Book Review : A Victorian’s Love Affair With Japan

Travels in the Land of the Gods by Richard Gordon Smith (Prentice-Hall: $25)

If intrepid and indomitable are reserved for Victorian Englishwomen who crossed the Sahara on camelback, fending off belligerent nomads at every oasis, what’s left for Richard Gordon Smith?

A hearty and eager sportsman, heir to a mining fortune, he habitually absented himself from his comfortable Cotswold estate to traipse through the outposts of Empire. After exhausting every bit of British pink on the globe, he set out for Japan, which so enthralled him that he filled eight huge scrapbooks with notes, photographs, drawings and impressions, creating an unparalleled personal record of a civilization still unknown to Europeans.

Extremely reticent about his private life, admittedly indifferent to art, no great writer, scholar or linguist, fond of creature comfort and ever-mindful of the diplomatic proprieties, he seems an unlikely sort to trade the pleasant routines of the landed gentry for the rigors of a solitary hegira through terra incognita, but there he was, stoically eating octopus for breakfast, worrying that every sore throat could be typhoid, dutifully visiting each temple and shrine in the land, bargaining for cloisonne vases and ivory carvings even though he considered the prices extortionate and the objects trivial.

Astonished Crowds Gather

Doggedly he soldiers on, nostalgic for the roast beef of Olde England, for a proper mattress on which a chap might have a decent night’s sleep; missing his post-prandial glass of fine old port, but not at all sorry to be away from his querulous wife and young children.

Tall and handsome, with waxed mustachio and rosy cheeks, he drew astonished crowds wherever he ventured. Ever-courteous even when most skeptical, the Japanese acceded to his outlandish requests; arranging deer hunts and fishing expeditions, searching out accommodations spacious enough for his Indian valet and his vast amount of luggage--the rods, rifles, cameras, furniture, wines, medicines and extensive wardrobe an Englishman required to create a home away from home. His hosts cheerfully provided the interpreters, guides, servants, introductions and permissions necessary for his ambitious undertakings.

Gordon Smith always traveled first class. Disliking hotels, he preferred to rent and staff houses, charter boats and trains. Public accommodations, he explains, often cater to undesirables--tradespeople, holiday-makers, remittance men and worse. One didn’t meet one’s own sort. The Japanese referred to him as Mr. Up, an allusion to his aristocratic manner.

Because he couldn’t spell, the editor of the diaries has not only corrected the whimsical orthography but researched a family tree and assembled a chronicle of Gordon Smith’s life, no small task when your subject’s name is shared by millions.

Set Off on Journey

Married at 21 to a young woman he met on a hunting expedition to the Canadian wilds, he suggests his bride “didn’t live up to his expectations of a sportsman’s wife,” and after a few rocky years on the Gaspe Peninsula hunting grizzlies, the Smiths returned to England for an easier life at Westbrook Hall, though jumble sales and hunt balls didn’t seem to improve Mrs. Smith’s disposition. In 1897, her husband left his newly acquired 51-acre manor “because of the villainous temper of a certain person,” and set off on the adventures and travels that would consume his life. He was 40 years old and roamed the world for the next 20 years, spending most of that time in Japan.

Little by little, his disdain for the arts was overcome by his realization that he could appreciate Japanese life and philosophy only by studying the aesthetics of the country. He learned the fundamentals of Japanese religion, familiarizing himself with the influence of Shintoism upon Buddhism, tracing legends and myths to their sources in folk tales. Though the diaries include a few such stories, his accumulated knowledge eventually filled five more volumes, all illustrated with drawings commissioned by Smith, a man whose own education was too sketchy to qualify him for an army commission.

Gradually he became not only a collector of art and artifacts but a connoisseur of what he saw and bought. Continuing to assure readers that art didn’t interest him except as a cultural marker, he discourses authoritatively upon the masters and their techniques, always engaging the finest calligraphers, photographers and painters.

Love Affairs

Smith has an eye for a pretty face, choosing his staff as much for looks as for competence, discreetly recording his love affairs with women guides and interpreters.

He’s game for everything and anything, reporting on Noh plays and Kabuki spectacles, giving native remedies a chance against his agues and fevers, cutting a notch in his chopsticks so that he can avoid the barbarism of asking for a fork.

He describes the processes by which pearls are cultured, lacquer work made, houses built, sumo wrestlers and geishas trained, games played and holidays celebrated, always explaining, analyzing, and recording for posterity.

In 1908 he found an English publisher for his treatise on Japanese folklore, though the book did poorly and he never attempted to sell his subsequent work. Instead he became a superb naturalist and was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun for his research on mammals and fish.

He died in 1918 from beriberi and malaria, leaving a greatly diminished fortune, a magnificent collection of Japanese antiques, prints, paintings, carvings and these uniquely wonderful journals full of wonder and respect for the culture he had adopted.

Elegantly reproduced with hundreds of plates, “Travels in the Land of the Gods” is as perceptive and insightful as the day it was written, still amazingly valid despite a century of radical change in Japanese life.