FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK

[Note: The following articles appeared as op ed or short feature pieces in several newspapers including The Hardwick [Vermont] Gazette between June 2008 and May 2009. All of these pieces are by Daniel A. Métraux.]

THE POWERFUL BEAUTY OF JACK LONDON’S “BEAUTY RANCH” WITH COMMENTARY ON THE AUTHOR’S WRITING ON ASIA

Deep in the Sonoma wine country of California lies an old meandering ranch. Surrounded by rolling hills and deep green valleys, the majestic ruins of a never-completed mansion, open grape vineyards, and a small modest home attract thousands of visitors a year, many of them from abroad. When I was there on a gorgeous Saturday afternoon in May, 2009, I met a few Americans, but the vast majority of tourists were from Europe, speaking French, Italian, Russian, German and a few other languages I failed to recognize. They were all there to visit the home of one of America’s greatest writers, Jack London (1876-1916).

London’s home at Beauty Ranch

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Jack London’s grave

The ruins of Wolf House

The ruins of Wolf House

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Jack London in 1914.

Jack London is rarely studied in American schools today and only a small handful of my college students really know anything about him. Yet a century ago London was America’s best-selling and most famous writer. He churned out more than forty novels and hundreds of short stories during his short life. London was also an avid socialist who twice stood as his party’s candidate for mayor of Oakland. Many of his fiction and non-fiction books dealt with the oppressive conditions and miserable lives faced by common laborers not only in the United States, but also Europe and Asia. He was also a well-read newspaper correspondent in Korea and Manchuria covering the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05) and the revolution in Mexico shortly before his death in 1916. London’s work gained great popularity in the socialist countries of eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and China. Recently I asked one of my former Chinese students if she had ever heard of London. “Oh yes,” she replied, “he is a great hero to my father. All his educated friends in China read London.” London’s appeal to foreign readers may well explain why there were so many foreign visitors to the Jack London State Historic Park the day I visited.

My interest in London comes from his work on and in Asia. My daughter Katie Metraux was party of a team of historic preservationists and curators from the California State Parks that renovated and restored London’s home at the Beauty Ranch several years ago. When Katie took me to London’s home in 2007, I was startled to see a picture of London in Manchuria surrounded by a group of Japanese soldiers. That led me to do a lot of research on London’s Asian work and to begin writing articles about London’s contribution to the field of Asian Studies.

London was above all a man of the Pacific and much of his best and most poignant writing focuses on the people he encountered there. We encounter many Japanese, Chinese, Koreans, native Hawaiians, South Pacific islanders as well as many people of mixed race in his stories. What makes much of London’s writing so compelling is that he avoids stereotypes and provides his main characters with many dimensions and considerable depth. He differs from many late Victorian writers in the West in that he was not writing from a mainly Anglo-Saxon-centric perspective. London

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penetrates the hearts and souls of non-white people who have suffered deeply from the exploitation of the Anglo-Saxon, but there is very little that is moralistic or didactic in his style. While London shows sympathy for many of his non-white characters, he is above all an artist who attempts to develop the full personalities of the key people in his stories.

London at home in Glen Ellen

In 1905 when he was already a famous writer at age 29, London purchased a 1,000 acre ranch in Glen Ellen, Sonoma County, on the eastern slope of Sonoma Mountain for $26,450. He wrote that "Next to my wife, the ranch is the dearest thing in the world to me." He desperately wanted the ranch to become a successful business enterprise. Writing, always a commercial enterprise with London, now became even more a means to an end: "I write for no other purpose than to add to the beauty that now belongs to me. I write a book for no other reason than to add three or four hundred acres to my magnificent estate."

"When I first came here, tired of cities and people, I settled down on a little farm ... 130 acres of the most beautiful, primitive land to be found in California." He didn't care that the farm was badly run-down. Instead, he reveled in its deep canyons and forests, its year-round springs and streams. "All I wanted," he said later, "was a quiet place in the country to write and loaf in and get out of Nature that something which we all need, only the most of us don't know it." Soon, however, he was busy buying farm equipment and livestock for his "mountain ranch." He also began work on a new barn and started planning a fine new house. "This is to be no summer-residence proposition," he wrote to his publisher in June 1905, "but a home all the year round. I am anchoring good and solid, and anchoring for keeps ..."

London added: “I have long decided to buy land in the woods, somewhere, and build. For over a year, I have been planning this home proposition, and now I am just beginning to see my way clear of it. I am really going to throw out an anchor so big and so heavy that all hell could get it up again. In fact, its going to be a prodigious, ponderous sort of anchor….” “I ride over my Beauty Ranch. Between my legs is a beautiful horse. The air is wine. The grapes on a score of rolling hills are red with autumn flame. Across Sonoma Mountain, wisps of sea fog are stealing. The afternoon sun smolders in the drowsy sky. I have everything to make me glad I am alive.”

There are many interpretations of the history and meaning of Beauty Ranch. A brochure produced by the London State Park elaborates further:

Clarice Stasz writes London "had taken fully to heart the vision, expressed in his agrarian fiction, of the land as the closest earthly version of Eden … he educated himself through the study of agricultural manuals and scientific tomes. He conceived of a system of ranching that today would be praised for its ecological wisdom." He was proud of the first concrete silo in California, of a circular piggery he designed himself. He hoped to adapt the wisdom of Asian sustainable

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agriculture to the United States. He hired both Italian and Chinese stonemasons, whose distinctly different styles can be seen today.

The ranch was, by most measures, a colossal failure. Sympathetic observers such as Stasz treat his projects as potentially feasible, and ascribe their failure to bad luck or to being ahead of their time. Unsympathetic historians such as Kevin Starr suggest that he was a bad manager, distracted by other concerns and impaired by his alcoholism. Starr notes that London was absent from his ranch about six months a year between 1910 and 1916, and says "He liked the show of managerial power, but not grinding attention to detail …. London's workers laughed at his efforts to play big-time rancher [and considered] the operation a rich man's hobby."

In 1909, '10 and '11 he bought more land, and in 1911 moved from Glen Ellen to a small ranch house in the middle of his holdings. He rode horseback throughout the countryside, exploring every canyon, glen and hill top. And he threw himself into farming - scientific agriculture - as one of the few justifiable, basic, and idealistic ways of making a living. A significant portion of his later writing - Burning Daylight (1910), Valley of the Moon (1913), Little Lady of the Big House (1916) - had to do with the simple pleasures of country life, the satisfaction of making a living directly and honestly from the land and thereby remaining close to the realities of the natural world.

Jack and Charmian London's dream house began to take definite shape early in 1911 as Albert Farr, a well-known San Francisco architect, put their ideas on paper in the form of drawings and sketches, and then supervised the early stages of construction. It was to be a grand house - one that would remain standing for a thousand years. By August 1913, London had spent approximately $80,000 (in pre-World War I dollars), and the project was nearly complete. On August 22 final cleanup got underway and plans were laid for moving the Londons' specially designed, custom-built furniture and other personal belongings into the mansion. That night - at 2 a. m. - word came that the house was burning. By the time the Londons arrived on the scene the house was ablaze in every corner, the roof had collapsed, and even a stack of lumber some distance away was burning. Nothing could be done.

London spent $80,000 to build Wolf House. After it burned he vowed to rebuild, but he never did.

Today the visitor can walk the grounds of London’s Beauty Ranch. His house is beautifully restored and looks as though London had just left it to go for one of his daily rides. Beautiful quiet woodland trails take the visitor to his isolated grave site, to the ruins of Wolf House and to a museum dedicated to London’s life.

One can catch the spirit of London’s life through a visit to this fascinating and beautiful site.

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I would rather be ashes than dust!I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry rot.I would rather be a superb meteor,every atom of me in magnificent glow,than a sleepy and permanent planet.The proper function of man is to live, not to exist.I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them.I shall use my time" Jack London

VISITING ANGEL ISLAND’S SAD IMMIGRATION STATION

San Francisco’s harbor is one of the most majestic in the world. Visitor’s to the city admire the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance and wait on long lines to tour Alcatraz Island with its notorious prison, but more often than not they ignore the harbor’s centerpiece—Angel Island. This mountainous island with an area of 640 acres is by far the largest in San Francisco Bay. It is a wild tree-covered place that offers almost instant fresh air relief from the city only minutes away by boat.

Angel Island offers rigorous paths for hiking and bicycling, historic old military installations for the history buff and, most interesting of all, the recently restored Angel Island Immigration Station, the veritable Ellis Island of the West. Ellis Island served as the great entrance way for several million European immigrants a century ago and most Americans with European origins harbor some Ellis Island experience. Most of these stories have happy outcomes, but for every smile emanating from Ellis Island, there is probably a corresponding tear for every memory of Angel Island.

Ellis Island has been open as a National Monument since 1990 and is visited by large crowds every day. It is a fascinating place that is well worth visiting, but the Imigration Station on Angel Island is also very worthy. Ably managed by the California State Park Service, the station was completely restored before it was opened to the public on 15 February 2009. I had a deeply personal reason to visit the site – my daughter Katie Metraux, a historic preservationist for the State Park service, was a part of the team that restored the site. Katie personally beautifully designed the exhibits in the barracks that housed detainees.

The Angel Island Immigration Station, which was in full operation between 1910 to 1940, was the main entry point into the United States for people, most of them Chinese, Japanese or other Asians, arriving from the Pacific routes. It is estimated that more than a million immigrants were processed at the Station. Most of these immigrants were allowed to enter the United States immediately – their paperwork was forwarded to San Francisco and they were allowed to enter immediately, but the many Chinese and Japanese who tried to enter were routinely incarcerated on the island until a decision

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could be reached concerning their eligibility to enter “Gold Mountain” (Gaam Saan)–a common Chinese nickname for the United States. . Many of them were detained for days, week, months or even years.

What makes a visit to the Angel Island installation so fascinating, however, is the fact that so many Asians were detained here. The barracks remain a sad testimony to their suffering and frustration. The simple fact is that they were not at all welcome to the United States – or Canada farther north. The Chinese exclusion laws, first passed in 1882 and updated periodically until 1943, were enacted to keep Chinese immigrants out of the United States. During the twentieth century, several other Asian ethnic groups were added as well to the "excluded" list.

Late imperial China brought untold misery to its people. Foreign invasions and wars combined with a series of deadly internal revolts and civil wars brought the nation to almost total collapse. Desperate for enough money to feed their families and to buy a plot of land, hundreds and later thousands of young Chinese men – as well as a much smaller number of women – came to the United States hoping to make enough money to be able to return to China to support their families. Starting in the mid- to late nineteenth century, large numbers of Chinese came to North America drawn initially by the gold rush to California then to work as inexpensive laborers on the transcontinental railroad and in mines in the western part of the country. Many American-born workers felt that these laborers had taken jobs away from them, and when an economic depression hit the United States in the 1870s, the anti-Chinese sentiment increased enormously. In response to public opinion, Congress passed the exclusion laws.

According to one source, “In enforcing these laws, immigration officials detained newly arrived Chinese people while they determined their eligibility to enter the United States. According to some estimates, 75 to 80 percent of the arrivals were admitted to the United States after some form of detention. Most detention periods ranged from few days or a couple of weeks to six months; a few lasted as long as nearly two years. Regardless of the length of time, detainees had little, if any, contact with friends or relatives on the mainland. For this reason, the immigration station on Angel Island was known among Immigration Service officials as the ‘Guardian of the Western Gate.’”

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Vintage Picture of the Dormitory at Angel Island

The recently restored barracks reflect the misery of the Chinese (and later Japanese and other Asians) detained here. One can readily see that it was a grim existence – there was little room to store one’s goods, one had to sleep on hard cots layered in three levels, and one was not allowed outside except for supervised outings in small fenced off areas. The food was grim and there was little to do except to sit and worry. The city of San Francisco sat only a short distance from the island, but many Chinese.

Responding to the harsh conditions of their detentions, and to the anxiety they suffered over the uncertainty of their futures, many of the detainees wrote poetry that spoke of their despair. The writing depicts a painful picture of the solitutde and isolation these lonely young men faced as they desperately tried to enter North America. Hundreds of poems were carved into the walls of the detention barracks, and many of them survive to this day. Chinese immigrants, like their European counterparts, came to the United States in search of new lives, prosperity, and Gam Saan, or the Gold Mountain. Instead, they were greeted with a detention center, interrogations, and uncertainty. Their poems speak of their frustration with their conditions:

Detained in this wooden house for    several tens of days

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   because of the exclusion laws.It's a pity heroes have no place   to exercise their prowess.

Waiting for news of my release,   I am ready to snap my whip and gallop.All my kinsmen and housemates   will be happy for me.

But don't deny this Western grandeur, this imposing facadeFor behind the jade carvings,   there lies a cage.(31)

THE CRITICAL ROLE OF THE CHINESE AMERICAN RELATIONSHIP

Although American attention has been focused on Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Middle East during the past decade, ultimately there is no more important relationship in the world as that between the United States and China. These two major world powers have become totally dependent on each other and neither could survive these days without help from the other,

The simple truth is that the United States desperately needs Chinese help in order to help survive the worsening economic crisis. There is a growing consensus in the Obama administration that the US needs to spend its way out of the recession if it is to avoid a major depression. Many leading American economists and politicians including Senator John McCain agree that a massive economic stimulus is needed and that for now we cannot afford to worry about deficits. But in order to run up these deficits, which could go as high as $1 trillion pr $1.5 trillion, somebody has to buy American debt. And the only country with cash in hand is China.

Last September Beijing became America’s largest foreign creditor, surpassing Japan, which used to, but no longer buys large quantities of American treasury notes. China, on the other hand, is buying up these bonds at a record pace and today holds about ten percent of American debt. The People’s Republic of China has become Washington’s biggest single creditor, foreign or domestic. Indeed, the PRC is America’s top banker. The United States desperately needs Beijing to keep buying American bonds so that Washington can run up a deficit and thus achieve its badly needed fiscal stimulus. At the same time China must launch its own domestic spending initiatives to spur its own flagging economy. China can do both because at the end of 2008 it had $2 trillion in foreign reserves compared to a paltry $73 billion in the US.

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Why should the Chinese be interested in propping up the American economy? The answer is simple and obvious. It is the American consumer who is buying Chinese goods and if Americans stopped buying Chinese products, the Chinese economy would plummet. The Chinese Communist party has staked its own future on bringing increased prosperity to the Chinese people, and if it fails to deliver big time over a prolonged period, its own future could be in question. For example, two-thirds of the durable goods sold by Walmart are from China and Walmart alone absorbs around five percent of China’s total exports.

Neither the United States nor China can afford any kind of military conflict. China and the US fought to a standstill during the Korean War. Both nations quickly recovered from that war, but today their economies are so interdependent that the collapse of one would lead to the ruin of the other. Both nations need to learn to get along better together because each one holds the other’s fate in its hands.

China is rapidly expanding its military capacity and is becoming a global power that must be reckoned with. Traditionally in its history China has been a land power with little interest or ability on the sea. Only once in its long history, during the 1400s in the early part of the Ming Dynasty did China build a fleet capable of extending Chinese power overseas. For reasons that remain unclear, however, the Ming emperors demanded the destruction of the fleet and China’s return to the seclusion that has placed not only a physical wall around China, but a mental one as well.

China’s Ming Dynasty treasure fleets went as far as Africa and the Persian Gulf, spreading China's economic and political influence across several continents. Had this naval expansion continued, some scholars say, China could have dominated the world. But successive emperors turned the nation inwards on itself, seafaring was banned and the country's great shipyards were closed. In Asia as elsewhere, it is America that rules the waves—its naval might is still needed, for example, to help defend the Malacca Strait, route for much of the region's oil and other trade.

Today a resurgent, confident and globalising China is rebuilding its naval strength. Like India, its rising Asian rival, it already has an impressive army. But both countries are finding that rapid economic growth is providing the money to realise long-cherished dreams of building ocean-going “blue-water” navies that can project power far from their home shores. In the past two years China's navy has acquired new destroyers, frigates and submarines, some home-built, some (including its most advanced kit) Russian. A recent study by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) concluded that China was also close to beginning the production of aircraft-carriers, which would give it the ability to project airpower over great distances. China has long wanted to create a force capable of thwarting the intervention of America's Pacific fleet in any war over Taiwan. But it is also increasingly keen to protect its supplies of fuel and raw materials from threats such as piracy and terrorism.

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China’s preoccupation today is with oil. China is in fact one of the world’s largest producers as well as consumers of oil. Until the 1980s China was an important oil exporter, but today it produces only half of the oil it consumes. China’s rapid economic growth has made gaining access to adequate energy supplies a matter of great priority for Beijing policy makers. By 2006 it had become the world’s second largest consumer and third largest producer of primary energy. Between 2000 and 2005 China’s energy consumption jumped by 60 percent, accounting for roughly half of the increase in world energy consumption. The country is able to meet more than 90 percent of its energy needs from domestic supplies—largely because of its huge reserves of coal and because it is still largely a coal-based economy, but it imports almost half of the oil that it consumes.

Self-sufficient in oil as recently as 1993, China became the world’s second largest consumer of oil behind the United States only a decade later. China, unlike Japan, is a major producer of oil—the largest producer in Asia since the mid-1960s. Only a year later, in 2004, Beijing became the third ranking importer of oil after the U.S. and Japan. Between 2000-2005, China was responsible for about a quarter of the growth in world oil demand, but only accounted for less than eight percent of global consumption. Nevertheless, imports will probably account for 60-80 percent of Chinese oil consumption by 2020.

China is now involved in a great global hunt for oil. Fueled by the amazing rise in automobile ownership as well as surging petrochemical production, China’s oil consumption surpassed that of Japan in 2002 (China used 6.7 million barrels a day in 2004 compared to 5.3 million for Japan). With five million car sales in 2004, China is already the world’s third largest car market—and it is the fastest growing major car market in the world. By 2010 or 2015, it will be the greatest auto market in the world. Virtually all the oil to meet this great rise in demand will come from imported oil.

The result is that Chinese oil dependence and its imports will only grow and grow. This phenomenon is in turn bringing on a whole host of vulnerabilities and insecurities, chief among which is a growing dependence on sea lanes. Over eighty percent of China’s oil comes through the Straits of Malacca above Singapore, only 1.5 miles wide. The Straits, if hit by terrorists, could bottle up China’s oil delivery system. Couple that with China’s natural fear of dependence on the outside world and one has one very nervous government.

The Chinese also fear American meddling with the sea lanes. The American navy dominates the 7,000-mile sea-lanes from Shanghai to the Straits of Hormuz. From Beijing’s perspective, the United States “has its fingers on China’s windpipe.” Economic sanctions are an important tool of American diplomacy in the post-Cold war world. Since ninety percent of China’s imported oil arrives by sea, China must consider its security options carefully.

China has at least five strategic options that it can pursue to reduce its vulnerability to prospective international pressure in the energy area: 1) Geographical

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diversification of its energy supplies; 2) Increasing energy efficiency; 3) Diversifying its reliance on oil toward nuclear power, hydro-electric power, and natural gas, the supply of which is less susceptible to sea-land interdiction; 4) Reducing reliance on international majors, while conversely increasing the share of energy imports flowing through Chinese-owned or controlled intermediaries; and 5) Developing the military capability to independently protect Chinese energy supplies. The evidence is that China is simultaneously pursuing all of these strategies simultaneously, with the strongest emphasis on the first four. In the aggregate, these strategies represent, in their international dimensions, the face of Chinese energy diplomacy.

China’s increasing reliance on foreign oil imported from unstable regions over huge distances via sea lanes that are difficult to control has had a notable impact on its military planning. According to some Western experts, Beijing is intent on expanding its naval capacity well beyond well beyond what is required to protect its coasts and the Straits of Taiwan. In support of this view they point to the sizable submarine fleet Beijing has built up as well as its efforts to conclude agreements on the use of port facilities along the tanker routes in the South China Sea and in Myanmar, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. Such moves could cause friction if China fails to seek cooperation with other Asian countries with similar concerns and above all the United States, on which, at least until the second half of the century, the security of the world’s sea lanes depend.

Through its active energy diplomacy, China has in recent years become a major actor in a large number of commodity- and energy rich countries and regions….In the medium term, China’s efforts to enhance its energy security are likely to increase its influence in the Middle East. This will pose a challenge to U.S. dominance of this part of the world and further complicate the already difficult relations the U.S. has with a number of countries in the region, notably Iran, as the current dispute over Iran’s nuclear ambitions—also viewed in Europe as a threat—has amply demonstrated. Even today almost two-thirds of Middle Eastern oil is destined for Asia, a trend likely in future to become still more marked. A number of Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia, are following Iran’s example and actively expanding their relations with China in order to reduce their one-sided dependence on the United States.

Just before Christmas 2008 China announced that it is seriously considering sending naval ships to the Gulf of Aden and waters off the Somali coast for escorting operations in this dangerous pirate infested area. There is, however, even a deeper motive for sending Chinese naval vessels there—one that is more psychological than real—establishing a naval presence there sends a message that China aspires to be a true naval power with worldwide outreach.

United States still dominant, but China and India catching up. China has far more money to invest in its naval program. But Chinese naval power is not something to worry about now unless there is a war over Taiwan.

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HENRY ADAMS’ 1886 SOJOURN TO JAPAN IN SEARCH OF NIRVANA

Henry Adams (1838-1918) is celebrated as one of the great American historians of the nineteenth century.i The great-grandson of President John Adams and the grandson of another distinguished American politician, John Quincy Adams, Henry Adams grew up in one of the leading American political and intellectual families of the 1800s and early 1900s. He never sought nor received political office, but his work as a writer and his wide circle of highly influential friends which included several presidents made him one of the most influential American figures of his day. And like many of his countrymen, Adams had a deep fascination for things and ideas Japanese and made a trip to Japan one of his top dreams and priorities in life. He realized his dream when he traveled there with his friend, artist John La Farge (1835-1910) in the summer and early fall of 1886.

Japan during the late nineteenth century had caught the imagination of many educated Americans who, while not very knowledgeable of the actual country, imagined an exotic land filled with incredible beauty and deep wisdom and philosophy. Some artists like La Farge were entranced with the simple and graceful beauty of Japanese art and were emulating it in their own art as early as the 1860s. So great was the enthusiasm for Japan and so small was their true understanding of these Westerners of the country that Oscar Wilde noted sarcastically in 1889 that “…Japan is a pure invention.  There is no such country, there are no such people.” Some American writers such as E. Warren Clark even went as far as to predict that in due course Japan would become the Anglo-Saxon nation in Asia that would transmit Western civilization to the rest of Asia.

It was La Farge perhaps who contributed more to the American consciousness about Japan than Adams. From the 1860s until his death in 1910, La Farge’s “precocious, passionate and sustained engagement with Japanese art was unmatched by any American of his time.” (Benfey 1970, 136) A century ago La Farge was easily the artist most responsible for introducing Japanese ideas and methodology into American art. Any visit to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts collection of La Farge’s work will allow the observer to see the great influence Japan had on his art, especially his watercolors and his many examples of stained glass… La Farge's 1897 book, An Artist’s Letters From Japan (La Farge, 1986) provides the reader with fascinating insights into many aspects of life in Japan during the middle part of the Meiji period (1868-1912) from an artist’s perspective.

Adams had planned to visit Japan long before embarking on his trip. He and his wife Cloverii had spent part of their honeymoon on the Nile in Egypt in 1872 and were anxious to embark on a second trip to an exotic land in the mid-1880s. Both were avid collectors of Asian art with which they planned to decorate their new house under construction on Lafayette Square in Washington DC. Adams, who left his professorship in medieval history at Harvard University in the late 1870s, also had a scholarly interest in Japanese religion and had befriended several Japanese diplomats including the Japanese ambassador, Baron Ryuichi Kuki, in Washington in the mid-1880s.

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Christopher Benfey notes:

Japan as Henry and Clover Adams conceived of it – an impression confirmed by the courtly Baron Kuki – was a world of aristocrats and connoisseurs, high ritual and deep wisdom, where exquisite gifts were exchanged rather than bought and sold. This idea was the perfect counterweight to the money-grubbing vulgarities of Gilded Age Washington under President Grant, a corrupt town that was unable to put the proper value on an Adams descended from the Adamses. Confucian Japan knew about filial piety and respect for benevolent rulers. There, the scholar and the ruler were one, or so Henry Adams imagined it.(Benfey 2003, 120)

Adams had developed a very serious interest in Buddhism and wondered if its diagnosis of suffering as the key problem facing mankind and whether its prescription for finding peace and happiness in this world was the key. Both Adams and La Farge were seeking an escape from the worst crass excesses of Gilded Age America and saw the possibility that Buddhism might help them find a release from earthly care – especially sexual desire.(Benfey 2003, 172) The singularly ugly materialism of the West offended them deeply and they hoped that Japan would offer them an avenue of escape for all that was wrong with Western life.

Although he was initially very disappointed with the very mundane Japan he found in Tokyo and Yokohama in the days right after disembarking from the steamer that had brought him from the United States, Adams soon found the peace and repose that he was looking for in the mountains of Nikko, the grand yet solemn statue of the great Buddha in Kamakura, and the majesty of Mt. Fuji itself. Unlike La Farge, who wrote extensively on Japan after his return and whose Japanese-inspired art had a profound influence on American art, Adams wrote very little about Japan outside of a few letters and a private journal. There is no mention of his Japan trip in his famous autobiography, The Education of Henry Adams (1918). But the peace and solitude that Adams found in Japan allowed him to embark on the most ambitious project of his life, his history of the early years of the American republic. It also later inspired a book on medieval French art that remains a classic to this day.

Sadly, Clover was not to live long enough to embark on this journey. She had suffered from depression all her adult life and suffered a prolonged episode following the death of her father, to whom she was devoted, in April 1885. She committed suicide on 6 December 1885 by drinking a vial of potassium cyanide which she used to develop her photography. Deeply distressed by Clover’s demise, Adams sought to escape Washington by stepping up his Japan travel plans. Not wishing to travel alone, he offered to pay all of La Farge’s expenses if the artist would accompany him. They boarded a luxury rail car provided by Adams’ brother Charles, a railroad executive, in

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New York on 3 June 1886 and were in San Francisco and ready to take a steamer all the way to Tokyo by June 11th.1(Adams letter to John Hay, Ford 1930, 365)

Adams’ Initial Impressions of Japan

Adams’ first impressions of Japan register a certain degree of disappointment. It was not the nirvana paradise that he had imagined, but a third-world country just beginning its awakening to the West. He especially noted the odd smells of Japan. Writing to his closest friend and neighbor, American statesman John Hay, Adams noted his disgust:

In one respect Japan has caused me a sensation of deep relief. In America I had troubled myself much because my sense of smell was gone. I thought I never should again be conscious that the rose or the new-mown hay had odor……., but since my arrival here I perceive that I am not wholly without a nose. La Farge agrees with me that Japan possesses one pervasive, universal, substantive smell -- an oily, sickish, slightly fetid odor – which underlies all things, and though infinitely varied, is always the same. The smell has a corresponding taste. The bread, the fruit, the tea, the women, and the water, the air and the gods, all smell or taste alike.2(Adams letter to John Hay, Ford 1930, 367-368)

Adams’ initial impressions of Japanese culture also displayed some degree of disappointment:

The only moral of Japan is that the children’s story books were good history. This is a child’s country. Men, women and children are taken out of the fairy books. The whole show is of the nursery. Nothing is serious; nothing is taken seriously. All is toy; sometimes, as with women, badly made and repulsive; sometimes laughable, as with the houses, gardens and children; but always as La Farge declares to have been the papboats of his babyhood. I have wandered, so to express it, in all the soup-plates of 48 years’ experience, during the last week, and have found them as natural as Alice found the Mock Turtle. Life is a dream, and in Japan one dreams of the nursery. (Adams letter to John Hay, Ford 1930, 369)

Another major disappointment for Adams was Japanese women. One of his close friends, Clarence King, who was devoted to what he saw as the exotic charms of Asian women, had hoped that Adams might find some distraction in the charms of Japanese women, especially geisha. But when La Farge hired two geisha to perform in their guest house in Nikko, Adams was not amused. He described them as “Wooden, jerky, and mechanical.” He wrote to John Hay that “The women all laugh, but they are obviously wooden dolls, badly made, and can only cackle, clatter in patterns over asphalt pavements in railway stations, and hop or slide in heel-less straw sandals across floors. I have not yet seen a woman with any mechanism better than that of a five dollar wax doll; but the

1 Henry Adams letter to John Hay, 11 June 1886 from San Francisco in W. C. Ford, Ed., The Letters of Henry Adams (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1930), 365. Hereafter referred to as Letters.

2 Letter to Hay, 9 July 1886, p. 367-368.

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amount of oil used in fixing and oiling and arranging their hair is worth the money alone.”3 (Benfey 2003, 150) In a letter to Elizabeth Cameron, Adams added: Japanese Women are “all badly made, awkward in movement, and suggestive of monkeys.” (Adams letter to Elizabeth Cameron, Ford 1930, 373)

Fortunately for La Farge and Adams, their stay in Tokyo was brief. Their Tokyo host, Clover’s cousin William Sturgis Bigelow (1850-1926), a doctor and major collector of Japanese art, took his guests to see Ernerst Fenellosa, perhaps the greatest collector of Japanese art and a major donor of this art to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Bigelow

3 Quoted in Benfey, 150.

i Adams’ nine-volume The History of the United States of America (1801-1817) published between 1889-1891 and his The Education of Henry Adams (1918) are regarded as classics.

ii Marian “Clover” Hooper Adams (1843-1885) was an accomplished photographer and American socialite who married Adams in 1872.

References:

Benfey, Christopher. The Great Wave: Gilded AAge Misfits, Japanese Eccentrics, and the Opening of Old Japan. New York: Random House, 2003.

Ford, W.C., Ed. The Letters of Henry Adams. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1930.

La Farge, John. An Artist’s Letters From Japan. New York: Hippocrene Books, 1988.

Russell, Francis. Adams: An American Dynasty. New York: Ibooks, 1976. Asia: The New Powerhouse of Baseball   　　　　　(Tokyo: 8 March 2009) Just over a century ago American writer Jack London, perhaps the foremost novelist and journalist of his day, traveled to Japan, Korea and China to cover the Russo-Japanese War for a chain of American newspapers.  What he found in Asia astounded him--he saw Japan emerging as a modern military and economic power, but he very accurately predicted that while Japan would enjoy a few years at the height of economic prosperity and that Korea would rise as well, it was China that would become the dominant economic power by the end of the twentieth century.  Having myself witnessed the rise of Japan as a baseball powerhouse, I feel　safe in making another prediction.  Japan will continue to rise as a major baseball power and Korea will continue its rise as well, but ultimately it is China which will come to dominate baseball later this century just as it has risen as an economic giant.        We are now in the midst of the second World Baseball Classic which is played every three years.  Japan won the 2006 classic even though it lost a game to the US in an early round.  The United States placed a miserable eighth and was completely dominated

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and Fenellosa gathered together many samples of Japanese art, both old and new, which they hoped La Farge and Adams would consider buying for their collections back home.

Adams and La Farge Visit Nikko

Adams and La Farge spent the bulk of the summer in the cooler climate of Nikko, and it is there that they began to see some of the Japan that they had been looking for. Adams went for long walks in the mountains, admiring temples, shrines and countless waterfalls which he breathlessly admired and La Farge busily sketched. Here at last

by Korea in the decisive game. 　This year the Asian teams may well win again although it is entirely possible that a North American or Carribean team might prevail  as well.       If you want to see baseball at its best, come to Japan to witness the Asian round of the World Baseball Classic.  I arrived in time last night just in time to see an incredible match between Japan and Korea.  The Tokyo Dome was packed with ovder 50,000 fans and the atmosphere was that of the World Series game charged with October excitement.  The game itself was  perhaps the best I have ever witnessed, and I have been to well over a hundred major league games in my life.  The pitching was excellent.  Korean  pitcher Bong Jung Keun hurled pitches at a velocity of nearly 100 mph over six innings, completely baffling Japanese hitters like Ichiro Suzuki, perhaps the best hitter in the game today.  Ichiro got a hit late in the game, but by then it was too late. Japanese pitcher Iwakuma was just as good, but in the fourth inning he gave up a walk and two hits that allowed in the only run of the game.        The game at the Tokyo Dome was punctuated by excellent pitching, great speed, incredible fielding and some power--hitters on both sides hit drives deep to center field that resulted in some spectacular catches.  Asian baseball is built around these fundamentals--the best in pitching, speed, fielding and enough explosive power to make it a thrill to watch.  The Japanese team led by hitter Ichiro Suzuki and Boston Red Sox ace pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka, is perhaps the best in the world today although Korea had a better team last night.  Earlier in the tournament, however, Japan embarassed Korea by a score of 14-2 by combining quality pitching and excellent power.         The big surprise of the tournament, however, was China.  Three years ago China fielded a team that was crushed by Korea and lost to Japan by a score of 18-2.  China has been eliminated from　the 2009 classic with a 1-2 record, but it did much better.  China lost to Japan 4-0, but Chinese pitchers held Japan to five hits.  China also lost to Korea, but it completely dominated its archrival Taiwan, winning by a deceptively close score of 4-1 (it was very refreshing to see China and its enemy regime Taiwan play each other without a sign of the tensions and war that have divided the two regimes since the 1920s--maybe peace will prevail in China after all). China demonstrated excellent pitching and fielding, but little power at the plate, but surely that will come in time.          Asians dominate baseball today because they pay close attention to the

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Adams found the peace and solemnity that he had expected and he took advantage of the opportunity to relax his mind and relieve the stress that had plagued his life in Boston and Washington and some of the pain occasioned by his wife’s recent suicide.

On his way to Nikko Adams passed through the old resort town of Yumoto where he suddenly shouted with joy! “I at last saw the true Japan of my dreams, and broke out into carols of joy. In a wooden hut, open to all the winds, and public as the road, men, women and children, naked as the mother that bore them, were sitting, standing, soaking and drying themselves, as their ancestors had done a thousand years ago.” (Adams letter to John Hay, Ford 1930, 376)

Writing to friends back home about the beauty of Nikko, Adams noted:

Heavy rains have come. The mountains are lost in mist. The temples and tombs of the shoguns drip with moisture. When the sun comes out, the sudden heat gives one a vapor bath. I wrap myself in my Japanese dress, and lie on my verandah, reading and sleeping, while La Farge sketches our little temple-garden, with its toy waterfall, miniature rocks and dwarf trees. (La Farge 1988, 125)

Adams found profound peace and solitude in the small shrine temples and gardens of Nikko, all “overgrown with lichens, moss and shrubs,” a profoundly natural and quiet environment where he could mourn in peace. (Belfey 2003, 149)

Cooler weather in late August and their plan to return to the United States in September brought the two sojourners back to Tokyo and then on very quick trips to Kamakura, Kyoto and the Fuji-Hakone region. Rapid as the trip was, their visits to many temples, shrines, and spots of great natural beauty brought them a kaleidoscope of impressions that would endure for a lifetime.

Adams and La Farge Extend Visit to Kamakura, Fuji and Kyoto

fundamnentals of quality pitching, fielding, speed and good hitting.  Only a few Asians hit tons of home runs, but they will beat you any day with endless singles and doubles, stolen bases, incredible speed and probably the best pitching in the world.  China lacks the capacity to get many hits, but it already has rapidly improving fielding and pitching.  New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox--watch out!         The West dominated the world militarily, economically and politically for several centuries, but that dominance is waning as Japan, Korea, India and China are emerging as major powers.  The United States now has to go to China to get for loans of nearly two trillion dollars as a way of bailing out its pitiful　economy.  Even Japan is struggling these days.  We see the same pattern today in baseball.  The Americans invented the game and dominated it for over a century, but just as London predicted in 1905 in terms of its economy, Japan today rules the roost.  Korea is a rising economic and baseball power, but ultimately it is the Chinese who may come to rule the baseball world.

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La Farge was deeply impressed with the Daibutsu (Great Buddha) of Kamakura. Freed from its enclosing walls and roofs by a tidal wave centuries before: “The figure sits in contemplation of entire nature, the whole open world that we feel about us….the landscape, the hills, the trees and fields, the sky and its depths…the confusion or the peace of all the elements, the snow in crystals, and the rain drops….” (La Farge 1988, 165) Amidst all the turmoil of the world, the giant Buddha sat there, a figure of profound repose. Adams was also duly impressed and had the sculptor Saint-Gaudens incorporate elements of this Buddha in the memorial statue that eventually adorned the grave of his wife and later himself as well.

The temples of Kyoto, Uji and Nara also profoundly moved La Farge and Adams, especially the complex of Kiyomizu on the outskirts of Kyoto. The near perfect symmetry of mountains, nature and temple buildings brought a greater sense of repose and peace for Adams. But it was a climb up Mount Fuji that really registered a sense of awe in the mind of the historian. His most treasured scene was looking up at the mountains hovering below the cone of the great mountain. Looking up at the mountain, one could see the work of the divine creator god, perfect in its awesome and irregular beauty. Looking down at the clouds that hid the base of the mountain, Adams almost felt that he had found nirvana as the imperfect world of man had vanished in the mist and haze and all that was visible was heaven itself. This surely was as close as anybody could come to paradise itself. That vision alone made the trip to Japan, with all of its disappointments, very worthwhile.

Final Reflections

By late September, they were back on a steamer heading to San Francisco. Their mission to Japan had ultimately brought them everything they desired. La Farge found great inspiration for his groundbreaking art and Adams found not only a sense of peace of mind, but also a penchant for further travel in Asia. Adams wrote a friend upon his return:

The only practical result of my trip has been to make me earnest to close up everything here, finish history, cut society, forswear strong drink and politics, and start in about three years for China, never to return. China is the great unknown country of the world. Sooner or later, if health holds out, I shall drift there, I shall not drift back. You may find me there, with a false pig-tail, and a button on the top of my head as a mandarin of the new class. (Russell 1976, 356)

Adams never made it to China, but years later he did embark on a prolonged trip to the South Pacific where he spent several months with native island cultures. His ultimate destination, China, had to be scrubbed due to the ongoing Boxer Rebellion, during which time it was extremely dangerous for any foreigner to travel to China. More importantly, the peace and sense of detachment that Adams gained in Japan allowed him to embark on his magnificent history of the early United States which justifiably gained him lasting fame as one of America’s greatest historians.

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La Farge wrote an open letter to Adams on the dedication page of his book An Artist’s Letters from Japan: “If only we had found Nirvana – but he was right who warned us that we were late in this season of the world.” Perhaps the historian and the artist had not found the ultimate heaven that they were looking for, but they certainly found enough inspiration and renewed energy to embark on the best and most influential work of their careers.

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