Japan^ Contributions to Gulliver s Travels
Maurice J o h n s o n , Muneharu K it a g a k i, Philip W il l ia m s
Perhaps the ultimate proof of recognition of an earnest project in scholarship is a request for reprinting of an article within a year of its publication. After more than a dozen years of collaboration of an American scholar, Dr. Williams, and a Japanese scholar, Prof. Kitagaki, under the advice and guidance of a senior Swift scholar, Prof. Johnson, such has been the reception of Gulliver s Travels and Japan: A New
Reading广 No. 4 in the Moonlight Series (published January 1977 by Amherst House, Doshisha University, Kyoto, illustrations, xii, 50 pp.). As stated in the Foreword, the Moonlight Series *'tries, among other things, to throw light on areas of study which might otherwise remain eclipsed, and to bring together compatible pieces which might otherwise never be found together—and so lost in the process. Especially ap propriate are cross-cultural problems which have been approached previously from only one side. Thus the exploration of Japanese prototypes in Swift’s Travels seems a particularly apt suoject... a distillation of research and interpretation by three craftsmen. .. result ing in a vigorous collaboration/7 With this excerpt (most documenta tion omitted), “Amherst House and her Moonlight Series are happy to be able to contribute towards breaking new paths in old fields.”
Otis Cary, Editor, Moonlight Series,
(The original monograph may be obtained from Amherst House, Doshisha
— i — University, Kyoto 602, Japan, for ¥ 5 0 0 plus Y 140 m ailing cost, or S 3 00- mail three one-dollar bills.)
Over 250 years ago, in words that seem more suitable for our cybernetic age, Jonathan Swift introduced the world to a prototype computer in the middle of Part III of Gulliver s Travels. The Projector- Professor of ^the grand Academy of Lagado^ had programmed a machine into which he “emptyed the whole Vocabulary. and made the strictest
Computation of the general Proportion there is in Books between the Numbers of Particles, Nouns, and Verbs, and other Parts of Speech.’’1 Swift has the inventor make the remarkable claim that he can produce great documents of the arts and sciences by even the most random opera tions of the machine. Significantly enough, the illustration of this table of language is the only non-map plate in the whole book, except for the frontispiece portrait of “Captain Lemuel Gulliver.’’2 It is, more over, immensely significant that to a trained eye, the characters in the
earliest plate (quite distorted in later issues and editions) 一 256 characters in all—show striking resemblances to the ancient Japanese syllabaries wmch, as we shall demonstrate, were available to Swift in the travel literature he is known to have read and often parodied in his masterpiece. It is quite possible that Swift himself suggested the Japanese model for the illustration of this wonderful machine, for he has Gulliver refer quite specifically to f*the Form and Contrivance... as in the figure here annexed'' [GT, p . 185, our italics). This discovery, which may be studied by comparison of the plates reproduced here (Plates II and III), is important for both general and specific aspects of research in the Travels as they relate to Japan, the one realf'exotic^ nation included with the imaginary lands visited by Gulliver, and the country which provides the framing at the beginning and the end
—— ii —
of Part III, where Swift takes pains to show the superior ways of the Japanese people. The plate for the "Alphabeta Japonum,> is taken from Engelbert Kaempfer’s monumental two-volume study, The History of Japan, which was published in London under the date of 1727.3 Professor Louis A. Landa has suggested to us that this may be post-dating; the work may have appeared the same year as Gulliver and conceivably at a time prior to Swift’s book. At any rate, as J. Leeds Barroll has pointed out, Swift might well have had access to this work in manuscript form as it circulated among his friends of the Royal Society for more than ten years before actual publication.4 Scholars of Japan studies are agreed that the exhaustive accounts and illustrations Kaempfer provided were ‘(the main source of knowledge about Japan in Europe throughout the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries.”5 The symbols in the Gulliver ^Figure*7 show an almost complete cor relation with those of the Japanese syllabaries as Kaempfer printed them. Like the parts of the Projector’s Contrivance, the language signs in Japanese are not genuine “alphabet elements’’ but syllable forms numb3ring in ths hundreds and thus comprising a word stock for writing. There are three styles of Japanese Kana syllabaries: the Hiragana and Katakana which are still used very much as Kaempfer reproduced them and which seem to dominate Swift’s system, and the more complicated Hentaigana which dropped from usage about a century ago (these are seldom seen in the Gulliver plate). By close comparison and the compilation of parallels, we find evidence suggesting that Swift and/or the designer of his plate drew directly from a table of the Japanese language as given in Kaempfer^ History. To designate the blocks of the 256 characters in Swifts plate, we have
— vi — labeled the horizontal rows from top to bottom “A, B, C，’’ etc. and the vertical rows from left to right ‘‘1 ,2, 3,’’ etc. To the Kaempfer plate we applied a similar system of letters and numbers, prefixing (K) for each such designation. We have tried to decipher each of the symbols in the Gulliver “figure,” comparing it carefully with the script of Kaempfer’s “Alphabeta Japonum，” and checking our impressions with Japanese scholars and with foreigners familiar with the syllabaries. In deciphering these figures, we found it necessary to look at them from every possible angle or position. Seen upside down, for example, B -l is the same as
(K)C-10:s/w.b)ofKaempfer’s_KaM々awa.6 No two blocks in Gulliver are the same, showing that the designer was not just scribbling random doodles for Swift but scrupulous in making his symbols and in avoiding repetitions. That they are Japanese language forms is no accident. We have noted two categories, finding at least 46 figures of Swift’s table that are clearly legible as single Japanese Kana, and at least 205 more that are composite forms involving two or more Japanese symbols. Only five of the 256 are not reasonably legible as direct elements of the “Alph- abeta Japonum.”7 Using our plates for a block-by-block comparison would go far beyond our limits of space and time. We have worked over such detail with colleagues for years and find an amazing consensus in “naming” the parallel forms. In this test subjective judgments always make tidy “conclusions” suspect, but we think some of the identifications can be accepted instantly by any viewer. Beginning in the right column of the plate in GT (this is Japanese reading form, as Kaempfer noted in his caption), we find at least nine of the Kana figures suggested clearly in this line alone: A-16 is like (K) 1-8 and B-16 is like (K) H-14, for example, while composite forms account for most others as in the case of
— vii — P-16 which is clearly based on (K)D-8: i.e.， h ( と ) in modern form. Beginning at the top left corner, in A—1 we have the composite of (K)F— 16 and (K)G-16 which appear in Kaempfer in just the same position that the GT designer's compound has them, one above the other. We have already noted that B -l is a Kana figure of (K)C-10 upside down, while C-l is very close to (K)J-6. Generally, towards the left and the bottom of Swifts plate the designer has moved from his Japanese models as simple forms to combinations of freer improvisation. Since no other source for the plate of the projector’s language is known, Kaempfer apparently being the first to present this “alphabet” to English readers, parallels in these plates seem to confirm BarrolFs theory that the History was available to Swift and his circle. The consequences of this particular association reach far beyond the conclu sions he presented. This will be detailed in due time, but the fact that this crucial device in Part III links Gulliver so specifically to Japan has far wider consequences. What emerges is a new picture of Swift’s use of Japan in an otherwise wholly imaginary list of ^Several Remote Nations of the World” visited by Gulliver. Our evidence will show that records of the early travelers to Japan must have provided a major source of materials for the fertile, not to say fevered, powers of his imagination. There are many more reasons than thus far recognized for the fact that Japan should be the scene of important episodes and that its name should even be included in the title of one of the four voyages. While Part III contains most of the direct references to Japan, the name also appears in the first two parts and the influence of the early travel histories marks the whole work.8 If it is noteworthy that Swift was the first English author to deal directly with Japan in important imaginative literature, it is also signifi-
— Vlll— cant that his interpretation was obviously indebted to accurate historical sources and that he expresses himself sympathetically toward the Japanese to the point of showing their superiority over other nationalities, not least the Dutch (as in I I I ,1 and 11), who were of course Swift’s satirical target. We might say that Swift did much to promote a favorable image of Japan in what was really one of its earliest British portrayals. What Japan did for Swift on the other hand, only begins to appear when we investigate the early histories from which he must have drawn his interpretations: his references to Japan's government, the geography and place names, the anti-Christian policy which he found, ironically, to be more honorable than the acts of the “Christian” Dutch. These and other historical matters became grist for the mills oi his imagination, and by his treatment they provide transforming revelations in paradoxes. It was paradoxical, to begin with, that this first serious treatment of Japan should be in the context of make-believe lands. It is paradoxical that, in the beginning of the third voyage, a Dutchman—a fellow Protestant— demands the death of Gulliver, but the Japanese “heathen” captain shows mercy and protects him. It is paradoxical that Gulliver admires the Japanese people and owes his life to them; yet, in that country—as in Houyhnhnm-land—the right to remain could not be granted him because he is a barbarous European. Paradoxically, Japan as the only real nation he “visits” is also the one whose language he can make no claim to have learned. Critics have noted, again paradoxically, that Part III—the Japan book—is at the same time the core of the whole work, and—critically speaking—the least “successful” section. Paradoxical, finally, is the evidence we will suggest showing that it was precisely through the use of the historical materials about travels in Japan that Swift found orientation for the most imaginative elements he introduced
— ix — in the adventures, and especially the characterization, of Gulliver. To outline a composite figure that can be drawn from just two of the travelers in Japan—Kaempfer of the History and Will Adams, the first Englishman to visit Japan (1600 to his death in 1620), whose letters and 'history'J were recorded in Purchas His Pilgrimes and Hakluyt's Voyages (both in Swiffs own library) —is to come very near the figure of Gulliver. This Gulliverian composite presents an English-speaking ship’s surgeon who becomes “Dutch,” whose years of harrowing experiences at sea and in strange lands bear him finally to Japan, where he is put ashore by mutiny (as reported, inaccurately, by John Saris about Adams in Purchas), who is taken to '
--- v --- The documentation and analysis of these elements drawn from the histories require that we try to approach them with some of the freshness felt by a poetic mind “when a new planet swims into his ken.’’ The first reports of Japan were exotic in the extreme, yet they described a culture that had five cities as large as London, at least two very much greater. Japan by Swifts time had been briefly revealed to the world, and then become the world’s first society to systematically plan and execute a calculated withdrawal from intercourse with other lands. In 1639 the Tokugawa shôgunate had deliberately severed ties with the rest of the world and entered an age of isolation (with the exception of the small Dutch “factory” at Nagasaki) that endured over 200 years until the Black Ships of Perry anchored off her shores in 1853. Here was a soceity mysterious yet powerful, fascinating in every respect yet able to keep other nations at arm's length. The Dutch alone held a tiny toe-hold in trade, bringing in a ship or two once a year to their “prison-like” colony, where a handful of Europeans lived under police guard on a man-made islet in Nagasaki harbor.9 The fact that the Dutch alone maintained contact with Japan was enough to quicken Swiffs interest in the situation, given the circumstances by which they had edged the British out of that apparently wealthy trade field a hundred years before. This still rankled British memories and it presented the opportunity for a most natural and sweet revenge, which Swift could seize upon to turn the Dutch record in the island empire— especially their conformity to the anti-Christian program of the Shogun— against Holland.10 It is from this perspective that Swift must have read his ■PwrcAas and, as our evidence seems to indicate, cast his fascinated eyes over the translation of Kaempfer, finding here striking materials for the almost incomparable powers of his imagination.11
—XI 一 Several chapters of Kaempfer’s Book II are given to the genealogy and history **of the Japanese Monarchy/' and the summaries presented supply exactly the form Swift imitated in the first sentence of his little- known work of 1728，An Account of the Court and Empire of Japan.
Among Kaempfer’s notes of marvelous events 一 “In the sixty-eighth year of [SIUSIN^] reign two Moons were seen in the East. ••• In the thirty-sixth year of [SYNIN’s] reign it rain’d 丨Stars from Heaven in Japan*' [History, I, 280) —there is one entry that mentions an ^extraordi nary swift Horse.. . brought over from the Indies into Japan. He could run a thousand miles a day^ [History, I, 280). The context of this ref erence is important, for it brings to a close the chapter relating Japan's history to that of the Coining of Christ, an event which Kaempfer every where regards as the central event of world history. This almost gratu itous insertion of Christian history, however, comes only after another reference to Houyhnhnm-style history: In the ninety-fifth year of [SYNIN’s] reign, Bupo, otherwise call’d Kobotus, came over from the Indies into Japan, and brought over with him, on a white Horse, the Kio or Book of his Religion and Doctrine. A temple was afterwards erected to him, which is still call^ Fakubasi, or the Temple of the White Horse (p. 280). This story comes from the earliest period of Japanese history. Later, writing of the seventeenth century, Kaempfer gives in terse summary the story of the persecution and massacre of Roman Catholics, but he makes no mention here that the Dutch had supplied cannons to put down the Catholic movement, though he gives detailed treatment later (History, II, 172 and 218) in terms that would register strongly with Swift. The Dutch clearly used the occasion of the final assault on the “Christian city” of Shimabara to win political and commercial favors over the Spanish and
— xii — Portuguese by helping to exterminate the Christians. Kaempfer, at this point of the historical summary, tells the story in a baldly objective way: MThe beginning of that famous rebellion of the Christians at Sixnabara, in the Province Fisen, falls upon the eleventh month of the eighth year, being the year of Christ 1637. In the ninth year, in the second month, on the 12th of April 1638, 37000 Christians were put to death on one day. This act of cruelty at once put an end to the rebellion, and a finishing stroke to the total abolition of the Christian Religion in Japan*, [History, I, 328). Vital to Swift’s masterpiece are Kaempfer’s two references to “the trampling over the Images of our blessed Saviour ••• on the cross,” since this was exactly what concerned Gulliver most during his short stay in Japan. Kaempfer gives details on this subject. With regard to the (ttrampling upon the Crucifix^ (GT, 216), Kaempfer actually gives conflic ting reports in his two references which Swift seems to combine. In one place it is suggested that this ceremony is performed “in every family’’ in the country: “ … a Court of Enquiry was establish’d by special command of the Emperor, in all the cities and villages throughout the Empire. The business of this court is to enquire what religion, belief or sect, each family, or its individual members belong to. This Enquiry is made once every year, tho’ not at a certain determined time, but commonly some days, or weeks, after the trampling over the Images of our blessed Saviour, and the Virgin Mary, hath been perform^ in every family, as a convincing proof of their abhorrence to the Christian ReIigion.M [History, 1,330; italics added). Later Kaempfer writes that “This inquisition is perform’d only at Nagasaki, in the district of Omura and the Province of Bungo, where
一 X lll—— formerly the Christian Religion had got the strongest footing*7 (History, I I , 122) —the interpretation we shall find Swift used, and actually the true situation. Historical study shows that the second view of Kaempfer is correct, and that all foreigners who landed on Japan’s soil—stranded as well as voluntarily visiting—were obliged to undergo this “inquisition.” Therefore, Gulliver, who arrived from Luggnagg in 1709, was tinder strict obligation to perform this ritual, like all the Dutchmen who had come to Nagasaki. Here is Kaempfer's accurate description : ^the Jefumi • • • is, in the strictest sense, the figure-treading, because they trample over the Image of our Blessed Saviour extended on the cross, and that of his holy Mother, or some other Saint, as a convincing and unquestionable proof, that they forever renounce Christ and his Religion---- The Images are about a foot long, cast in brass, and kept in a particular box made for this purpose^ [History, I I , 121). Gulliver^ experience is tied firmly into history in this case; when he is interviewed by the “Emperor” on his arrival, he makes this matter his chief concern, so he obviously has read or heard of this before. “ … I was admitted to an Audience, and delivered my Letter ; which was opened with great Ceremony, and explained to the Emperor by an Interpreter, who gave me Notice of his Majesty’s Order, that I should signify my Request; and whatever it were, it should be granted for the sake of his Royal Brother of Luggnagg. This Interpreter was a Person employed to transact Affairs with the Hollanders: He soon conjectured by my Countenance that I was an European, and therefore repeated his Majesty^ Commands in Low-Dutch, which he spoke perfectly well.I answered, (as I had before determined) that I was a Dutch Merchant, shipwrecked in a very remote Country, from whence I travelled by Sea and Land to Luggnagg, and then took Shipping for Japan, where I knew
— xiv — my Countrymen often traded, and with some of these I hoped to get an Opportunity of returning into Europe'. I therefore most humbly entreated his Royal Favour to give Order, that I should be conducted in Safety to Nangasac, To this I added another Petition, that for the sake of my Patron the King of Luggnagg, his Majesty would condescend to excuse my performing the Ceremony imposed on my Countrymen, of trampling upon the Crucifix) because I had been thrown into his Kingdom by my Misfortunes, without any Intention of trading. When this latter Petition was interpreted to the Emperor, he seemed a little surprised; and said, he believed I was the first of my Countrymen who ever made any Scruple in this Point; and that he began to doubt whether I were a real Hollander or no; but rather suspected I must be a CHRISTIAN" (GT,
216). This tour de force seems too close to another account in Kaempfer to be mere coincidence, though Swift’s satire turns the “Dutch Surgeon’s” defense upside down. Kaempfer says, ^1 cannot forbear taking notice in this place of an aspersion which hath been falsly thrown upon the Dutch by some Authors, viz. That having been ask’d by the Japanese Government, whether they were Christians ? they answer^, No, not Christians, but Dutchmen. This I particularly and with great Impariality enquir’d into, but could not meet with any thing of this nature in the Journals, and other writings belonging to our factory at Nagasaki, which have been kept and preserve ever since our first arrival in this country. But besides, our above-mention^ chief Interpreter, who certainly, had there been any such thing, had no reason to conceal the truth, frequently assur’d me to the contrary, and told me, in answer to the like questions, that they constantly, and very much to their own disadvantage, profess^ them-
——XV — selves to be Christians, but not addicted to the sect of the Portuguese Priests. What probably gave birth to this rumour, was the answer of one Michael Sandvoort, a Dutchman, who being stranded upon the coasts of Japan, settled afterwards, with a countryman of his, at Nagasaki, amongst the natives and independent of the Dutch. Upon the establish ment of the Japanese Inquisition, this man being ask'd, whether or no he was a Christian, he answer’d, to save his and his companion’s life, “what Christians, Christians, we are Dutchmen; which confession the Inquisitors were then seemingly satisfy'd with*' [History, II, 221). Gulliver, we should recall, twice has the experience of indirectly con fessing himself to be a Christian to the Japanese. He doubles his thrust against the Dutch by ironically showing they are willing to <4cut my Throat . . . [because] I had not yet trampled on the Crucifix^ (GT, 217). But then Gulliver, who would not conceal his Christianity from the Japanese, very cunningly conceals his integrity on this point from the Dutch aafter which I was no more troubled with such Questions.” He joins them as a fellow countryman and "Surgeon” who, like Kaempfer, had studied at Leyden! Another touch of Swiftian wit concerns Japan's standards of justice.
Kaempfer reports that **N0 crimes are punish'd in Japan by fines, or pecuniary mulcts; for in this case, they say, if punishments could be bought off with money, it would be in the power of the rich to commit what crimes they please, a thing in their opinion, and in its very nature, absurd and inconsistent with reason and justice” [History, I I , 114). 'They admit of none but temporal rewards, or punishments, and only such, as are the necessary consequences of the practice of virtue or vice’’ [History, II, 67). Gulliver, in Lilliput, encounters a land whose practice of justice closely conforms to that of the Japan which Kaempfer describes. As Gulliver presents the Lilliput system, it is not hard to see Japan in the
— xvi — background : "ALTHOUGH we usually call Reward and Punishment, the two Hinges upon which all Government turns; yet I could never observe this Maxim to be put in Practice by any Nation, except that of Lilliput. • • • • And these People thought it a prodigious Defect of Policy among us, when I told them that our Laws were enforced only by Pe nalties, without any Mention of Reward1 J [GT, 59). Gulliver then illustrates the principle of "temporal rewards^ in the same manner Kaempfer does. The sentence quoted above from Kaempfer is followed by words even more directly relevant for Swift’s attack on “Reason” （the very crux of Part IV of the Travels) : “They say, that we are oblig’d to be virtuous, because nature hath endow’d us with reason, on purpose, that living according to the dictates of reason, we should show our difference, and superiority over irrational brutes'7 (History, II, 67). However, care is taken in Japan, as Kaempfer shows, to keep this “reason” under the check of another authority. “The Sintos Religion” teaches a more powerful ruler within their hearts, natural reason, which here exerts it self with full force, and is of itself capable enough to restrain from indulging their vices, and to win over to the dominion of virute, all those, that will but hearken to its dictates. But besides, the civil magistrates have taken sufficient care to supply what is wanting on this head; for, by their authority, there are very severe laws now in force against all sorts of crimes and misdemeanors. And certainly the Japanese Nation, consider'd in the main, make it evident, that the dictates of natural reason, and the laws of civil magistrates, are sure guides enough ... [History, I I , 16-17, our italics). Basic in Japanese morality is the sense of obligation or gratitude to ancestors and superiors, as Kaempfer points out in many places (e.g. II, 4), and one of the greatest sins is .‘ungratefulness.’’ Gulliver reports the
— xvii — same thing in Lilliput: ^INGRATITUDE is among them a captial Crime, as we read it to have been in some other Countries: [!] For they reason thus; that whoever makes ill Returns to his Benefactor, must needs be a common Enemy to the rest of Mankind, from whom he hath received no Obligation; and therefore such a Man is not fit to live^ (GT, 60). As Gulliver had noted before this entry, 'THERE are some Laws and Cus toms in this Empire very peculiar; and if they were not so directly con trary to those of my own dear Country, I should be tempted to say a little in their Justification” （GT, 58). Another significant parallel relates to the nine ^Articles/7 drawn up to govern Gulliver's life in Lilliput, which begin rather strangely: ^FIRST, The Man-Mountain shall not depart from our Dominions>, (GT, 43). Kaempfer records the “Imperial Proclamation” of 1637 which eventually shut off Japan from all contact with the outside world ; this nine-paragraph text begins with a similar article: “No Japanese ship, or boat whatever, nor any native of Japan, shall presume to go out of the country*' {History, I I , 164). Related to the trade war among Europeans, there are references in Kaempfer to the Dutch operations at Tonquin—and the spelling of this place name, which varies widely in travel reports of the time, is precisely the same as in Travels (GT, 154), a remarkable coincidence if not a direct mark of borrowing. As in Purchas so in Kaempfer we find
elaborate descriptions of cities: Osacca (modern “Osaka”： III, 1-12), Jedo (III, 73-79; this city as de facto capital), and especially Miaco (today’s Kyoto: 111,16-25; 157-60) —where the Emperor of the unbroken tradition dating back to the Sun Goddess resided—a city of perfectly- planned streets and buildings after the Chinese model, as indicated in a map opposite the description.
— xviii — Compared with the rambling, “unplanned” form of most great cities East and West, Miaco is shown to be almost square in shape, with all streets straight and running through the ——XIX — NOTES 1 . The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, V ol.XI, ed. Herbert Davis (Oxford, 1941;revised 1959), pp. 216—17. Subsequent quotations will be from the revised edition of 1959 based on Faulkner’s text of 1735; in the body* of the text, this volume will be referred to as GT. 2. We have worked with the first 1726 edition, published by Benjamin Motte, for relevant plates, though Harold Williams makes Faulkner basic. The plate in Motte faces p. 74 of Volume II, which is mistakenly numbered p. 44 in all copies we have seen, including the one in the Thomas Wise Collec tion in the British Museum. 3. Engelbert Kaempfer, The History of Japan, translated by J.G. Scheuchzer (2 vols., first issue, 1727; second issue, 1728; reprint, 3 vols., Glasgow, 1906; reissue of the Glasgow edn., AMS Press, New York, 1971). The three-volume modern edition will be cited as History, with subsequent references noted in parentheses in the text. 4. J. Leeds Barrol, ^Gulliver in Luggnagg: A Possible Source,PQ, XXXVI (October,1957), p. 505. In “Gulliver and the Struldhrugs,^ PMLA, LXXIII (M arch,1958), pp. 43-50, Barroll again refers to Japan materials he considers related to Gulliver. In addition to the associations Barroll makes between Swift and Sir Hans Sloane and ‘‘The Right Honorable JOHN Lord Carteret/' we would suggest that other names on the Kaempfer 4 8. “J a p a n ” a p p e a r s i n I , 8; II , 4, a n d III , 1 , フ，9 ，10, a n d 1 1 ..\11 S w i f t ’s references are favorable, in a time when the word conjured images of the — XX — strange and mysterious—even grotesque, black, and outlandish—for most Englishmen. References on “Japan** in OED show usages by Pope, Arbuthnot, Dampier, and Defoe to be rather objective but many other references, e.g. Quack's Academy, are to darkening forces and ^conjuring Japan.” Rochester, in Poems (1680), has an ambiguous image: “Kiss me thou curious picture of a man;/ How odd thou art, how pretty, how Japan*" (Ox. Eng. Die., 1933, V ol.V, p. 552). 9. See James Murdock, A History of Japan (London, second impression, 1925- 26), II, xix ff. Many reports of the activities of Europeans in Purchas, and the whole of Kaempfer^ two-volume History (except for the vital two trips made to Edo/Tokyo), are based on the experiences of residents of this little base in Nagasaki called “Dejima.” 10. See Ellen Douglass Leyburn, ^Swiffs View of the Dutch,^ PMLA, LX V I (1951),pp. 734-45. Her well-documented study shows Swift willing to “expose himself to the charge of loving the French,” if that is necessary to attack the perfidy of the Dutch ‘‘allies.’* She holds that there is *'no artistic warrant” for the Japan sections of Part III, it comment typical of much of the criticism that has so long overlooked the centrality of Japan for all parts of the book. In J. Kent Clark, MSwift and the Dutch/* HLQ, XVII (1954), pp. 345- 356, the interpretation of Swiffs complete reversal from favoring the Dutch to scorning them is further detailed. Swifts readings in the his tory of British-Dutch relations in Japan, we believe, were basic in the development of this hostility to Holland in Swift’s mind, aud hence played a fundamental role in Gulliver. 1 1 .Our assumptions of how Swift must have created his great fiction from a body of factual/historical materials have been well expressed and illustrated by the essays of Marjorie Nicolson and Nora M. Mohler on Swift’s use of Royal Society publications. In their essays, republished in Science and Imagination (Ithaca,1956), Nicolson and Mohler concluded from their studies of 1937 on "The Scientific Background of Swiffs Voyage to Laputa” that “Swift’s imagination was eclectic; the mark oi his genius lay less in original creation than in paradoxical and brilliant combinations of familiar materials” (p.111). Stressing historical rather than literary and "scientific ，， materials, we too feel “Swift himself would have been the last to object to the attempts of later travellers* to recognize the specific sources of his satire’’ ( p . 152). — xxi 一