 | Joseph Roggendorf - Between Different Cultures Subjects: Education Ancient.; Education Greek.; Education; Classical education; Classical education.; Education.; Education Ancient.; Education Greek.; Originally published in Japanese ( Ibunka no hazama de ) by Bungei Shunju , Japan's leading intellectual monthly, in 1983, shortly after the author's death, the English text from which the Japanese translation was made has only recently come to light. Though framed for the Japanese context he knew and loved for some fifty years, the Roggendorf memoir is enriched by it and causes the writer to define with perhaps even greater clarity and sensitivity than might otherwise have been the case, his life-work, his training for and commitment to his religious vocation within the Jesuit Order, perceptions of the outside world and insights into the nature and values of Japanese society. Roggendorf's life and experience included Germany during the First World War and in the 1920s and 30s, Britain briefly in the late '30s, Japan at war and under the Occupation and subsequently the new post-war Japan. Pen-portraits by Edward Seidensticker, a close friend for many years, and also Hugh Cortazzi who knew Father Roggendorf well, especially in the 1970s, illuminate the man and his work and help fill in some of the inevitable 'gaps' of persona and place. Roggendorf was a superb linguist, teacher and translator; during the war years he was editor of the distinguished Japanese Studies journal Monumenta Nipponica ; he was also a philosopher and theologian and, in the view of many who knew him, an extraordinary human being. |
