| J.W. (John William) Robertson Scott (aka, Robertson-Scott, 1866-1962.) In The People of China
(1900), he detailed the spread of Christianity in China and the
obstacles that the missionaries encountered. During the 1914 war
he was publisher of the Tokyo-based magazine, The New East,
which included articles by D.T. (Daisetz Teitaro) Suzuki. Suzuki
(1870-1966) was a Buddhist scholar and a philosopher of religion who
would later be instrumental in spreading Zen in the west.
Robertson Scott married Elspet "Jessie" Keith. (They invited
Elspet's sister, Elizabeth (1887-1956), to Japan on holiday in
1915. Elizabeth fell in love with the East and sold her return
ticket home. For the next nine years she lived in Japan and
traveled extensively in Korea, China, and the Philippine Islands,
absorbing the atmosphere and sketching the people and places that
interested her. Her first professional exhibit at the Peers Club
Tokyo included original paintings and a limited-edition book of
caricatures of Tokyo socialites. The exhibit was a sell-out
success and the talk of the town. Her success attracted the
attention of woodblock printer Shosaburo Watanabe, who approached
Elizabeth about publishing some of her paintings as woodblock
prints. This began a long and fruitful relationship between
Keith, Watanabe, and his artisans as Elizabeth devoted herself to
learning the traditional shin-hanga style of
printmaking. Keith returned to England in 1924 where she
studied color etching. In 1932 Keith went back to Japan where her
sister, Jessie, helped to promote her works.) Was Robertson Scott
also the publisher of The countryman : a quarterly review and miscellany of rural life and
progress (Oxford; Vol. 1, No. 1, Apr. 1927) ? |
| The
Foundations of Japan, Notes Made During Journeys Of 6,000 Miles In The
Rural Districts As A Basis For A Sounder Knowledge Of The Japanese
People (1922):
In various parts of the country I came upon smallholders who had reached a high degree of proficiency in the fine art of dwarfing trees. One day I stopped to speak with a farmer who by this art had added 1,000 yen a year to his agricultural income. A thirty-years-old maple was one of his triumphs. Another was a pomegranate about a foot and a half high. It was in flower and would bear fruit of ordinary size. The wonder of dwarfing is wrought, as is now well known, by cramping the roots in the pot and by extremely skilful pruning, manuring and watering. While we drank tea some choice specimens were displayed before a screen of unrelieved gold. In the room in which we sat the farmer had arranged in a bowl of water with great effectiveness hydrangea, a spray of pomegranate and a cabbage. 1 |
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1 Scott, J.W. Robertson The Foundations of Japan, Notes Made During Journeys Of 6,000 Miles In The Rural Districts As A Basis For A Sounder Knowledge Of The Japanese People (London: John Murray; 1922. Project Gutenberg, January 6, 2005 [EBook #14613]), pg. 52. Biographical information from The People of China ; Elizabeth Keith; Elizabeth Keith; The Countryman. |