The Soul of the Far East

What It's About

Written after Percival Lowell's years living in Japan and Korea, this is an attempt to explain the Far Eastern mind to Western readers. Across eight chapters (Individuality, Family, Adoption, Language, Nature and Art, Art, Religion and Imagination) Lowell examines how East Asian habits of thought differ from Western ones. He draws on everyday observation, Japanese grammar and custom, and the science of his day. The tone is witty and literary, and the book is also a revealing document of how Victorian Westerners saw Asia.

Key Concepts

Lowell's central argument is that Far Eastern peoples are marked by "impersonality", a weak sense of the individual self. He traces this through family structure, the widespread practice of adoption, a language that often avoids personal pronouns, and an art and religion that favour the general over the particular. He frames this through contemporary evolutionary theory, suggesting these societies had reached the end of their development, a view he sums up with the phrase "the survival of the unfittest". Modern readers will recognise the book as a product of its time. Its racial-evolutionary framework and sweeping generalisations have been widely criticised as Orientalist, and it is now read as much for what it shows about Western attitudes as for what it says about Japan.

About the Author

Percival Lowell (1855–1916) was a wealthy Boston aristocrat, businessman, writer and astronomer. After travelling in the Far East in the 1880s, including serving as a foreign secretary to a Korean diplomatic mission, he turned to astronomy and founded the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. He is best remembered for his belief in canals on Mars and his search for a ninth planet.