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The true story of a half-Chinook, half-Scot adventurer who entered feudal Japan in 1848 and helped pave the way for its modernization.
How Japan, after 250 years of self-imposed isolation, began the process of modernization is in part the story of Ranald MacDonald. In 1848 this half-Scot, half-Chinook adventurer from the Pacific Northwest landed on an island off Hokkaido. Although promptly arrested and imprisoned for seven months in Nagasaki, the intelligent, well-educated MacDonald fascinated the Japanese and became one of their first teachers of English and Western ways.
Based on primary research in Japan and North America, this book chronicles the events leading to MacDonald's journey and his later struggle to obtain recognition at home.
"A story that reads like fiction. . . . [Schodt] is particularly well-qualified to discuss Japanese perspectives on MacDonald's story and has uncovered material hitherto untouched by writers on the subject. This is certainly the definitive work on Ranald MacDonald."
—Jean Murray Cole, author of This Blessed Wilderness and Exile in the Wilderness: The Biography of Chief Factor Archibald McDonald 1790-1853.
"What a gem! Readable and meticulously researched, this book presents a colorful character in his complex cultural context. After 150 years MacDonald finally has his story told fully and accurately."
—Stephen Kohl, Associate Professor of Japanese Literature, Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures, University of Oregon
"Schodt's account of MacDonald's life and his eventual journey to Japan is depicted with the accuracy of a trained academic and the excitement of a skillful novelist."
—Kyoto Journal
Frederik L. Schodt is an author, interpreter, and translator who has written extensively on Japanese culture and Japan-U.S. relations. His classic Manga! Manga! introduced the English-speaking world to Japanese comics culture.