A RUSSIAN IN JAPAN

Recollections of Japan, comprising a particular account of the religion, language, government, laws and manners of the people, with observations on the geography, climate, population & productions of the country … To which are prefixed chronological details of the rise, decline, and renewal of British commercial intercourse with that country.

London, Henry Colburn, 1819.

8vo, pp. viii, lxxxix, [1 (blank)], 302, [2 (advertisements)]; occasional slight foxing and spotting; good in contemporary half brown cloth, marbled sides, spine lettered in gilt; rebacked with spine laid down, some wear to corners and edges, covers rubbed, endpapers renewed; pencil inscription dated 1868 to front flyleaf.

£1000

Approximately:
US $1295€1190

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Recollections of Japan, comprising a particular account of the religion, language, government, laws and manners of the people, with observations on the geography, climate, population & productions of the country … To which are prefixed chronological details of the rise, decline, and renewal of British commercial intercourse with that country.

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First edition in English of Golovnin’s account of Japan and the Japanese, derived from his Russian original of 1816, with a preface on British relations with Japan and an appendix detailing Khvostov and Davydov’s fur-trading voyages to the northwest coast of America. Recollections followed Colburn’s 1818 publication of Golovnin’s two-volume Narrative of my captivity in Japan; all three volumes were subsequently collected together under the title Memoirs of a captivity in Japan in 1824.

Golovnin (1776–1831) was commander of a Russian naval surveying expedition of the Kuril Islands and surrounding waters. Upon landing he was arrested by the Japanese who, after Davydov and Khvostov’s raids in 1806-7 on Japanese settlements in the Kurils, feared a Russian attempt to invade Japan. Although Golovnin’s ship, the Diana, was allowed to return to Kamchatka, he remained a prisoner in Japan for two years while negotiations for his release were conducted. He was, however, generally treated well and was able to obtain much information about the country, its people, culture and language, as described here.

‘The captivity of Golovnin was a milestone in Russo-Japanese relations … and, unimportant as the events surrounding it might appear, they were really filled with significance. Had Golovnin died in Japanese hands, whatever the cause, Russo-Japanese relations would have taken a turn for the worse, and an aggressive Russia would have been provided with an excuse, indeed an invitation, for hostile measures. His amicable release, on the other hand, improved relations between the two nations … Golovnin’s own observations were profound [and his] writings were the most significant Russian firsthand portrayal of the Japanese available until the opening of Japan, if not indeed, until the beginning of the twentieth century. In later years, they were crowded aside by misleading accounts, which doted on the quaintness of the Japanese, but, with the onslaught of the Russo-Japanese War, authors were to remember Golovnin’s penetrating observations and to regret that his remarks had not been taken more seriously’ (G.A. Lensen, The Russian push toward Japan: Russo-Japanese relations 1697-1875, 1959, pp. 246-8).

Cordier, Bibliotheca Japonica 465.

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