- William Adams (1620†)
- Lafcadio Hearn (1904†)
- Ernest Fenollosa (1908†)
- Sir Ernest Mason Satow (1929†)
- Wenceslau de Moraes (1929†)
- Reginald Horace Blyth (1964†)
- Arthur Waley (1966†)
- A.L. Sadler (1970†)
- Ezra Pound (1972†)
- Ivan Morris (1976†)
- Oreste Vaccari (1980†)
- Paulo Leminski (1989†)
- Edwin O. Reischauer (1990†)
- Edward Seidensticker (2007†)
- Carmen Blacker (2009†)
- Herbert E. Plutschow (2010†)
Arbitrarily excluding entrepreneurial nihonjironism (Drucker). I haven’t read Thunberg or Siebold so I don’t know if they qualify as japanophiles—if they had that bright blind feverish enthusiasm for the romanticized Other that all japanophiles must at least go through. Should Fernão Mendes Pinto be included (is there truth to the rumors that his affection for Japan was toned down by the Jesuit censors)? Should Pierre Loti? Pending verification.
Please help me complete this list.
Maybe Edwin O. Reischauer (1990†)?
I’m still unfamiliar with his writings but up he goes.
What about William George Aston (1911†), and, by extension, Ernest Mason Satow (1929†) and Basil Hall Chamberlain (1935†)?
Do you know of Fosco Maraini? He was an Italian anthropologist who worked in Japan and was then interned in a concentration camp at Nagoya for two years during WWII because he refused to swear allegiance to Mussolini. His classic is “Meeting with Japan”. Remarkable book.