マーク・トウェインの日本への関心 : 1870年代を中心に

Mark Twain\u27s interest in Japan had deepened since he enjoyed appreciating the performance of the Japanese acrobats in New York in May, 1867. Through the friendship with Edward Howard House, who in 1870 came to Japan as a foreign correspondent of the New York Tribune, and in 1871 became “Oyatoi” teacher of English at Daigaku Nankô in Tokyo, Twain got the information of such books as A.B. Mitford’s Tales of Old Japan and Aimé Humbert’s Le Japon illustré. As to the former, in his letter to David Gray in April, 1878, just before leaving for Europe, he commented Mitford’s “THE FORTY-SEVEN RONINS” was better literature than The Loyal League with the fascinating Japanese woodcutting illustrations, which he had borrowed from Gray. As to Le Japon illustré, in some illustrations of A Tramp Abroad (1880) the influence from it can be recognized. In his library, Twain kept The Loyal Ronins of Tamenaga Shunsui by Shuichiro Saito and Edward Greey as well as Mitford’s Tales of Old Japan