- Kume Kunitake
was a
historian in Meiji andTaishō period Japan . He had a son,Kume Keiichiro , who became a noted painter.Kume was born in
Saga Domain , Hizen (present-daySaga Prefecture ), and was active in attempting to assist the administrative reform of Saga domain during thebakumatsu period.After the
Meiji Restoration , he was selected to join theIwakura mission on its around-the-world voyage in 1871 as the private secretary toIwakura Tomomi . After his return to Japan in 1878, he published the "Tokumei Zenken Taishi Bei-O Kairan Jikki", a five-volume account of the journey, and what he observed of theUnited States andEurope .He became a professor at
Tokyo Imperial University in 1888, while contributing to "Dai Nihon Hennenshi ", an encyclopedic comprehensive history of Japan.In 1889, he was awarded the
Order of the Sacred Treasure . [Brownlee, John. (1997.). "Japanese historians and the national myths, 1600-1945: the age of the gods and Emperor Jinmu," p. 96.]However, in 1892, he was forced to resign after publishing a paper "Shinto wa saiten no kozoku" (Shinto is an outmoded custom), which the government considered to be seditious and highly critical of the
State Shinto system.Kume continued to write and lecture at the Tokyo Semmon Gakko (the predecessor of
Waseda University ).Works
*"Tokumei Zenken Taishi Bei-O Kairan Jikki", Tokyo, 1878
Available in English
* Kume Kunitake. Healey, Graham and Tsuzuki Chushichi, eds. "The Iwakura embassy, 1871-73 : a true account of the ambassador extraordinary & plenipotentiary's journey of observation through the United States of America and Europe" (2002)
References
* Brownlee, John S. (1997) "Japanese historians and the national myths, 1600-1945: The Age of the Gods and Emperor Jimmu." Vancouver:
University of British Columbia Press . ISBN 0-7748-0644-3 Tokyo:University of Tokyo Press . ISBN 4-13-027031-1External links
* [http://www.kume-museum.com/index.html Link to Kume Museum of Art(in Japanese)]
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