Commodore Perry's Minstrel Show

by Wiley, Richard

• ISBN13: 9780292714700
• ISBN10: 029271470X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-03-01
• Publisher: Univ of Texas Pr

Summary

In 1854, Commodore Matthew Perry steamed into Edo Bay and "opened" Japan to trade with America. As entertainment for the treaty-signing ceremony, Perry brought a white-men-in-black-face minstrel show--and thereby confirmed the widely whispered Japanese belief that trade with the American "barbarians" could only lead to cultural ruin. Yet the pawns in this clash of cultures--the minstrels, Ace Bledsoe and Ned Clark, and the Japanese interpreter, Manjiro Okubo--are just slightly more curious than cautious. Within the minstrels Manjiro sensed "the subtleties of spirit that reside in all good men." When Ace and Ned are unwittingly made part of a Japanese plot to undermine the American presence, Manjiro helps them escape into the countryside. Pursued by samurai, torn between treachery and loyalty, Manjiro and the minstrels (along with family, friends, and lovers) make their way across Japan, fleeing a showdown with the samurai that gradually becomes inevitable. Commodore Perry's Minstrel Show is the long-awaited prequel--more than a decade in the making--to Richard Wiley's PEN/Faulkner Award-winning novel, Soldiers in Hiding. A sword-swinging page-turner infused with a heady mix of Japanese etiquette, American ideals, and Machiavellian philosophy, Wiley's latest novel sparkles as it shapes history into an enlightened drama of the earliest moments of globalization.

Author Biography

Richard Wiley is Professor of English and Associate Director of the Black Mountain Institute at the University of Nevada - Las Vegas.

Table of Contents

Prologue

Edo

Dutch Learning

Oh, What I'll Find There I Don't Know

Accident upon Accident

Whitman Sampler

Approach of the Outside World

Tell Him I'm in Mourning!

He Didn't Care about the Neighbors Anymore

Don't Get Up on My Account

A Word Overheard Is a Word Forgotten

The Pavilion of Timelessness

Where Has My Heart Gone?

A Fly in the Ointment

Three Tulips in a Boat

Under the Falling Wisteria

The Experiment of America

Rumors

Fine Mornin', Ain't It?

Commodore Perry's Anxiety

Odawara

Everything Wrong Everywhere

Saved from the Realm of Absolute Calamity

"Kambei"

Angelface

Hired for a Bad Cause

Whoa, Nellie

Come to Me, My Dear, Come

I Guess There's Hooligans Every Damned Where

Twenty Questions

Allergic to Pain

Einosuke's Anger

Japan's Conundrum

An Earlier Walker than His Uncle

Extra Circumspect, From Now On

Behold, Your Defeated Lord

We Can't Have This

Is It Easier to Go or Be Left Behind?

Incense or Prosthetics

Irony Provides Relief

A Fetish without Many Followers

Shimoda

Keiki and the Planting, Ueno and the River Trout

The Wind and Intransigence

Hide This in Your Wagon

The Omen of the Crows

I Have Not, Particularly, Saved Myself

Life Is Short. Fall in Love

Strength and Flexibility

I Am Taking You Home

Knowable People

Not Selling Chestnuts

Outraged Periods and Exclamation Points

It's a Poor Life Anyway

Alas, We Are Defeated

Afterword

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