For aesthetes dissatisfied with the upholstered world of late Victorian taste, Japan offered a cultural richness that mesmerized an unusual gallery of American characters. Their collecting and publicizing of all things Japanese animates this braided tour of cultural encounter. Of the people Benfey follows, none but Henry Adams is a household name today, and he was a latecomer to the Japanese fad, a languid, solace-seeking (after his wife's suicide) tourist among Benfey's group. More distinctive are those who initially sailed to Japan after the Meiji restoration of 1868. Benfey recounts Edward Sylvester Morse's seminal importance; he went to Japan as an anatomist of mollusks and returned as a popular writer and lecturer on Japanese style, particularly architecture. Others brought back immense quantities of artwork, or, like muralist John La Farge, sought a creative change in Japan's land-and seascapes. Conveying both rapture and disappointment with Japanese culture, Benfey draws a sophisticated portrait of the period's personalities. --Gilbert Taylor

Benfey (English, Mt. Holyoke Coll.) examines the relationship between Japan and the United States from the late 1850s to 1913. During that time, Emperor Meiji oversaw Japan's transition from an isolated feudal country to one that began to explore trade with America-an effort that benefited both nations and made Japan a military power to be reckoned with, as evidenced by its victory in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05). Relationships forged by prominent Americans such as Herman Melville, Henry James, Teddy Roosevelt, and Frank Lloyd Wright, to name a few, led an effort to open Japan to the United States through cultural exchanges and diplomacy. Artist and professor Kakuzo Okakura brought the tea ceremony into American society, making a hit in Boston. Benfey's enjoyable narrative provides biographies of these luminaries, looking into the characteristics of each and how they became interested in Japan and how some Japanese reciprocated. Well documented, this scholarly and very readable account provides thought-provoking viewpoints that will appeal to scholars and students who enjoy history. For large public libraries and academic collections.-Steven J. Mayover, formerly with Free Lib. of Philadelphia (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

The quests for spiritual fulfillment of the figures profiled here unfold in extraordinary ways. Disaffected by the mercenary state of American culture in the Gilded Age following the Civil War, many of New England's intellectual elite sought a new social order from the largely unfamiliar Japan, a nation whose own intellectuals were in turn looking to shake off years of isolation and forge a new identity as part the international community. Cultural historian Benfey, a professor of English at Mount Holyoke (Degas in New Orleans), seamlessly braids the far-flung adventures of cultural importers/exporters from both countries and offers an enjoyable collection of eclectic and surprising historical narratives about such figures as Isabella Stewart Gardner and Henry Adams. Benfey traces the importation of Japanese culture to the U.S. back to intrepid pilgrims like Herman Melville, who wrote of exploring Asia's "impenetrable Japans." This curiosity boomed in the cultural confusion after the Civil War, when many Americans felt that European philosophy could advance no further except through mysticism, which the exotic Japan was thought to offer. Benfey relates the lives of several Japanese eccentrics who likewise believed that a foreign culture might provide useful tools for a country similarly in the midst of dramatic change. The cultural exchanges that Benfey describes, at times comic, are tantalizing examples of how nations develop and in what ways they are able to learn from each other. Though Benfey sometimes meanders and indulges in digressions into the decadent lives of 19th-century Boston Brahmins, his account is consistently enjoyable and always informative. (On sale May 6) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

The author of Degas in New Orleans (1997) attempts to define the nexus that arose between the US and Japan in the late 19th century by examining its effect on key cultural and social arbiters of the day. Benfey (English/Mount Holyoke) alludes to the subject of the well-known print by Hokusai in finding that a cultural "Great Wave" from Japan loomed over the US for decades after Commodore Matthew Perry's thinly disguised mission of intimidation in 1853. It crested following the Centennial of 1876, asserts the author, principally on New England's shores, where wealthy, influential Boston Brahmins languished in ennui, looking for some infusion of mysticism to revive a shopworn Protestant climate. Benfey chronicles the infusion of Japan (or a least the concept of "Old Japan") into the writings of brooding Herman Melville and quirky Lafcadio Hearn, the paintings of John LaFarge, and the collections of connoisseurs like Edward Morse and Sturgis Bigelow. On the flip side, the reader will find an account of Manjiro (a.k.a. John Mung), the castaway boy fisherman who, after being raised in Massachusetts, returned home to Japan as a champion of education in the English language, Western ideas, and modern technologies. Fortunately, these extensive documentations are often relieved with juicier bits of gossip that place, say, an enrobed Samurai gigolo--possibly bisexual, definitely an utter snob--sipping tea in a paneled drawing room on Beacon Street. Anecdotal gems such as Frank Lloyd Wright's admission to being "bored to extinction" by the formal Japanese tea ceremony also help lighten the author's forced march from art history through literary criticism to geopolitical ruminations. He barely notes, however, the 1905 event that signaled the unprecedented coming of age of Japanese military technology: the battle of Tsushima, during which the imperial navy destroyed the Russian fleet. A sweeping cacophony of about a half-dozen condensed books. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.