VAN REED, Eugene Miller.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Waei showa ("Japanese-English Merchant Dialogues"). Second edition, published a year after the rare first edition, of this early English-Japanese phrasebook, the first published by an American in Japan. Van Reed was a merchant and the Kingdom of Hawai'i's first consul to Japan. WorldCat records one institutional copy outside Japan.This phrasebook opens with the katakana and hiragana syllabaries and basic numerals, before moving on to crucial conversational sentences for a merchant, such as "We always sell for cash", "If you will sell cheap I will buy", "Have the goods sent down early to the jetty", and "You have been very reckless in trading".Eugene Van Reed (1835-1873) became interested in Japan after meeting Joseph Heco and began working at the consulate in Kanagawa in 1859. He also worked as a trader for Augustine Heard & Co., importing and exporting goods. He is most famous for sending the first Japanese immigrants, the Gannenmono, to Hawai'i without the Meiji government's permission. He nevertheless was written about positively in Japanese sources, such as in the 1863 work Chinji Yokohama banashi where he was described as "A man of great knowledge and connoisseurship, who interacts with others using Japanese gestures and facial expressions" (Takahashi, p. 130).The first edition was issued under the title Shoyo kaiwa in 1861 and is only held by six institutions.

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