This unique book introduces nineteenth-century Japan through the
compelling life story of Boston journalist Edward H. House (1836-1901),
America's first regular correspondent in Japan. House's accomplishments
were breathtaking in variety: shaping the reputations of John Brown and
Mark Twain, influencing American attitudes toward Asia, persuading
Congress to return a massive indemnity to Japan, editing Tokyo's
earliest English-language newspaper (Tokio Times), constructing a
powerful case against imperialism, and introducing Western orchestral
music to Japan. House's experiences also illustrated many of the era's
key themes: Japan's use of public relations as a diplomatic tool, the
contentious relations of the expatriate community, the role foreign
advisors played in Japan's drive toward modernity, and the complicated
nature of U.S.-Japan relations. The book captures the human drama of a
special breed of early journalist. It recounts the bohemianism that made
House and his friends (e.g., Walt Whitman, Artemus Ward) notorious. It
narrates his tender, tortured relationship with Aoki Koto, a girl he
adopted when she was on the verge of suicide. It shows a courageous
struggle with gout, including 20 years in a wheelchair given to him by
the powerful Okuma Shigenobu. And it details a deep friendship with Mark
Twain, which eventually was destroyed by a dispute over The Prince and
the Pauper. Twain's unpublished 50-page manuscript on the experience,
Concerning the Scoundrel E. H. House, is introduced here for the first
time. Meticulously researched, the book draws on House's voluminous
writings and on hundreds of letters between House and major figures in
both America and Japan, including Mark Twain, U.S. Grant, John Russell
Young, Edmund Clarence Stedman, Okuma Shigenobu, and Inoue Kaoru. With
its lively, accessible prose and seamless interweaving of the life of
House with the history of the Meiji era, this book will be welcomed by
students, scholars, and general readers interested in modern Japanese
history and in America's nineteenth-century foreign relations.
