the text.

14 As in the Moll map of 1719 which Case and Bracher conclude Swift used. Case, op. cit., pp. SO-68, in his essay on "The Geography and Chronology of Gulliver's Travels," supports the case for Moll. Frederick Bracher, in "The Maps in Gulliver's Travels" (HLQ, 8 [1944], pp. 59-74), presented the first data accepting Herman Moll's world-map of 1719 as Swift's primary source. "The shape of Japan, lesso, and Companys Land is unmistakenly Moll's. Place names are the same .(p. 59). We have searched in the Map Room of the British Museum and in the extensive map collection of the Tenri Museum, Japan, hoping to find a still more perfect source-for there are obvious differences from Moll to "Swift"-but have had no success.

15 J. Leeds Barroll, "Gulliver in Luggnagg: A Possible Source," PQ, 36 (1957), 505. In "Gulliver and the Struldbrugs," PMLA, 73 (1958), 43- 50, Barroll again refers to Japan materials he considers related to Gulliver. In addition to the associations Barroll makes between Swift and Sir Hans Sloane and "The Right Honorable JOHN Lord Carteret," we would suggest that other names on the Kaempfer "Subscription List" such as Armagh, Friend, Mead, and Orrery could link Swift's circle with the History. Barroll points to parallels between Kaempfer's visit to "Jedo" (ancient "Edo" in Japanese; today's Tokyo) and Gulliver's experience in Luggnagg, but does not carry such observations beyond limited elements of Part III of Travels.
Professor Louis A. Landa has suggested to us that 1727 may be post-dating for Kaempfer; the work may have appeared the same year as Gulliver and conceivably at a time prior to it.

16 The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, ed. Herbert Davis (Oxford, 1962), V, 99.

17 The 37, 000 "martyrs"-a figure supported by all historic records, foreign and Japanese-were victims of almost half a year at Shimabara and environs. Many Christians kept the faith during the more than 200 years of persecution that followed, resulting in the famous Kakure Kirishitan ("Hidden Christians") sect. But Kaempfer in 1692 could not have known this. His almost callous narrative moves right along.

18 We have worked with the first 1726 edition, published by Benjamin Motte, for relevant plates, though Harold Williams makes Faulkner basic. The plate in Motte faces p.74 of Volume II, which is mistakenly numbered p. 44.

/ 19 Kaempfer spells this "Catta-Canna" and (III, 177) "Kattakanna" -- close indeed to the present "Katakana" of Japan.

20 The Gulliver plate may seem to resemble the Arabic or Hebrew "alphabets," but specialists find no correlation and in neither is there a "table" syllabary as in the Japanese language.

Copyright © 1977 Amherst House, Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan
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