Around the World in Eighty Days, Chapters Twenty-One and Twenty-Two

In which the master of the Tanakadere runs great risk of losing a reward of two hundred pounds; Passepartout sees very well that, even at the Antipodes, it is prudent to have some money in one's pocket; and in which our narrator makes a big deal about something no one else would likely notice.



In putting together the previous post while at work on Monday, I seem to have left the copy of Around the World I've been reading from at my desk. Naturally, the last two days have been snow days in which I was unable to retrieve it. Now, if you remember all my palaver about translations from the first installment, you'll recall that said paperback contained the Stephen W. White translation, not the much more commonly found George Towle translation or the rather dated Henry Frith version, and that I was unable to find the White translation online. Now, obviously, I didn't want to record an installment using a different translation, so after a little more thorough searching I managed to find a Creative-Commons printing from Choptank Press on Google Books, which has no download option but does have a full online preview, so I used that. And that means that those reading along can now use the same edition I'm using! I'm sure this is exciting news to everyone.

These chapters were a little extra-long, so I only got through two of them this time around and thus we only have three illustrations:

2:43 - "The young woman seated aft, felt quite affected looking at the ocean."

10:22 - "The Tankadere was raised like a feather by the wind."

It was pretty much only when we join Passepartout in Yokohama that I think any notes are necessary. At around 21:40, reference is made to the nearby city of Jeddo being the former residence of the Tycoon. First, "Jeddo" is an archaic name for Edo, which itself is the former name of Tokyo. During the Tokugawa period in Japan that ended in 1868, Japan was technically ruled by an Emperor (the "Mikado" the text also refers to), but practically speaking was ruled by the military-feudal governors, or shoguns. In 1600, the shogun of the Tokugawa clan essentially took control of the Japanese government and set up its base of power in Edo, as opposed to Kyoto (formerly called and referred to in the text as "Miako"), where the Emperor was based. This is why Tokyo, and not Kyoto, is the current capital of Japan. Now, taikun (or "tycoon," and yes that's where that term comes from) was the term used to refer to the Tokugawa Shogun, essentially the ruler of the country, when dealing with foreign countries.

Look, I took a college class in the History of Modern Japan twelve years ago to fulfill a liberal arts core requirement, and I'm not letting that go to waste.

About thirty seconds later, which discussing the architecture of the city in a sentence with very strange and confusing syntax, reference is made to "Treaty Promontory," which refers to Honmoku-misaki, or "Treaty Point," which (near as I can tell) is the southern peninsula bounding the Yokohama harbor on the map here.

At 25:01, the text talks about women wearing "the national garment, the 'kirimon, a sort of dressing-gown." Now, the kirimon is one of the versions of the Government Seal of Japan, so I can only assume this is a mistaken reference to the kimono instead, which is clearly what they are describing. While I would definitely say Verne did his homework, I wouldn't necessarily take everything he describes (especially after being translated) as a perfectly accurate description of these foreign cultures.

Last, we hear about how it is sacrilege to kill beeves, which is just an archaic plural for "beef," which used to refer to cows themselves and not just the meat derived thereof.

27:23 - "Night came on. Passepartout returned to the native quarter."

If you would like to read along, I finally found my translation by Stephen W. White online by Choptank Press on Google Books. If you prefer one of the other options, the George Towle translation can be found at Zvi Har’El’s Jules Verne Collection, which is also where I got the illustrations, or the more accurate but rather fusty Henry Frith translation can be found at Project Gutenberg. No reading ahead, though!