Joseph Roggendorf - Between Different Cultures: A Memoir - Couverture rigide

Roggendorf, Joseph

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 1901903869 ISBN 13 : 9781901903867

Editeur : Global Oriental Ltd, 2004

Synopsis

Originally published in Japanese (Ibunka no hazama de) by Bungei Shunju, Japan's leading intellectual monthly, in 1983, shortly after the author's death, the English text from which the Japanese translation was made has only recently come to light. Though framed for the Japanese context he knew and loved for some fifty years, the Roggendorf memoir is enriched by it and causes the writer to define with perhaps even greater clarity and sensitivity than might otherwise have been the case, his life-work, his training for and commitment to his religious vocation within the Jesuit Order, perceptions of the outside world and insights into the nature and values of Japanese society. Roggendorf's life and experience included Germany during the First World War and in the 1920s and 30s, Britain briefly in the late '30s, Japan at war and under the Occupation and subsequently the new post-war Japan. Pen-portraits by Edward Seidensticker, a close friend for many years, and also Hugh Cortazzi who knew Father Roggendorf well, especially in the 1970s, illuminate the man and his work and help fill in some of the inevitable 'gaps' of persona and place. Roggendorf was a superb linguist, teacher and translator; during the war years he was editor of the distinguished Japanese Studies journal Monumenta Nipponica; he was also a philosopher and theologian and, in the view of many who knew him, an extraordinary human being.

A propos du livre

À propos de l?auteur

Joseph Roggendorf was born in 1908, in Mechernich, west of Cologne, the eldest of eight children. He recalls, when returning to the region: 'As I stood there ... looking down on my native town and, further to the east, the plain of Cologne, I felt that it was here, at this spot, that my interest in the intermingling of cultures had begun.' Just before completing his seven years at Gymnasium (1919-26), he announced that he was going to become a priest and join the Society of Jesus (Jesuits); he made his first trip to Japan ten years later. 'The image of Japan had been looming in my motives to join the Jesuit Order, ' he admits. In 1937 he was required to return to Europe (England) to complete his studies at London University so that he could teach in the newly-established English Literature Department at Sophia University. He left England in June 1940, shortly after Dunkirk, and returned to Japan where he was to spend the rest of his life. Fr Roggendorf died suddenly on 27 December 1982.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Global Oriental Ltd
• Date d'édition: 2004
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 1901903869
• ISBN 13: 9781901903867
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 132
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible