Circus day in Japan, is a simple story about a young brother and sister living in rural, 1950s Japan and the day that they travel to visit a circus. By way of the morning chores that the children perform prior to setting off, and then the journey by foot and train and then the circus spectacle itself, young readers will be transported on an unfamiliar but carefree adventure.
Eleanor Coerr is the author of Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes. Circus Day in Japan was written prior to her more famous work and is quite a different specimen. Firstly, it is bright and optimistic and lacks the pall of predestined tragedy. Also, the simple language and large, vivid illustrations make it much friendlier to be read by, or be read to, a young audience.
The story probably reflects Coerr's own experiences during her first visit to Japan in 1949. She spent a year living with a farming family and had the occasion to visit a circus. When originally published in the 1950s, it likely opened many young eyes to the lifestyle of children in a far off land. For today's children, though, there is the added wonder of learning how we used to live and play in an unelectronic world. |
The English Wikipedia's article for "Japanophile" currently features a portrait of this man. Unlike the bulk of preaching Westerners arriving in Japan from 1853, he found himself enamoured of traditional Japanese culture and lifestyle. For interested readers abroad, he would become the main disseminator of information about "old Japan". Paradoxically, as time passed and his views and writings became dated in the West, his recognition within Japan grew as that of an unusual foreigner who appreciated Japan for what it had been.
Lafcadio Hearn was a remarkable individual whose colourful early life as a tabloid reporter in America would be eclipsed by publications from his later life in Japan. The globetrotting Hearn probably qualified as a "world citizen" long before the term became mainstream. Born in 1850 in Greece, he moved to Ireland as a child and went to school in England and France. He would later live in America and finally Japan. A misfit due to physical impairment (blinded in one eye) and a rebellious, non-conformist personality (he blatantly married a black, single mother while in Cincinnati when such union was illegal and resulted in him being fired from his job) he seemingly would be enthralled with whatever in his environment was being outmoded.
Author Roger Pulvers flexes an impressive vocabulary in his re-creation of transitional Japan as through the eyes of one of its greatest fans. This is an imagined autobiography. It is fictional but based on Hearn's period of life in Japan. Each main chapter covers one of the three Japanese cities in which he resided: Matsue, Kobe, Tokyo. A non-fictional 25 page essay "The Life of Lafcadio Hearn" provides the book's introduction. Selected works authored by Lafcadio Hearn can be found in the library’s collection. |
