“The Most Warlike Nation” from “Heavenly Beautiful” islands: Japan in Matas Šalčius’s travels

Abstract

The paper seeks to analyse the connections between Japan and Matas Šalčius (September 20, 1890 to May 26, 1940) who was a traveler, writer, journalist and prominent political figure in the inter-war Lithuania. Dynamic fate of Šalčius allowed him to start exploring distant lands comparatively early in his life. What made his explorations important is that he was eager to bring his knowledge and experiences back to Lithuania and share them by publishing articles and books. During his life, Šalčius often chose Asia as a direction for his travels and visited Japan three times: for several weeks in 1915, for around a year in 1918, and, finally, for several days in 1933. This makes Šalčius an important figure, because visits to Japan were rather rare among Lithuanians at that time, making such early encounters between Lithuania and Japan historically important. Furthermore, there exists an open question who was the first Lithuanian to ever visit Japan. Šalčius falls among the candidates who could be considered, adding significance to his travels to Japan.[...]