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The Great WaveBy: Christopher Benfey When the United States entered the Gilded Age after the Civil War, argues cultural historian Christopher Benfey, the nation lost its philosophical moorings and looked eastward to Old Japan, with its seemingly untouched indigenous culture, for balance and perspective. Japan, meanwhile, was trying to reinvent itself as a more cosmopolitan, modern state, ultimately transforming itself, in the course of twenty five years, from a
By: Christopher BenfeyWhen the United States entered the Gilded Age after the Civil War, argues cultural historian Christopher Benfey, the nation lost its philosophical moorings and looked eastward to “Old Japan,” with its seemingly untouched indigenous culture, for balance and perspective. Japan, meanwhile, was trying to reinvent itself as a more cosmopolitan, modern state, ultimately transforming itself, in the course of twenty-five years, from a feudal backwater to an international power. This great wave of historical and cultural reciprocity between the two young nations, which intensified during the late 1800s, brought with it some larger-than-life personalities, as the lure of unknown foreign cultures prompted pilgrimages back and forth across the Pacific.
In The Great Wave, Benfey tells the story of the tightly knit group of nineteenth-century travelers—connoisseurs, collectors, and scientists—who dedicated themselves to exploring and preserving Old Japan. As Benfey writes, “A sense of urgency impelled them, for they were convinced—Darwinians that they were—that their quarry was on the verge of extinction.”
These travelers include Herman Melville, whose Pequod is “shadowed by hostile and mysterious Japan”; the historian Henry Adams and the artist John La Farge, who go to Japan on an art-collecting trip and find exotic adventures; Lafcadio Hearn, who marries a samurai’s daughter and becomes Japan’s preeminent spokesman in the West; Mabel Loomis Todd, the first woman to climb Mt. Fuji; Edward Sylvester Morse, who becomes the world’s leading expert on both Japanese marine life and Japanese architecture; the astronomer Percival Lowell, who spends ten years in the East and writes seminal works on Japanese culture before turning his restless attention to life on Mars; and President (and judo enthusiast) Theodore Roosevelt. As well, we learn of famous Easterners come West, including Kakuzo Okakura, whose The Book of Tea became a cult favorite, and Shuzo Kuki, a leading philosopher of his time, who studied with Heidegger and tutored Sartre.
Finally, as Benfey writes, his meditation on cultural identity “seeks to capture a shared mood in both the Gilded Age and the Meiji Era, amid superficial promise and prosperity, of an overmastering sense of precariousness and impending peril.”
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4.5 ★★★★★
Based on 9 reviews
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Product Reviews
★★★★★ 5
his best work.
Format: Paperback
The books in this compilation are, in my humble opinion, his best work.
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Reviewed in the United States on January 23, 2017
★★★★★ 5
Five Stars
Format: Paperback
An acquired taste, perhaps, but definitely my taste.
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Reviewed in the United States on August 21, 2016
★★★★★ 1
Was stream of consciousness...
Format: Paperback
Not what I expected.
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Reviewed in the United States on May 1, 2019
★★★★★ 5
Well done!
Format: Kindle
Young, bloodied, sleep deprived and starving, not to mention being surrounded by an army of hungry sharks! It seems almost unimaginable that a sixteen-year-old could experience such a harrowing ordeal and live to tell about it. The story of young Josh, a baseball loving kid from San Antonio, Texas, who forges his mothers signature in order to join the Navy, takes place in 1945 near the end of WWII aboard the USS Indianapolis. After being struck by a Japanese torpedo, the mighty Naval ship sinks, thrusting the survivors into an unforgiving ocean for five harrowing days. The story is fast-paced with lots of action without being overly graphic and is the perfect for middle-schoolers with a penchant for excitement!
There's also a great friendship angle which was really great to see especially since the boy Josh befriends (Lee) is of Japanese decent. At the time Josh bears a lot of resentment towards the Japanese since his father was killed when the Japanese bombed Pear Harbor so I think this offers an excellent 'teaching moment' for kids today.
The book is chock-full of numerous interesting facts about the USS Indianapolis which I hadn't known before reading the book. Of note, it states that the sinking of the USS Indianapolis resulted in the largest number of shark attacks on humans in history, which I think is a little known and very interesting fact! Well done!
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Reviewed in the United States on November 19, 2019
★★★★★ 5
A fast paced and exciting read
Format: Kindle
I really enjoyed this book about the sinking of the USS Indianapolis by a Japanese submarine towards the end of World War II. The story is told through the eyes of a sixteen year old boy, Josh, who lied about his age on his enlistment application and forged his mother's signature. He was determined to do his bit for the American war effort and revenge the death of his father during the attack on Pearl Harbour.
When the USS Indianapolis was torpedoed, the survivors, about three quarters of the crew, were flung into the ocean without any survival equipment. Many of them did not even have life jackets and were burned by the fire that had broken out on board the ship or injured when they were swept overboard. The scent of urine and blood soon attracts sharks, lots of sharks, and the survivors fear that they have survived the sinking of the ship only to become food for these huge and vicious fish.
The story is short and sharp and I think middle school and young teenage boys will really enjoy it. The author shares some details of the attack and sinking of the ship, without making it to graphic and over whelming for younger readers. Boys, particularly, will relate to the action packed excitement of the attack and also to Josh's thoughts about his mother and younger brother back home. The terrible hardship of being in the ocean for a few days, without food or water, the temptation to drink sea water to alleviate the dreadful thirst and the savage behavior of some of the other survivors are all well told but not with so much detail that younger readers will become overwhelmed or bored.
Josh's relationship with another young survivor, Lee, who is of Japanese extraction is also most interesting and contains a good message of delving deeper into relationships and people that merely their heritage and looks.
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Reviewed in the United States on November 16, 2019