Cornwallis' Account of Japan

by Joseph Koshimi Yamagiwa

Cornwallis' Account of Japan

A Forgery and Its Exposure

by

Joseph Koshimi Yamagiwa,
Tokyo

In early 1859, five years after Perry's expedition, a young English writer, Kinahan Cornwallis, took advantage of contemporary interest in Japan and brought out a two-volume work entitled Two Journeys to Japan, 1856-57 under the imprint of T. C. Newby of London. Cornwallis' work, as the title indicates, told of two visits to Japan, but also contained a section headed The After-journey in which he purported to describe Nookoora or the Washington Islands. To those familiar with Japan and with anterior Western writings on Japan, Cornwallis' work is today a clear instance of faking and plagiarism. How the English reviewers of the day reacted is, however, the subject of this paper, and I shall begin by indicating in brief the chief materials which they had available, with which to judge and to question the authenticity of Cornwallis' work. Especially available in the later 1850's were the celebrated History of Japan translated by J. G. Scheuchzer from Engelbert Kaempfer's originals and published in 1727, the compilation Manners and customs of the Japanese, which had run through four editions between 1841 and 1852, the volume headed Memorials of the Empire of Japan, edited and compiled by Thomas Rundall for the Hakluyt Society in 1850, and the volumes compiled by Charles MacFarlane in 1852^[1] and by Richard Hildreth in 1855^[2]. The four-volume Narrative of the Perry Expedition,^[3] published in 1856, was also available, and two works by Bayard Taylor^[4] and by Lt. J. W. Spalding^[5] who were members of the Perry expedition. The translation into English of the Russian captain Golovnin's spirited memoirs of a long captivity in Yezo had also reached its third edition in 1852.^[6] The compilations of Steinmetz^[7] and of Kemish^[8] were not yet published, nor the volumes issued by Englishmen who were either members of the diplomatic expedition headed by Lord Elgin or were subsequent sojourners in Japan.^[9]

Perhaps also prejudicial to Cornwallis were two extravagant works which he had previously published. One was a poetical narrative entitled Yarra Yarra,^[10] whose setting was Australia, which Cornwallis had already visited as a member of the British Colonial Civil Service. The other was a prose work called The New El Dorado^[11] which told of British Columbia. Both books had not been well received; and the question had been raised as to whether Cornwallis had actually been in British Columbia.^[12] I have been able to locate six reviews, all anonymous, of Cornwallis' Two Journeys to Japan, four of which appeared on or before February 12, 1859, in the Supplement of the Spectator,^[13] in Chambers' Journal,^[14] in The Literary Gazette,^[15] and in The Athenaeum.^[16] The mildest of these reviewers were suspicious of the exuberant style, but gave themselves up to a somewhat unwilling suspension of disbelief: the most critical, on the other hand, objected to the grave pretensions to authenticity, indicated strange omissions and contradictions, and even went so far as to cite parallel passages from past writings. By the 19th of February, 1859, the publication of Cornwallis' work had even become something of a scandal if we are to judge from the following item in The Athenaeum:

A note from a Correspondent warns us against even the small amount of trust we wore disposed to place in the literal exactness of Mr. Cornwallis's adventures in Japan - as being so much honest faith thrown away. It is just as well that both Mr. Cornwallis and his readers should be acquainted with the doubt that has sprung up. Has he ever been in Japan? Was he not in London at the time given by himself to his adventures in the far Orient? If he can answer these questions, so much the better for his book.^[17]

This direct assault on Cornwallis' honesty brought forth the following answer in the next number of The Athenaeum, in which we read:

Mr. Kinahan Cornwallis, in answer to the question of last week, writes:- "I have simply, but emphatically, to state that I have been in Japan. The circumstance of my having returned to London, within a comparatively short period after visiting that country, may have afforded a sort of foundation for your anonymous Correspondent to build upon.^[18]

But the reviewers, once on the trail, were not to be shaken off. A highly critical review appeared in The British Quarterly Review for April 1,^[19] and another, more moderate in tone, in The Saturday Review of April 30.^[20] The subsequent history of the reception of Cornwallis' work is also interesting. Certain people were apparently taken in by Cornwallis' work, since in 1860 at least two incidents fabricated by Cornwallis were being accepted as genuine and had found their way into an avowed compilation on Japan by the writer S. B. Kemish.^[21] But Englishmen who had actually been in Japan were by 1863 probably agreeing with the first British minister to Japan, Sir Rutherford Alcock, who in The Capital of the Tycoon stated that the Two Journeys to Japan contained "such marvellous adventures as can seldom have fallen to the lot of Paladin or Traveler since the days of Mendez Pinto."^[22]

To revert to 1859, the peculiar nature of Cornwallis' work brought forth a number of reactions, which taken together afford us a picture of the state of knowledge concerning Japan then prevalent among the reviewers of the day, that is, among men who were more or less well-read and prepared to criticize each new book on Japan.

The most serious charge of all, that of plagiarism, was leveled principally by the reviewers in the British Quarterly Review, the Literary Gazette, and the London Spectator Supplement. Both the reviewers in the British Quarterly Review and in the Literary Gazette point out that the description of a wrestling match in Cornwallis is "the same in substance, and in part the same in language, as the one reported in Commodore Perry's trip a few years before,"^[23] that is, in the Narrative of the United States Expedition compiled under the direction of Dr. P. L. Hawks. The reviewer in the British Quarterly Review also indicates that in the Narrative there is a picture and a description of a funeral procession at Shimoda, and virtually the same is found in Cornwallis, with this exception, that the locale has been changed to Hakodate. Furthermore, it was indicated that from the famous work on Japan by Engelbert Kaempfer, Cornwallis had adapted a visit to some Buddhist temples at Miako or present-day Kyoto, and some of the sentences, according to the reviewer, were "positively the same." The London Spectator Supplement finally found that a climbing excursion in the Lew-chew Islands as described by Cornwallis "bore a resemblance to a similar exploit of Bayard Taylor's" and, together with the Literary Gazette, was even more positive of passages in The After-journey, which, as the parallels indicated, were clearly stolen from Typee, written by the American, Herman Melville.

Further investigation along these lines confirms what the reviewers said of Cornwallis and the Narrative of the Perry expedition. The passages stolen by Cornwallis are numerous,^[24] and three pictures instead of one may be traced to the pages of the Narrative.^[25] Moreover, further exploration of past writings on Japan indicates that the originals of the remaining pictures used by Cornwallis came from Phillipp Franz von Siebold's Nippon, Archiv zur Beschreibung von Japan, which had been published in 1832.^[26] What the reviewers said of Cornwallis and Kaempfer is equally true; only, it should be noted that Cornwallis stole from Kaempfer as quoted by Richard Hildreth in Japan as it was and is, and not from Kaempfer directly. Hildreth in 1855 had quoted extensively from Kaempfer, but had been obliged at times to condense what Kaempfer had written. The condensations were re-condensed by Cornwallis, but with obvious retentions of Hildreth's wording.^[27] Whenever Hildreth quoted directly from Kaempfer, Cornwallis also changed the wording, so that at times it appears as if he might have used the English translation of Kaempfer's work (1727) instead of Hildreth's compilation. As partly indicated by the reviewer in the British Quarterly Review, the most extensive plagiarism is from the account, first given by Kaempfer, then quoted by Hildreth, of the trip from Osaka to Yedo, which Kaempfer had undertaken twice, in 1691 and 1692, and which he had described minutely in Book V, Chapters ix to xv of his work. Avoiding tedious quotation, I shall only call attention to the description of Miako or Kyoto as found in Cornwallis, Kaempfer, and Hildreth.^[28] Cornwallis claims to be reporting what a Dutchman at Nagasaki had told him, and places the date of the Dutchman's visit to Miako in 1853. Aside from the fact that the whole passage is a palpable theft from Kaempfer as quoted by Hildreth, Cornwallis was unaware of the fact that Miako at that time had not been visited by Westerners for many years.^[29] Perhaps it might also be added that Cornwallis retained spellings like Jodobas (for Yodobashi) and Jamatto (for Yamato) which would have been proper in transcriptions by Dutch-men or Germans, whose y sound is represented by the letter j, but not by Cornwallis as an Englishman who should have represented the sound by y.

The extensive use which Cornwallis made of Hildreth is also evidenced by Cornwallis' plagiarism of certain passages that Hildreth had borrowed with more honest documentation from two sections of Carl Peter Thunberg's Travels in Europe, Africa, and Asia in which Thunberg had described, first, the plants in and around Nagasaki, and, second, the plants of the Hakone mountains.^[30] Cornwallis, coming later, took Hildreth's summaries of Thunberg,^[31] and joined them together (II, vi, 83-84) and since he was also careless, spoke of all the plants as belonging to Nagasaki and its vicinity, whereas both Thunberg and Hildreth had specifically mentioned two groups, one of plants belonging to Nagasaki and its environs, and the other of plants around the Hakone mountains.

Cornwallis' predatory excursions into past accounts of Japan took him finally to the English translation of Captain Golovnin's exciting memoirs of a long captivity on the island of Yezo between 1811 and 1813. The third edition of Golovnin's work had appeared in 1852.^[32] Portions of it were used by Hildreth, but a description of the Japanese language as given by Golovnin is not to be found in Hildreth, and it seems reasonable to assume that Cornwallis appropriated the passage directly from Golovnin.^[33]

The plagiarism laid at Cornwallis' door by the first reviewers of his book is therefore more than proved. Few of the reviewers knew enough about Japan to contradict, even if they wished to, the material there presented as fact. But most of them ageed on "the flashy and exaggerated rhetoric of the author's style, or rather of his mind." One of them asserted that the smartness of Cornwallis' style was of the kind that engenders smartness of imagination, and even in the most favorable reviews, as those which appeared in Chambers' Journal, the Athenaeum, and the Saturday Review, there are clear indications of the doubts entertained by the writers. Most of the reviewers doubted the story told by Cornwallis of having actually seen a harakiri. The London Spectator Supplement questioned Cornwallis' identification of the Washington islands. Chambers' Journal felt that Cornwallis' estimate of Japanese characteristics was "much too exalted" and that some of the incidents told by Cornwallis wore difficult to believe. The fact that Cornwallis once denies the use of tables and chairs in Japan and then describes their use was at least contradictory, according to the reviewer in the Athenaeum, and both the Athenaeum and the British Quarterly Review found that Cornwallis' studies of the Japanese in the nude were a bit incredible. In the words of the critic in the Saturday Review, Cornwallis, "on his own showing," classifies as "one of those singular persons to whom singular occurrences are always happening in the most singularly appropriate way." More sharply, the reviewer in the Literary Gazette declared that Cornwallis "has never seen the things he writes of so glibly, nor done the feats that he recounts."

Cornwallis' Two Journeys is indeed a tissue of statements that are often diverting but too frequently contrary to fact. There is, for instance, the picture which Cornwallis draws of the Japanese eating with single chopsticks (I, viii, 242-3; II, vii, 194), a picture which might be compared with Captain Golovnin's first report, later corrected, that the Japanese ate with "two or three",^[34] Cornwallis speaks of the Japanese pressing the knuckles of their hands to their breasts, in greeting or in parting (I, v, 151; ix, 244; x, 269-279), whereas the custom smacks more of China than of Japan. Again, no statement more contrary to Japanese notions of courtesy has ever been made than that "the health is never inquired after" (II, vii, 87), although this assertion also may stem from a past account of Japan.

Again, much of Cornwallis' work is taken up by a charming account of a friendship struck with a native.^[35] But the native, his wife, and her friend, bore, according to Cornwallis, the strangely un-Japanese names of Noskotoska, Sondoree, and Tazolee!

That which is foreign to things Japanese is also matched by the erroneous nature of Cornwallis' geographical and topographical knowledge. He is most absurd when he seems to speak of Japan as being separated from Korea by Manchuria (I, Pref., p.v), or when he places Dejima, first in Nagasaki Bay, at a distance from the city of Nagasaki (I, ix, 233), then at its proper location, right at the city (I, ix, 235). The dimensions of the bridge which separated Dejima from Nagasaki proper were, according to Cornwallis, 660 feet by 240 feet, but these dimensions were actually the dimensions of Dejima itself.^[36]

The question might finally be asked, was Cornwallis ever in Japan? Was his book merely a compilation with absolutely no basis in fact, and worth listing in bibliographies only as evidence of contemporary interest in Japan? As the reviewer in the London Spectator Supplement points out, Cornwallis claims to have gone to Japan first on an American "sloop of war," then on an American "steam-frigate," but where the sloop or frigate hailed from, how Cornwallis got on board, what capacity he filled, and how he came to be on board at all, is not to be gathered from his account.^[37]

The dates are questionable because Cornwallis' first entry into and experiences at Shimoda are said to have occurred in 1856 at a time when certain Sandwich islanders were still there. But the Islanders to whom Cornwallis probably refers had already left the port more than one year before, in early June, 1855.^[38] The first date which we get concerning Cornwallis' second trip to Japan is August 12, 1857, when his vessel is reported to have been at Fow-chow, China. Since the Portsmouth, under the command of Captain A. H. Foote, left Shanghai on August 22, and arrived at Shimoda on September 8, 1857,^[39] it may have been that Cornwallis was on this vessel. But there is no record, so far as I have been able to find, of stops having been made either in the Lewchews or at Nagasaki. Cornwallis attained sufficient prominence in later life to warrant inclusion in the Dictionary of American Biography, but the details of his life as there given fail to confirm the statement made in his Two Journeys that he had had experience in the dissecting room of a school of medicine (I, iii, 101). He is even amusing when he writes of his "harum-scarum days" (II, ix, 180), because even in 1859, when he was writing his book, he had barely reached the age of twenty! The book written by Cornwallis in 1860 entitled My Life and Adventures carries a preface in which Cornwallis states that "The writer of this autobiography deems it almost unnecessary to state that (descriptions of places excepted) the same is entirely fictitious." Furthermore, he says that "beyond the mere travels, there is not a single personal experience of the Author given in the book." Perhaps it is significant that the fictitious hero of My Life and Adventures goes around the world but does not stop in Japan.

The reviewers of 1859 did not, collectively, indicate all the plagiarism which we can today detect in Cornwallis' work.

They were able to find a few errors and contradictions and suspected the presence of fabrications. They were least sure of the march of events and of Cornwallis' biography which today make Cornwallis' voyages fictive. But it is clear that the reviewers were all on the right track in suspecting the authenticity of Cornwallis' volumes and in three cases particularly, that is, in the cases of the reviewers in the British Quarterly Review, the Literary Gazette, and the London Spectator Supplement, adduced enough evidence to expose Cornwallis' work as one which could not in the least be trusted.

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1. Charles MacFarlane, Japan; an account, geographical and historical (London, 1862).
2. Richard Hildreth, Japan as it was and is (London, 1855).
3. F. L. Hawks, comp., Narrative of the expedition of an American squadron to the China seas and Japan, performed in the years 1852, 1853, and 1854 (Washington, 1856), 4 vols.
4. Bayard Taylor, A visit to India, China, and Japan in the year 1853 (New York, 1855).
5. Lt. J. W. Spalding. The Japan expedition. Japan and around the world (New York, 1855).
6. Captain Vasilii Mikhailovitch Golovnin, Japan and the Japanese (London, 1852), 2 vols. The first edition was in two parts, namely, Narrative of my captivity in Japan (London, 1818) and Recollections of Japan (London, 1819). The second edition, combining these two parts, was entitled Memoirs of a captivity in Japan; its place of publication was London, its date 1824.
7. Andrew Steinmetz, Japan and her people (London, 1859).
8. S. B. Kemish, The Japanese empire (London, 1860).
9. Notably Laurence Oliphant, Narrative of the Earl of Elgin's mission to China and Japan in the years 1857, '58 '59 (Edinburgh and London, 1859), 2 vols.; and Sir Rutherford Alcock, The capital of the tycoon: a narrative of three years' residence in Japan (London, 1863), 2 vols.
10. Kinahan Cornwallis, Yarra Yarra; or the wandering aborigine (London, 1858).
11. Kinahan Cornwallis, The New El Dorado (London, 1858).
12. Cf. Household Words, XVIII, no. 437 (Aug. 7, 1858), 181-184, for a review of the Yarra Yarra. The reviewer in The Athenaeum, no.1612 (Sept. 18, 1858), 361, calls the New El Dorado a sample of "book-making," and suggests that half of the book, along with the sketches, "may have been done at home." Also, "we cannot say of the personal adventures here detailed that they could not have been as easily imagined as experienced."
13. The Spectator, no.1597 (Feb. 5, 1859), Supplement, p.160.
14. Chambers' Journal, XI, no.267 (Feb. 12, 1859), 100-102.
15. The Literary Gazette, II, no.33 (Feb.12, 1859), 204-205.
16. The Athenaeum, no.1633 (Feb. 12, 1859), 214-215. The Athenaeum, passim, as in No.1634 (Feb. 19, 1859), 242, contained advertisements of Cornwallis' work in which were quoted excerpts of reviews from the Athenaeum itself, from the Literary Gazette, Chambers' Journal, the Birmingham Journal, the Globe, and the World. I have not been able to see the reviews in the last three journals.
17. The Athenaeum, no.1634 (Feb. 19, 1859), 254.
18. Ibid., no.1635 (Feb. 26, 1859), 288.
19. The British Quarterly Review, XXIX, no.58 (Apr. 1, 1859), 483-506. Cornwallis' work is here reviewed in conjunction with the Narrative of the Perry expedition (see note 3), with Japan opened (The Religious Tract Society, 1858), and with Steinetz's book (see note 7).
20. The Saturday Review, VII, no. 183 (Apr. 30, 1859), 533-534.
21. Kemish, op cit. p.50 repeats the story of the harakiri which Cornwallis claimed to have seen; also on p.206 repeats Cornwallis' story of a Japanese child who had rapidly learnt the Arabic numbers. Cf. Cornwallis, I, i, 49-57 and 35-36 respectively.
22. Alcock, op. cit., I, 172n.
23. So The British Quarterly Review, XXIX, no.58 (Apr. 1, 1859), 506.
24. Cf. Hawks, op. cit., I, xxi, 411 and Cornwallis, I, ix, 250-51; Hawks, I, xxiii, 442-43 and Cornwallis, I, vi, 167-68; Hawks, I, xxiii, 443, and Cornwallis I, vi, 170. These passages dealing with Japanese temples, clearly show plagiarism on the part of Cornwallis. Hawks, I, xxiii, 459, refers to Japanese pictures and the illustrations in Japanese books as reminding him of "the monochromatic designs upon the Etruscan vases." Cornwallis, I, ii, 73, uses the same phrase, but with reference to the designs on Japanese porcelain.
25. The picture of the funeral procession is in Hawks, I, xxii, opp. p.426, and in Cornwallis, II, ix, opp. p.252. Cornwallis' picture of "A street in Simoda" (I, ii, opp. p.82) is taken from the "Street in Hakodadi" found in the Hawks' narrative, I, xxiii, opp. p.443. Cornwallis' "A Buddhist temple, at Nagasaki" (II, x, opp. p.206) is traceable to Hawks' "Chief temple, Hakodadi" (I, xxiii, opp. p.442). The reviewer in the Athenaeum apparently regarded Cornwallis' pictures as being genuinely his own.
26. Cf. Cornwallis, I, frontispiece entitled "Ladies witnessing the performance of the actors. At Nagasaki" with the pictures in von Siebold (193), Tafeln I, 117, and 133, entitled in Dutch and in German "Burgerdragt. Bürgertracht" and "Bijwijven van den, Nebenweiber des Mikado". Also Cornwallis, I, x, opp. p.275, "Theatricals at Nagasaki," with von Siebold, Tafeln II, 246, "Gemaskerde Dansers Maskemtänzer." Also Cornwallis, II, frontispiece entitled "My Nagasaki friends. Noskotoska & Tazolee" with von Siebold, Tafeln I, 134 and 135, entitled "Sjogun" and "De vrouw, die Gemahlin d. Sjogun."
27. Cf. Engelbert Kaempfer, The History of Japan . . translated by J. G. Scheuchzer (1906), I, 187-8, Hildreth, op. cit., vi. 68, and Cornwallis, I, xii, 306-7 on the agricultural products of Japan. Other parallels may be adduced.
28. Cf. Cornwallis, II, viii, 147-48 with Kaempfer, op. cit., III, 21, and Hildreth, op. cit., xxxv, 349-50.
29. See James Murdoch, History of Japan (1910-25), III, 614.
30. Carl Peter Thunberg, Travels in Europe. Africa, and Asia (ed. 3, 1796), III, 81¾86, 160-65.
31. Hildreth, op. cit., xxxix, 395; xl, 408.
32. See note 6.
33. Cf. Golovnin, op. cit., (ed. 2, 1824), III, iii, 38-40 and Cornwallis, I, ix, 254-55.
34. Golovnin, op. cit. (ed. 2, 1824), I, ii, 86. The correction is at I, iv, 227n.
35. Cornwallis met the native while viewing the above-mentioned funeral procession (I, ix, 252).
36. Cf. Kaempfer, op. cit., II, 175: Thunberg, op. cit., II, 40.
37. The reviewers in the Athenaeum and the Literary Gazette also found the namelessness of the vessels damning.
38. So M. E. Cosenza, ed., The complete journal of Townsend Harris (1930), 328 n.
39. See J. M. Hoppin, Life of Andrew Hull Foote, rear-admiral United States Navy (New York, 1874), xi, 129, and M. E. Cosenza, ed., The complete journal of Townsend Harris (1930), 387.