Conan Doyle and Japan
Conan Doyle and Japan is an article written by Mikio Kawamura published in the A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (Vol. 5, 1994).
This historical and cultural study examines Arthur Conan Doyle's indirect connections with Japan, analysing references in the Sherlock Holmes stories, the influence of Professor William K. Burton, and early Japanese translations and receptions of his work. It also documents Japanese encounters with Conan Doyle in London and explores how he was perceived in Japan during the early twentieth century.
Conan Doyle and Japan
ACD takes on a slightly oriental appearance in the illustration for the cover of Mikio Kawamura's Japanese biography.
Conan Doyle resurrected Sherlock Holmes, who was believed to have died with Professor Moriarty at the bottom of the Reichenbach Falls, in the October 1903 issue of the Strand Magazine.
On his return to London, Holmes told Watson, in 'The Empty House', that he had some knowledge of baritsu, or the Japanese system of wrestling, and this had been useful to him on more than one occasion.
In the duel at the Reichenbach Falls, Moriarty rushed at Holmes and threw his long arms around him. The two tottered together on the brink of the Falls, before Holmes slipped the grip of Moriarty, leaving the latter unable to regain his balance before falling over the precipice. When I stayed in London, and being a member of The Sherlock Holmes Society of London, I could pride myself upon the undeniable fact that it was that Japanese art of wrestling which had saved the life of Sherlock Holmes.
Whether Conan Doyle himself had a systematic knowledge of Japan is, however, still very questionable and rather unlikely.
If a Londoner of a hundred years ago had straddled the Greenwich Meridian and looked to the East, he could possibly have seen as far as China but would have stopped there. The face of some Grandfather clocks in those days did show the time differences in the world then known to Britons, but to the east the limit of knowledge was, at best, China. I have never seen in London a face which stretched as far out as Japan.
That small country of Japan, located far to the east and, like Britain, an island, went to war with China and was victorious in 1895. It was not surprising, then, that Great Britain formed an Anglo-Japanese Alliance in 1902 against Russia, and with this backing, Japan dared to declare war against the Russian Empire. It would not be unusual, then, for a prominent person of the time, like Conan Doyle, to show interest in the land of the rising sun. As a matter of fact, some references were made to Japan in some of the Sherlock Holmes stories, though only occasional ones.
In 'The Gloria Scott', old Trevor had a Japanese cabinet in his possession and told Holmes that he had visited Japan. In 'The Greek Interpreter', Mr Melas caught a glimpse of what seemed to be a suit of Japanese armour in the room into which he was shown. A Japanese vase was seen by both Holmes and Watson in the museum-like room of Nathan Garrideb in 'The Three Garridebs'. Also, in 'The Illustrious Client', Baron Gruner questioned Watson's knowledge of the Emperor Shomu and the Shoso-in near Nara. Such are the references made to Japan. Regrettably, no Japanese person appeared in any of the sixty Sherlock Holmes stories.
Conan Doyle wrote many other stories besides the Holmes adventures and one of them, 'Jelland's Voyage', was set in Yokohama. In this short tale of the blue water, action took place in the mid-1860s, just before the Meiji Restoration.
- The middle of the sixties was a stirring time out in Japan. That was just after the Simonoseki bombardment, and before the Daimio affair. There was a Tory party and there was a Liberal party among the natives, and the question that they were wrangling over was whether the throats of the foreigners should be cut or not. If you lived in a treaty port, you were bound to wake up and take an interest in them.
'Jelland's Voyage' is the story of two young men, Henry Jelland and Willy McEvoy, employed by a European businessman named Randolf Moore, who carried out his 'trading-house-export-import business' in the water-front colony in Yokohama.
How Conan Doyle had obtained the knowledge of Japan to enable him to write a story of foreign residents there remains unknown, though one of the sources of information must have been his dear old friend, William Burton. ACD's early novel, The Firm of Girdlestone, was prefaced by the words 'to my old friend Professor William K. Burton, of the Imperial University, Tokyo, who first encouraged me, years ago, to proceed with this little story, I desire affectionately to dedicate it'
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Burton was born in Edinburgh in 1856, three years before Conan Doyle, and he became an engineer in hydrodynamics and mechanical engineering. In 1884, at the World Exhibition of Hygiene in London, Burton met Mr Nagai, Director of Hygiene at the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Imperial Japanese Government, and at his invitation went to Tokyo as professor of hygienics at the Imperial University of Tokyo.
In Japan, at that time, it was considered imperative to build a modern water supply system to meet the needs of the rapidly-growing industries, as well as of the military. The prevention of epidemic diseases was the backbone of 'a wealthy nation with a strong army' policy. Burton, in response to such a governmental requirement, took charge of the building of the new water supply systems in big cities like Yokohama, Tokyo, Nagoya and Hiroshima.
Burton was also a skilled photographer and published a photographic book of a large earthquake in the Nohbi region of Japan in 1891, titled A Big Earthquake in Japan. He visited the site and took many photographs in order to emphasise to the public the importance of the policy on earthquakes.
He contracted malaria while engaged in the construction of the water system in Formosa and returned to Tokyo to recover from the disease. Unfortunately his return was in vain: he died in 1899 at the age of 43, leaving his Japanese wife, Matsuko, and their daughters.
Burton was an expert in photography and Conan Doyle learned this art from him. While Burton was in Japan, ACD took custody of his bank passbook. He also took the role of Burton's assistant in photographic matters. There appears to have been a long-standing and very close friendship between the two gentlemen and there were frequent exchanges of correspondence, from which it may be surmised that ACD obtained from Burton the information on, and knowledge of, Japan that he required for his story-writing.
But how was Conan Doyle seen through Japanese eyes? His first Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet, was published in 1887, and some of the stories appeared in Japan in the form of Japanised translations in which all the characters and situations were completely transformed into Japanese. But the fact that the stories appeared at all shows how eager were the Japanese to transplant Western culture into Japan.
Shinzo Koizumi, a most celebrated literary figure in Japan, touched on Conan Doyle in his book My Daily Life, published in 1963:
- I recognise carrying some English taste in myself as the result of my stay for two years there as a student at the age of twenty-five, as my father was when he stayed there... A warm fire in the fire-place, a whisky and soda, a detective story. This combination is undoubtedly English. My first stay in England was during the time of Great Peace, some years before the First World War. Night falls into the deep fog and suddenly noise starts as the theatres closed and whistles are heard everywhere to call for cabs. Policemen over six-feet and wearing helmets try to control the traffice; a gentleman in a frockcoat and opera-hat and wearing an overcoat comes out of the theatre and passes through the jammed traffic in a hansom with a lady beside him. I can clearly picture those scenes in my memory and this is also the atmosphere in the Sherlock Holmes stories.
- I am not sure what other famous detectives ever existed before Conan Doyle created Holmes. There must have been detective stories before him. However, once Conan Doyle took up his pen, things changed completely. Sherlock Holmes, his creation, was accepted as a real historical character and Baker Street, where he was supposed to live, was considered a historical site... The writer, Conan Doyle, was a very patriotic person though never bureaucratic or militant. His spirit respecting justice and freedom is duly reflected in the words and actions of Sherlock Holmes.
Although Conan Doyle made no trip to the East, there were at least two Japanese who met him in London. One was Mr Kan-Ichi Ando who was born in Tokyo in 1878 and later became an English teacher. In 1909, while he was teaching English at a middle school in Kagoshima, the southern island of Japan, he was selected as an attendant member of Baron Shimazu's mission and left Yokohama for the United States and Great Britain. The next January in London he finally succeeded in meeting Conan Doyle in the lobby of the Piccadilly Hotel.
A Japanese fortnightly magazine for students learning English, English Youth, carried his account in its 1 April 1911 issue:
- Feeling the door was open behind him, that gentleman stopped reading his newspaper and stood up to turn to me slowly. With his splendid physique, over six-foot tall, with his hair neatly parted, a moustache in the shape of the Japanese character eight, a rosy colour which is exceptionally beautiful even among English gentlemen suffuses his gentle countenance, just like the aura of Japanese cherry blossom. His amiable eyes were glittering authoritatively, but not pressingly and his broad breast suggests embracing a baby with love. This authoritative and kindly gentleman looked straight at me...
So, both Conan Doyle and Ando shook hands firmly. ACD was fifty years old then and at the peak of his life:
- Ah, this is the very gentleman I had long waited to see, with whom, even in my dream I had looked for the opportunity to meet and to learn from. This is Doctor Doyle, whose books I had never let out of my sight. I was so overwhelmed that I was almost blinded.
Ando came very close to fainting.
In this interview, ACD told him that Professor Burton had been his classmate from primary school to university and that Burton had gone to Japan and served with great merit in the construction of the water system in Tokyo. He also told him that Burton had two or three children by his Japanese wife, though he had passed away six years before, and that he had been an authority on photography.
The talk extended to religion, sport, ACD's own stage work, his family tree and his own books. ACD said that such gallant exploits as Brigadier Gerard's were his favourite subject to deal with and that, though he had concentrated his effort on historical novels, they had failed to receive public popularity as high as he had expected, and that, on the contrary and to his astonishment, those detective stories had become more successful.
Kan-Ichi Ando later became a professor at Osaka Higher Commercial College.
In 1924 he left Japan again for his second overseas trip to the United States and Great Britain. But this time he lost his health while staying in America and, though he did set foot in England, his illness prevented his reaching London. He tried to recover on the Isle of Wight, but died there in January 1925 without meeting Conan Doyle again, as he had desperately hoped to do.
Another Japanese who made Conan Doyle's acquaintance was Mr Jirohachi Satsuma who was born in 1901 with a silver spoon in his mouth. His paternal grandfather was called a king of the cotton industry and his maternal grandfather was a pioneer of the woollen-textile industry. At the age of 18 he went first to London, then moved to Paris. He soon attracted the attention of Paris society for his extravagance and his extraordinary and gorgeous daily life. He was said to have spent as much as 60 billion yen, or 200 million pounds, in the value of those days, but returned to Japan penniless.
Jirohachi published his autobiography and, in addition, there are several biographies by Japanese authors. According to his autobiography, and the biography by Jiro Kubota, the meeting between Conan Doyle and Jirohachi took place like this: upon his arrival in London, Jirohachi was sent to a parsonage at Whitchurch in Hampshire. But this simple country life did not keep him long and afer a while he became the guest of Dr Knox in Richmond, thanks to the introduction of Arthur Diosy, who was then vice-president of The Japan Society. On an evening in May 1922 (though a date of 1923 makes more sense)*, old Diosy, who was very fond of Jirohachi, invited him to the famous Savage Club. There, in the salon of the club, Jirohachi was introduced to Conan Doyle who was then some sixty years old and a well-established writer. To a young man like Jirohachi, the atmosphere was almost like a dream. He was flanked by Diosy and Conan Doyle and their conversation sounded like a talk in the dream. Their conversation had inadvertently shifted to the recent discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamen when Jirohachi broke the silence so suddenly as to surprise even himself. 'Lawrence, yes, can I see Lawrence of Arabia? If possible I would definitely like to see him.'
The two Romantics looked at each other in surprise. Old Diosy, however, was an amiable person who would not say 'no!' so easily. 'It would be next to impossible to see him-like sneaking into the harem in a palace built in a mirage on the Arabian desert,' said Diosy. 'Yes, it would be most difficult to see him. The Daily Mail reported that Lawrence was recently seen in Rassa,' responded Conan Doyle. 'Even Sherlock Holmes could not trace him.' In spite of their talk that evening, Jirohachi eventually did see Lawrence of Arabia and thus remains the only Japanese to have met him.
(*) Neither makes sense. ACD was in America on both dates. His visit in 1922 began on 9 April and ended on 24 June. The 1923 visit began on 3 April and ended on 4 August — Ed.
- Article courtesy Christopher Roden, founder of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (1989-2003).
