Abstract
ALTHOUGH Prof. Morse's connection with Japan has been comparatively short and interrupted, few men have done so much for scientific progress in that country. About ten years ago he first visited Japan in order to study certain forms of ocean life on its coasts, and, fortunately, was induced to accept the Chair of Zoology in the University of Tokio. While holding this office he did much to arouse an interest in the minds of his students for biological research, and he established a Biological Society, which is, we believe, still at work. By his discovery and thorough investigation of the shell-mounds at Omori, near Tokio, he stimulated prehistoric studies. His monograph on these mounds—although perhaps his theory as to the builders may not, on more extended examination, have proved tenable—was followed by a number of publications on the Japanese Stone Age, cave-dwellers, and the like; and in many less generally known directions his influence on the advance of science in Japan has been a beneficial and stimulating one. His first visit to Japan has been followed by two others, during which he visited all parts of the country, as well as other regions of Eastern Asia, and has collected material on a variety of matters. The present volume is a monograph on the house in Japan;—the different types of houses, their mode of construction, the uses of each part, the varieties in each from the roof to the foundation, the types and uses of household utensils, & c. The illustrations, which are beautiful, are also very numerous, being, on the average, about one to a page. Without them it would, indeed, be difficult for readers who are not well acquainted with Japanese houses to follow the descriptions. Many of these details Prof. Morse thinks it may soon be difficult, if not impossible, to obtain, and therefore like an old Japanese to whom he refers, and who “held it a solemn duty to learn any art or accomplishment that might be going out of the world, and then to describe it so fully that it might be preserved to posterity,” he now describes and copies them for the benefit of future generations who may not have the opportunity of seeing these evidences of Japanese skill and sense of beauty. We do not apprehend that the Japanese will ever change so far as to substitute the jerry-builder for their own carpenters, and we do not think that their style of architecture will ever greatly alter, for the simple reason that they have now what, on the whole, is the fittest. Nevertheless we cannot but be grateful to Prof. Morse for making the Japanese house, inside and out, so familiar to English readers. His work is so clear and detailed that we see no reason why any one who feels so disposed should not be able to erect for himself a home in the Japanese style in England.
Japanese Homes and their Surroundings.
By Edward S. Morse, Director of the Peabody Academy of Science. (London: Sampson Low, 1886).
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Japanese Homes . Nature 34, 26 (1886). https://doi.org/10.1038/034026a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/034026a0