Japan is referred to in Gulliver's Travels , the 1726 satirical novel by Jonathan Swift.
Part III of the book has the account of Lemuel Gulliver's visit to Japan, the only real location visited by him. It is used as a venue for Swift's satire on the actions of Dutch traders to that land. His description reflects the state of European knowledge of the country in the 17th and early 18th centuries, and the tensions due to commercial rivalry between the English and the Dutch at that time.
Japan is shown on the map at the beginning of part III, [1] which also shows the island of "Yesso" (i.e. Hokkaido), "Stats island" (Iturup) and "Companys Land" (Urup) to the north. The map also marks the Vries Strait and Cape Patience, though this is shown on the northeast coast of Yesso, rather than as part of Sakhalin, which was little known in Swift’s time. On the island of Japan itself the map shows "Nivato" (Nagato), Yedo (Edo), "Meaco" (Kyoto), Inaba and "Osacca" (Osaka).
The text describes Gulliver's journey from Luggnagg, which took fifteen days, and his landing at "Xamoschi" (i.e. Shimosa [2] ) which lies "on the western part of a narrow strait leading northward into a long arm of the sea, on the northwest part of which Yedo, the metropolis stands". [3] This description matches the geography of Tokyo Bay, except that Shimosa is on the north, rather than the western shore of the bay.
Following early contacts with Portuguese and Spanish explorers and missionaries Christianity became established in Japan in the 16th and 17th centuries. However it became enmeshed in the civil disorder and wars of the pre-Shogun period and with the establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate was proscribed and fiercely repressed. Japan adopted a closed-door policy and European traders were expelled. At this point the custom of e-fumi , "trampling on the crucifix", was introduced as a test for Christians, both in the country and for travellers arriving there. Higgins states [4] that e-fumi "was at the suggestion of Dutch traders who had no scruple about doing so".
Swift satirizes the practice of the Dutch by having Gulliver request, with the backing of the king of Luggnagg, that he be excused from this test, despite claiming to be Dutch himself. He reports the Emperor of Japan was “a little surprised at this, as I was the first of my countrymen to make a scruple of the point” and that he "began to doubt that I was a real Hollander but suspected I might be a Christian," a satire on the Dutch trader who claimed he was "not a Christian but a Dutchman". [5] The Emperor also warned that if the secret should be found out by Gulliver’s countrymen, the Dutch, they would assuredly cut his throat in the voyage. [6]
On his arrival at "Nangasac" (Nagasaki), Gulliver was able to find passage on a ship, which Swift names as the Amboyna, of Amsterdam, a reference to the place of a notorious massacre by the Dutch of ten English traders in 1623. [7]
Jonathan Swift was an Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer, poet and cleric who became Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, hence his common sobriquet, "Dean Swift".
Gulliver's Travels, or Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships is a prose satire of 1726 by the Irish writer and clergyman Jonathan Swift, satirising both human nature and the "travellers' tales" literary subgenre. It is Swift's best known full-length work, and a classic of English literature. Swift claimed that he wrote Gulliver's Travels "to vex the world rather than divert it".
Houyhnhnms are a fictional race of intelligent horses described in the last part of Jonathan Swift's satirical 1726 novel Gulliver's Travels. The name is pronounced either or. Swift apparently intended all words of the Houyhnhnm language to echo the neighing of horses.
Laputa is a flying island described in the 1726 book Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift. It is about 4.5 miles in diameter, with an adamantine base, which its inhabitants can maneuver in any direction using magnetic levitation. It has a cave in the very centre which is precisely there to gather all the rainwater. It is also used by the king to enforce his supremacy.
John Arbuthnot FRS, often known simply as Dr Arbuthnot, was a Scottish physician, satirist and polymath in London. He is best remembered for his contributions to mathematics, his membership in the Scriblerus Club, and for inventing the figure of John Bull.
Lilliput and Blefuscu are two fictional island nations that appear in the first part of the 1726 novel Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift. The two islands are neighbours in the South Indian Ocean, separated by a channel 800 yards (730 m) wide. Both are inhabited by tiny people who are about one-twelfth the height of ordinary human beings. Both kingdoms are empires, i.e. realms ruled by a self-styled emperor. The capital of Lilliput is Mildendo. In some pictures, the islands are arranged like an egg, as a reference to their egg-dominated histories and cultures.
Brobdingnag is a fictional land in Jonathan Swift's 1726 satirical novel Gulliver's Travels occupied by giants. Lemuel Gulliver visits the land after the ship on which he is travelling is blown off course and he is separated from a party exploring the unknown land. In the second preface to the book, Gulliver laments that this is a misspelling introduced by the publisher and the land is actually called Brobdingrag.
A Tale of a Tub was the first major work written by Jonathan Swift, arguably his most difficult satire and perhaps his most masterly. The Tale is a prose parody divided into sections each delving into the morals and ethics of the English. Composed between 1694 and 1697, it was eventually published in 1704. It was long regarded as a satire on religion, and has famously been attacked for that, starting with William Wotton.
The Amboyna massacre was the 1623 torture and execution on Ambon Island of twenty men, including ten of whom were in the service of the English East India Company, and Japanese and Portuguese traders, by agents of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), on accusations of treason. It was the result of the intense rivalry between the East India companies of England and the United Provinces in the spice trade and remained a source of tension between the two nations until late in the 17th century.
Glubbdubdrib was an island of sorcerers and magicians, one of the imaginary countries visited by Lemuel Gulliver in the 1726 satirical novel Gulliver's Travels by Anglo-Irish author Jonathan Swift.
A fumi-e was a likeness of Jesus or Mary onto which the religious authorities of the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan required suspected Christians (Kirishitan) to step, in order to demonstrate that they were not members of that outlawed religion.
Augustan prose is somewhat ill-defined, as the definition of "Augustan" relies primarily upon changes in taste in poetry. However, the general time represented by Augustan literature saw a rise in prose writing as high literature. The essay, satire, and dialogue thrived in the age, and the English novel was truly begun as a serious art form. At the outset of the Augustan age, essays were still primarily imitative, novels were few and still dominated by the Romance, and prose was a rarely used format for satire, but, by the end of the period, the English essay was a fully formed periodical feature, novels surpassed drama as entertainment and as an outlet for serious authors, and prose was serving every conceivable function in public discourse. It is the age that most provides the transition from a court-centered and poetic literature to a more democratic, decentralized literary world of prose.
Lagado is a fictional city from the 1726 satirical novel Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift.
Motte v Faulkner was a copyright lawsuit between Benjamin Motte and George Faulkner over who had the legal rights to publish the works of Jonathan Swift in London. This trial was one of the first to test the Statute of Anne copyright law in regards to Irish publishing independence. Although neither held the copyright to all of Swift's works, the suit became a legal struggle over Irish rights, which were eventually denied by the English courts. Faulkner, in 1735, published the Works of Jonathan Swift in Dublin. However, a few of the works were under Motte's copyright within the Kingdom of Great Britain, and when Faulkner sought to sell his book in London, Motte issued a formal complaint to Jonathan Swift and then proceeded to sue Faulkner. An injunction was issued in Motte's favor, and the book was prohibited from being sold on British soil. The basis of the law protected the rights of the author, and not the publisher, of the works, and Swift was unwilling to support a lawsuit against Faulkner. With Swift's reaction used as a basis, the lawsuit was later seen as a struggle between the rights of Irishmen to print material that were denied under English law.
Luggnagg is an island kingdom, one of the imaginary countries visited by Lemuel Gulliver in the 1726 satirical novel Gulliver's Travels by Anglo-Irish author Jonathan Swift.
"Politics vs. Literature: An Examination of Gulliver's Travels" is a critical essay published in 1946 by the English author George Orwell. The essay is a review of Gulliver's Travels with a discussion of its author Jonathan Swift. The essay first appeared in Polemic No 5 in September 1946.
Balnibarbi is a fictional land in Jonathan Swift's 1726 satirical novel Gulliver's Travels. it was visited by Lemuel Gulliver after he was rescued by the people of the flying island of Laputa.
Maldonada is a fictional city from the 1726 satirical novel Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift. It is the main port of the kingdom of Balnibarbi.
The cultural influence of Gulliver's Travels has spanned centuries.