Kristin Young
Lilla S. Perry, A Treasure Hunt in Japan
Due to a general interest in Japan, I used it as one of my keywords in searching through
the Amherst College Archives and Special Collections. After scrolling past dozens of theses in
which Japan plays a role, I came to a group of mixed material collections and one individual
manuscript: A Treasure Hunt in Japan. So that’s what first attracted me to this manuscript. Just a
place. What kept me interested were the genre, the writer, the voice, and the circumstances. A
Treasure Hunt in Japan is the title Lilla Perry gave to her 1936 journal of her trip to Japan. I
wanted to look at a journal or diary in order to feel a sense of history and real emotion, and the
voice of Lilla Perry provides both of those. She writes her journal somewhat like a novel; she
depicts important events and adds some emotional description concerning them.
It is the circumstances of the trip to Japan, though that really attracted me to this
manuscript. Lilla had no business to attend to there. It was simply a pleasure trip undertaken for
her love of Japanese art. A pleasure trip is not so unusual, but Lilla took the trip by herself, she
seemed to have at least three children she left for the summer, and I get the impression that she
was not very wealthy – she mentions teaching music up until the day of departure and using less
expensive means of travel in order to have spending money for art while on her trip. The mode
of travel she chose – freighter – also adds a lot of interest. The beginning of the journal is
concerned largely with that rather archaic form of travel: the social sea voyage. These details
were most responsible for my interest in this manuscript because I imagine that they shaped her
experiences in striking and fascinating ways.
Many of the physical details of the manuscript add interest as well, especially those
details that leave unanswered questions. The first physical aspect that I noticed, and is important
to note, about A Treasure Hunt in Japan is that it is a typescript journal. It is typewritten in
slightly faded black ink on light tan colored paper, a bit thicker than today’s standard print paper,
but of approximately the same texture and dimensions. The very edges of the paper are darkened
with age and each piece of paper has two punched holes for binding, though they are not actually
bound together. The stack of pages curves on the left side from being stored upright.
It’s hard to say how thick the stack is or how many pages it has in it, though the pages are
numbered at the top. Most of the pages have a typed number, starting from 1, centered at the top
of the paper, but so close to the edge that the number isn’t even on the page completely on some
of them. This numbering continues until page 21, but the next page is labeled with the number
1755, and the numbers continue up from there. However, on many of the pages there is a smaller
number scribbled out or possibly whited out on some. The change in numbering is one of the
minor mysteries of this manuscript’s physical entity.
There are other interesting changes that also occur from the same page. From the
beginning of the journal, there were typed corrections, as well as some written in pencil and
black ink. This includes some underlining, such as the name of the ship Lilla was on, adding
accents to French words, and plenty of crossing things out. On page 21, there is a paragraph at
the bottom of the page crossed out in pencil, with “See next page” written above it. That next
page, 1755, starts with the paragraph that had been crossed out, but it has blue ink writing at the
top, which is also crossed out, and the hand written corrections are now in blue ink. More
noticeable than this, though, is that the font of the type is different. I assume this means Lilla
changed to a different typewriter, which brings me to an interesting point. Lilla is still traveling
on a freighter at this point; would she have access to a typewriter (never mind two) on the boat?
It suggested to me the possibility that she wrote her journal by hand originally and then typed it
later, which opens up whole new questions of audience and editing. Reading more closely into
the actual text of the journal, I found that there is a parenthetical comment on page 21, the last of
the pages with smaller numbering and original font, which begins “Here I omit 37 pages from
my first long-hand account of this trip to Japan.” The fact that such questions of editing and
audience as this comment raises are also raised by the physical manuscript speaks to the power
of the manuscript as an object.
Lilla’s normal entries are neatly formatted into double-spaced paragraphs, and each entry
is headed by the date, written in a consistent format (ex. July 20th, 1936. Monday). There are
some special sections that she writes single-spaced, such as notes on the Japanese history book
she read while on the ship. The pages are generally filled with writing, but some pages are left
blank until half way down. The most notable example of this is the very first page, on which is
typed the title “MY SUMMER IN JAPAN”. Black ink is used to cross out “MY SUMMER”,
write “A Treasure Hunt” above it, and add “, 1936” to the end of the title. Such editorial details
also point toward questions of audience.
Other pages with spaces left free of writing appear toward the end of the stack, which can
take us away from the minutiae of ink color and font type. These gaps are filled with pictures and
other paper pieces pasted onto the pages. There is a variety of sepia toned and black and white
photos and what seem to be postcards or other officially issued and captioned picture materials,
including pictures of Buddhist statues, of Lilla feeding the wild deer in Nara, and from various
schools affiliated with Doshisha University (founded by Amherst’s first Japanese graduate). The
scraps pasted in include a “handbill scattered by the Geisha”, a “Guide to Mt. Hiei”, and some
newspaper clippings. Some of these scraps have left noticeable impressions – rectangles the size
of the scraps and the same aged color as the very edges of the paper – on the back side of the
pages opposite them. There are some pages that are filled entirely with pictures and scraps, sans
typewriting. These pages have their numbers written at the top in blue ink, and some have
handwritten captions underneath, but there are also pictures with typewritten captions.
Also toward the back of the stack are letters that Lilla seems to have received while on
her way to Japan. The relationship between these and the journal is rather ambiguous. It is
unclear whether Lilla inserted them as part of the completed journal or they were received with
the diary and are just stored in the same folder. They are attached to paper consistent with the
rest of the journal but are not inserted or ordered in any significant or organized way, as the rest
of the non-typed material (photos and scraps) is.
Lilla’s outgoing letters are also incorporated. As part of the structure of the journal itself
are included letters Lilla wrote during her time in Japan. This is one of a few structural anomalies
that appear in the journal, though, due to the way it is formatted, with the date and location (once
in Japan) written at the top right, it is harder to distinguish from the journal entries. Another
structure that is a bit different from her normal entries is a sort of story or anecdote. There are a
few sections that are headed by a centered, underlined title rather than a date. The first of these
that I noticed comes directly after an entry in which the subject matter of the story section is
mentioned briefly (“We rode back to the ship in the water taxi”, “AT THE WATER TAXI
WHARF IN YOKOHAMA”). This implies that the story structure elaborates on things
mentioned in the journal entries, possibly in a different style or possibly added later, upon typing
the journal. My ability to pick out these separate sections without a thorough reading shows how
consistent Lilla was in her formatting. The overall sense I get from the physical aspects of this
manuscript is that Lilla was attempting to prepare it for publication, or at least viewing by other
people, an important aspect to keep in mind while working with it.