Sumario: | "Here is a rare first-hand account by a foreigner living and working in Japan in the first half of the twentieth century which provides a unique insight into this important period of Japan's history, and complements the existing archival material. Beginning his career as a student interpreter, Oswald White went on to become an assistant in Korea, Vice-Consul in Yokohama and Osaka, Consul in Nagasaki and Dairen, then Consul-General in Seoul, Osaka, Mukden and Tientsin. Not a contemporary diary as such, but a write-up of notes made towards the end of White's career spanning thirty-eight years. Importantly, it includes reflective passages on the momentous developments of the later 1930s, as Japan moved onto a war-footing in China--and as Consul-General in the Chinese treaty port of Tianjin under Japanese occupation, White was in the middle of the growing tensions between Britain and Japan. His recollections after leaving Korea (summer 1941) are also valuable. Like others who had lived and worked in Japan, he sought to come to terms with what had happened to the country in which he had spent so much of his adult life. Along the way he provides fascinating vignettes of his colleagues, some well known, others less so, while his service in Seoul, Mukden (now Shenyang) and Tianjin provides fresh information on the development of the Japanese colonial empire."--Provided by publisher.
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