An erudite voyage through the details and customs of Japanese life. An engaging collection about everything from the abacus to zoology in Japan, designed to preserve knowledge about a society that was modernizing beyond recognition. This book remains an erudite source of information about culture, history, art, religion, and daily life.

Armchair travelers beware! Japanese Things will lure you out of your cozy, comfy home and chair to an unusual country with bewitching manners and customs—and once you have succumbed to its spell you will never be the same. Here in one neat package you will meet the flavor, charm, and piquancy of old Japan—a revised reprint of one of the indispensable books on Japan, by the late Prof. Basil Hall Chamberlain, eminent British scholar who in the latter part of the 19th century "taught Japanese and Japan to the Japanese." Many books in one, this monumental compilation contains such diversified subjects as Art and Abacus; Botany and Buddhism; Charms and Cherry Blossoms; Daimyos and Divination; Fairy Tales and Flowers; Gardens and Government; History and Hara-kiri; Law and Language; Marriage and Music; Poetry and Pottery; Shinto and Singing Girls (Geisha); Tea and Theater, and Writing and Wood Engraving. In this long-awaited reprint, in which the title has been changed from Things Japanese, the reader will encounter exquisite objects of daily Japanese life, the gardens and cultures of the fields, the harmony and balance in the fundamentals of day-by-day existence.

This book explores British reflections of Japanese education between 1858 and 1914, by referring to accounts by British observers, derived from documentary sources such as newspapers, journal articles, published books, and official reports. Hiraoka argues that British attitudes and comments on Japanese education reflect concerns about their own education system. International economics and politics of the time, as well as the voices of the Japanese, are also taken into account. British interpretations of the advantages of Japanese education are explained with two seemingly contradictory views: traditions inherited in Japan, and modern institutions newly introduced using the Western model. The book illustrates how this dual view of Japan affected the rise and fall of British interest in Japanese education over half a century. It also explores a broad range of phenomena – educational reforms, legislation and practice, science networks, exhibitions, international trade, and military affairs – to observe how Japanese education was viewed by the British. It consults a wide range of primary sources, most of which are published or digitally archived. Shedding new light on the transnational history of the educational relationship between Japan and Britain, this book will be an attractive base for future researchers in the fields of history of education, cultural history, and comparative education.