The Self-Fashioning of E. S. Morse: A Comparison of Japan Day by Day and Its Primary SourceHina Hirayama
MN 77:2 (2022) pp. 259–94
The large corpus of travel writing about Meiji Japan by Europeans and North Americans varies widely in focus, structure, and source. This article compares the travelogue Japan Day by Day (1917) with the text on which it is said to be based—the journal in which the author E. S. Morse recorded his three visits to Japan in the 1870s and 1880s. By analyzing Morse’s editing in the 1910s, this article shows how his authorial voice sought to accommodate the historical, social, and personal changes that had occurred since his travels in the late nineteenth century.
