Bibliography
Books Which Help One to Understand the Orient and Its People
In this bibliography no attempt has been made to cover the field of books about the leading countries of the Orient. The aim has been to mention the books which the tourist will find most helpful. Guide books are indispensable, but they give the imagination no stimulus. It is a positive help to read one or two good descriptive accounts of any country before visiting it; in this way one gets an idea of comparative values. In these notes I have mentioned only the books that are familiar to me and which I have found suggestive.
JAPAN
Of all foreigners who have written about Japan, Lafcadio Hearn gives one the best idea of the Japanese character and of the literature that is its expression. Hearn married a Japanese lady, became Professor of English Literature at the Imperial University of Tokio, renounced his American citizenship, and professed belief in Buddhism. He never mastered the Japanese language but he surpassed every other foreign student in his ability to make real the singular faith of the Japanese in the presence of good and evil spirits and the national worship of beauty in nature and art. Hearn's father was Greek and his mother Irish. In mind he was a strange mixture of a Florentine of the Renaissance and a pagan of the age of Pericles. In The West Indies he has given the best estimate of the influence of the tropics on the white man, and in Japan: An Interpretation, In Ghostly Japan, Exotics and Retrospections, and others, he has recorded in exquisite literary style his conception of Japanese character, myths and folk-legends. His work in this department is so fine that no one else ranks with him. He seems to have been able to put himself in the place of the cultivated Japanese and to interpret the curious national beliefs in good and evil spirits and ghosts. He has also made more real than any other foreign writer the peculiar position of the Japanese wife. Hearn was a conservative, despite his lawless life, and he looked with regret upon the transformation of old Japan, wrought by the new desire to Europeanize the country. He paints with great art the idyllic life of the old Samauri and the loyalty of the retainers to their chief.
Sir Edwin Arnold, who in his old age married a Japanese lady, has given excellent pictures of life in Japan in Seas and Lands and Japonica. Religions of Japan by W. E. Griffis gives a good idea of the various creeds. Mr. Griffis in The Mikado's Empire also furnishes a good description of Japan and the Japanese.
In Fifty Tears of New Japan, Count Okuma has compiled a work that gives a complete survey of Japanese progress during the last half century. Among the contributors are many of the leading statesmen and publicists of Japan.
Of fiction, the scene of which is laid in Japan, one of the most famous stories is Madame Chrysantheme by Pierre Loti, a cynical sketch of the Japanese geisha, or professional entertainer. Another good story which lays bare the ugly fate that often befalls the geisha, is The Lady and Sada San by Frances Little, the author of that popular book, The Lady of the Decoration.
Other books that will be found valuable are Norman, The New Japan; Chamberlain, Things Japanese; Treves, The Other Side of the Lantern; Murray, Handbook of Japan; Clement, Handbook of Modern Japan; D'Autremer, The Japanese Empire; Hartshorne, Japan and Her People; Fraser, A Diplomatist's Wife In Japan; Lloyd, Everyday Japan; Scidmore, Jinrikisha Days In Japan; Knox, Japanese Life In Town and Country; Singleton, Japan, As Described By Great Writers; Inouye, Home Life In Tokio.
MANILA
The acqusition of the Philippine Islands by the United States has led to a great increase of the literature on the islands, especially in regard to educational and industrial progress. Among the old books that have good sketches of Manila are A Visit to the Philippine Islands by Sir John Browning.
For sketches of the city since the American occupation see Worcester, The Philippine Islands and Their People; Landor, The Gems of the East; Dennis, An Observer in the Philippines; Potter, The East To-day and Tomorrow; Moses, Unofficial Letters of An Official's Wife; Hamm, Manila and the Philippines; Younghusband, The Philippines and Round About; Stevens, Yesterdays in the Philippines; Arnold, The Philippines, the Land of Palm and Pine; and LeRoy, Philippine Life in Town and Country.
HONGKONG
Good descriptive sketches of Hongkong may be found in Norman, The Peoples and Politics of the Far East; Des Veux, A Handbook of Hongkong; Colquhoun, China in Transformation; Penfield, East of Suez; Treves, The Other Side of the Lantern; Ball, Things Chinese; Thomson, The Changing Chinese; Singleton, China As Described by Great Writers; and Liddell, China, Its Marvel and Mystery.
SINGAPORE
Sir Stamford Raffles, the founder of Singapore, was one of the British Empire builders who was very shabbily treated by the English government. Unaided, he prevented the Dutch from obtaining exclusive control over all the waters about Singapore and he was also instrumental in retaining Malacca, after the East India Company had decided to abandon it. He was appointed Lieutenant-Governor of Java after the English wrested the island from the Dutch in 1810. His ambition was to make Java "the center of an Eastern Insular Empire," but this project was thwarted by the restoration of Java to Holland. The Raffles Museum in Singapore, one of the most interesting in the Orient, was his gift.
Sketches of Singapore may be found in Sir Frank Swettenham's British Malaya, Malay Sketches and The Real Malay; Wright and Reed, The Malay Peninsula; Belfield, Handbook of the Federated Malay States; Harrison, Illustrated Guide to the Federated Malay States; Ireland, The Far Eastern Tropics; Boulger, Life of Sir Stamford Raffles; Buckley, Records of Singapore.
RANGOON
There is a large literature on Burma, which seems to have appealed to British travelers. Among the books that have chapters devoted to Rangoon are Cuming, In the Shadow of the Pagoda; Bird, Wanderings in Burma; Hart, Picturesque Burma; Kelly, The Silken East; MacMahon, Far Cathay and Farther India; Vincent, The Land of the White Elephant; Nisbet, Burma Under British Rule and Before; Hall, The Soul of a People and A People at School.
INDIA
The literature about India is very extensive, so that only a few of the best books may be mentioned here. To the tourist the one indispensable book is Murray's Handbook for Travelers in India, Ceylon and Burma, which is well provided with maps and plans of cities. For general description, among the best works are Malcolm, Indian Pictures and Problems; Scidmore, Winter India; Forrest, Cities of India; Kipling, From Sea to Sea; Stevens, In India; Arnold, India Revisited; Low, A Vision of India (describing the journey of the Prince of Wales in 1905-6); Caine, Picturesque India; Things Seen in India.
For the history of India, some of the best books are Lane-Poole, Mediæval India and The Mogul Emperors; Fanshawe, Delhi, Past and Present; McCrindle, Ancient India; Rhys-Davids, British India; Roberts, Forty-one Tears in India; Holmes, History of the Indian Mutiny; Innes, The Sepoy Revolt; Curzon, Russia in Central Asia; Colquhoun, Russia Against India.
On the religions of India: Rhys-Davids, Buddhism; Warren, Buddhism in Translations; Clarke, Ten Great Religions; Hopkins, Religions of India; Arnold, The Light of Asia.
EGYPT
Egypt has changed so much during the last twenty years that books written before that time are practically obsolete. The dahabiyeh is no longer used for Nile travel, except by tourists of means and large leisure, since the tourist steamers make the trip up and down the Nile in one quarter the time consumed by the old sailing vessels. Cairo has been transformed into a European city and even Luxor is modernized, with its immense hotels and its big foreign winter colony.
Bædeker's Egypt is the best guide book, but be sure that you get the latest edition, as the work is revised every two or three years. The introductory essays in this volume on Egyptian history, religion, art and Egyptology are well worth careful reading. The descriptions of the ruins and the significance of many of the hieroglyphs are helpful. Of general descriptive works on Egypt, some of the best are Penfield, Present Day Egypt (1899); Jeremiah Lynch, Egyptian Sketches, a book by a San Franciscan which gives a series of readable pictures of Cairo and the voyage up the Nile; Holland, Things Seen in Egypt.
Of Egypt, before it was transformed by the British, standard works are Lane, Cairo Fifty Tears Ago; Lady Duff-Gordon, Letters From Egypt (covering the period from 1862 to 1869). Good historical works are Lane-Poole, Egypt, and the Story of Cairo; Ebers, Egypt, Descriptive, Historical, and Picturesque.
Of the administration of England in Egypt, the best book is Lord Cromer's Modern Egypt. Other works are Milner, England in Egypt; Colvin, The Making of Modern Egypt. The story of Gordon's death at Khartoum is well told in Stevens, With Kitchener to Khartoum and Churchill, The River War.
Several valuable works on Egyptian archeology have been written by Maspero and Flinders-Petrie. Maspero's Art in Egypt, which is lavishly illustrated, will be valuable as a guide book. Flinders-Petrie's Egyptian Decorative Art is worth reading.