Foreign Images and Experiences of Japan: First Century AD to 1841

This volume begins with the earliest written reports from China in the first century AD and ends with a survey of Dutch reports from 1841. The volume is supported by a significant Glossary and Bibliography, as well as Subject and Name/Place Indexes.

William McOmie graduated in psychobiology at the University of California at Santa Cruz and received an MA in Russian language, literature and history from the University of California at Davis. He subsequently travelled and lived abroad, studying German and Japanese to an advanced level. For the last ten years he has been accessing primary sources in English, Russian, German and Dutch for the writing of this book, most recently as a visiting scholar at the Center for Japanese Studies,at the University of California, Berkley (2001-2). He is currently Associate Professor in the Faculty of Foreign Languages, Kanagawa University, Japan, and is also author of the forthcoming The Opening of Japan, 1853-55. A comparative study of the American, British and Russian campaigns to force the Tokugawa shogunate to conclude treaties and open ports to their ships (Global Oriental, 2005).