Booklog: Nonfiction Dump

[nebroadwe]

And herewith are the non-fiction books I took up after Ash Wednesday.

David A. Clary, Adopted Son: Washington, Lafayette, and the Friendship that Saved the Revolution

Reductive biography of Marie Jean Paul Joseph Roche Yves Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, with emphasis on his filial relationship with George Washington. The author's tone is lively and more than a touch snarky: his Lafayette comes off as a sort of perpetual adolescent even in his maturity (e.g. his attention to dress leads the author to call him a "clotheshorse" throughout, but the book fails to consider whether or to what extent, in an era where self-presentation was a political statement, Lafayette's dressing-up differed from his peers'). It is entirely possible that, as the author posits, the animating passion of Lafayette's life was his love for Washington, but the lack of attention to other elements of his makeup and other significant relationships in his life, particularly during Lafayette's post-American career, leaves me disinclined to lean too heavily on this biography for a comprehensive portrait.

Gregory Clancey, Earthquake Nation: The Cultural Politics of Japanese Seismicity, 1868-1930

I borrowed this from the library in order to research the eruption of Bandai-san in 1888 (background for the novella about Seta Sojiro encountering Mishima Eiji ten years after Rurouni Kenshin's Kyoto arc that I'll probably never write but can't stop considering). Sadly, that disaster is dealt with in two pages, but the rest of the book is so fascinating that I forgave it at once. The author writes a nuanced account of the production of earthquake knowledge in Meiji Japan that spans the development of architecture and seismology as disciplines, the interactions among English and Japanese architects, engineers, craftsmen, politicians and journalists concerning natural disasters and how to deal with them, and the fascinating push-pull over the "westernization" of Japan during this period as enshrined in its built (and sometimes tumbled-over) landscape. A good, solid cultural history that tries to unravel complexity without flattening it and mostly succeeds. Recommended.

Ikuo Higashibaba, Christianity in Early Modern Japan: Kirishitan Belief & Practice

A brief overview of the reception of Christianity by Japanese converts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Usefully based in primary source material from the converts as well as that produced by the (primarily Jesuit) missionaries, the book is dry but informative. A revised version of the author's dissertation, its origins show in both approach and rhetorical style: the author lays out a series of topics to cover and ticks them off one by one and has no time to contextualize Kirishitan practice from the other side. For instance, he explains the Kirishitan use of relics in terms of Japanese syncretism, but has little to say about how the missionaries viewed Kirishitan practice in this area -- did they understand what was up or interpret it according to their own lights, or did it fall into the linguistic and cultural gap between the locals and the foreigners without making a noise? I'd love to see some cross-cultural analysis here of the sort that Clancey provides on architecture and seismology -- perhaps in the author's next book?

Every year I say I'm going to do more spiritual reading, and every year I have an awful time actually finding something I want to read. At least the current tome is a biography of St. Hildegard of Bingen ... maybe after that I can pick up Mechthild of Magdeburg or Birgitta of Sweden or somebody ...