1.
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
