Collection of scientific articles, comp., ed. by A. S. Dybovsky. Vladivostok: Publishing House of the Far Eastern University, 2007, 188 p.

The name of the prominent Russian Japanist Yevgeny Genrikhovich Spalvin (1872-1933) is not well known, because he, like other founders of Japanese studies in Russia, more practitioners than scientists, was overshadowed by such brilliant younger researchers who began their activities after the Russo - Japanese War, as E. D. Polivanov, N. I. Konrad, N. V. Kolesnikov, and others. A. Nevsky, S. G. Eliseev and others. Although we have had publications about Darwin since the 1960s (A. A. Babintsev, V. M. Alpatov, and a substantial article by V. N. Goreglyad), the book about him was published for the first time. It is natural that it was published in Vladivostok, the city where the main part of this Japanese artist's activity took place.

The authors of the book are teachers and employees of the Far Eastern State University (E. V. Ermakova, O. P. Elantseva, Z. F. Morgun), a former teacher of this university, now working in Japan (A. S. Dybovsky), Japanese scientists (V. Fujimoto, M. Ikuta, T. Yokota-Murakami), a researcher from Latvia (L. Galvane). It also includes excerpts from E. G. Spalvin's book "Japan: A View from the Outside", published only in Japanese, which are published for the first time in Russian (translated by A. S. Dybovsky).

In the article by E. V. Ermakova and A. S. Dybovsky "E. G. Litvin: pages of biography" based on archival documents, the life path of the scientist is restored. A native of the Livonia province (now Latvia), Spalvin graduated in 1898 from the Eastern Faculty of St. Petersburg University in the Sino-Mongolian-Manchurian department (there was no special category for Japan at that time), after which he was seconded to Japan for a year and a half (1899-1900), where he mastered the Japanese language. Since 1900, he began a quarter-century-long activity in Vladivostok, first at the Eastern Institute, and later at the Far Eastern University, which included the Institute. It was E. G. Spalvin, together with A. M. Pozdneev, who became the founder of teaching Japanese in the Far East, and after Pozdneev left Vladivostok, Evgeny Genrikhovich was at the head of training specialists in Japan in the Far East for more than two decades. The article contains detailed descriptions of training programs for Japanese students at the Eastern Institute, archival documents, excerpts from speeches and speeches of E. G. Spalvin from different years. The authors review the activities of the scientist during the civil War and in the first years after the establishment of Soviet power, when thanks to his efforts as dean of the Eastern Faculty of DVSU, it was possible to preserve the teaching of Japanese and Chinese languages in Vladivostok (unfortunately, it was interrupted for a long time after his death in 1933). when in 1925-1931 he was dragoman of the Soviet legation in Tokyo and in 1931-1933 he worked in the CER administration in Harbin, where he died after a short serious illness.

The Japanese researcher V. Fujimoto devoted his article "E. G. Spalvin in Japan: a stay in Kyoto on the eve and immediately after the Russo-Japanese War" to the first trips of E. G. Spalvin to Japan in 1899-1900, 1903, 1906 and 1907. The author shows the difficult situation for Russian-Japanese relations before the Russo-Japanese War and in the first years after it, when Darwin had to overcome the extremely unfriendly attitude of the Japanese side towards Russia. A tragic episode related to the murder in Tokyo in 1907 of the closest associate of the Rabbi at the institute, who accepted Russian citizenship and law, is considered in detail-

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the fame of Japanese lecturer Maeda Seiji as a nationalist fanatic. Japanese newspapers of those years, quoted in the article, expressed sympathy for the killer, who believed that Maeda "sold out his homeland." E. G. Spalvin, who was in Japan at the time, was involved in the settlement of the incident (later, after being widowed, he married Maeda's widow, who worked at the Oriental Institute).

M. Ikuta, a well-known expert on Russian - Japanese relations, examines the scientist's life in Tokyo and Harbin in 1925-1933 in her article "Evgeny Genrikhovich Spalvin as the creator of Practical Japanese studies in Russia". It is shown that his activity was not limited to the functions of a translator: he gave lectures on the USSR, organized exhibitions of Soviet art, helped Soviet cultural figures who came to Japan, and assisted Japanese scientists and cultural figures in visiting the Soviet Union. It was thanks to him that the first performances of Kabuki theater in the USSR took place in 1928. The author points out Spalvin's connections with Japanese leftist cultural figures, including representatives of the popular proletarian art in those years; writes about some of E. G. Spalvin's scientific ideas, including highlighting in his works the features of the Japanese nation that contributed, in his opinion, to Japanese progress and modernization.

A. S. Dybovsky in his article "The image of the author in E. G. Litvin's book "Japan: a View from the outside" (Tokyo, 1931)" examines an unknown book published in Japanese and consisting of 462 pages of essays, articles, travel notes, the main theme of which is a foreigner's view of Japan. The author writes: "Evgeny Genrikhovich appears to us as an observant and reflective person, a person with very high self-esteem, ambitious, self-confident and who considers himself entitled to evaluate the qualities of the people around him" (p.79). In the book, Darwin talks about himself, gives his biographical data, but most of all he talks about Japan, and, as A. S. Dybovsky emphasizes, first of all about Japanese culture in all its manifestations, about the attitude of the Japanese to the USSR and to the Russians, and much more. The book included Darwin's memoirs of meetings with famous figures of Japanese culture, travel notes about different regions of the country, etc. The author of the article notes the original method of encoding hieroglyphs proposed in Darwin's book, based on the digital designation of their components in a certain order. This method was not used in dictionaries and was forgotten, but, as A. S. Dybovsky notes, when creating computer training systems, such principles of naming Chinese characters are convenient and are re-invented.

O. P. Elantseva's article "E. G. Spalvin as a librarian of the Oriental Institute" describes the scientist's activity in forming an extensive fund of the Oriental library based on archival documents.

З. F. Morgun in his article "A few touches to the portrait of E. G. Litvin against the background of the Vladivostok landscape" tells about how Vladivostok looked in the 1900s-1910s, about the Japanese diaspora in Vladivostok, about its most prominent representatives, including the already mentioned Maeda.

Another article by A. S. Dybovsky - "On the characteristics of the training system of the Eastern Institute (1889-1920) and the teaching of the Japanese language in it" - for the first time in our Japanese studies examines the activities of the Eastern Institute in 1899-1920. The author shows that the main focus of teaching Japanese and Japanese-related subjects was on practical knowledge of the modern language and country studies. From the very beginning, the Eastern Institute differed from the Eastern Faculty of St. Petersburg University, where the main emphasis was placed on scientific issues, and the language of old texts was studied more than the modern language. However, the program of the Oriental Institute included both the old written language, which was still actively used in Japan at that time, and classical literature. The solution of the tasks set for the institute, especially in the first years of its activity, was complicated by the low development of Japanese studies in Russia, the lack of literature, including educational ones, and the lack of teaching staff. E. G. Spalvin and his staff often had to resort to translating or retelling Western works, which were not very numerous in those years. The article also discusses the organization of students ' trips to Japan, the formation of the library and other issues, and examines in detail the extant textbooks of E. G. Spalvin and his student and closest collaborator V. M. Mendrin.

In particular, Darwin's manuals "A Textbook of Spoken Japanese", "Practical Japanese Conversations" and "The Japanese Army"are analyzed in detail. In addition, A. S. Dybovsky analyzes the last and most famous work of Darwin-written already in Harbin and

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the posthumous book "Japanese Spoken Language "(1933), which is a translation of the textbook of the English Japanist W. M. McGovern. More precisely, this is not a translation, but, as A. S. Dybovsky points out, an arrangement, since Darwin made many of his additions there. At that time, we had only the grammar of the Japanese language by O. V. Pletner and E. D. Polivanov, so the appearance of Darwin's book, in which a number of language phenomena, such as forms of politeness, were described more accurately than in the much more scientifically "advanced" Polivanov and Pletner, was a valuable contribution to the development and teaching of the Japanese language.

One of the most informative articles in the collection is the article by T. Yokota-Murakami and L. Galvane " Spalvin in Riga: unknown pages of life (research notes)". It clarifies the bibliographic data about E. G. Spalvin, cited by him in the book "Japan: a View from the outside", including establishing the exact place of his birth, and supplements information about his father. However, these valuable facts go hand in hand with the authors ' desire to exclude Yevgeny Genrikhovich, a Latvian by nationality, from Russian science and classify him as one of the Latvian sciences that allegedly existed not only after 1918, but also before (or at least two). The authors of the article write that his "national identity, in all likelihood, was ambivalent" (p. 71), and emphasize his silence in their book on the independence of Latvia, "as if he really was only a citizen of the Soviet Union and had nothing to do with Latvia" (p.73). They even try to explain why Darwin, in his book on Japan, often refers to the Soviet Union as Soviet Russia: "Or was it an ironic attitude, that is, an ironic attitude. he saw deception in this cosmopolitan, imperialist ideology, but for some reason did not resist it...? " (p. 73). This approach is clearly unhistorical. The name "USSR" appeared only in 1922, until that time the whole country was officially called the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, and the unofficial name adopted in 1917-1922 was "Soviet Russia", according to tradition, it was often used later not only instead of the RSFSR, but also instead of the USSR.

Apparently, T. Yokota-Murakami and L. Galvane are right that E. G. Spalvin's mother tongue was Latvian, which is not confirmed by them: E. D. Polivanov, who was constantly at odds with Spalvin, including on the Russian transcription of Japanese words, claimed that some of the decisions made by Spalvin were influenced by the peculiarities of Latvian phonetics [Polivanov, 1931, p. 7], i.e., according to Polivanov, Evgeny Genrikhovich retained a Latvian accent in his speech. Does this mean that after leaving Livonia in his youth, he continued to maintain a Latvian or" dual " national identity? In the 1890s, the most common way of self-identification in the Russian Empire was to recognize oneself as its subject (along with identification by religion), so even a Latvian by nationality, excluding a part of the national intelligentsia, could call himself Russian. Later Spalvin worked in Russia, then in the USSR, but we do not know anything about his relations with Latvia after 1918. The book "Japan: a View from the Outside" reflects his full recognition of the Soviet system (as A. S. Dybovsky notes in his article). So the identity of this Japanese to Russia and the USSR can not be questioned.

The book under review is fairly complete from a factual point of view, but the amount of information provided in it could be supplemented. At least one other textbook by E. G. Litvin, which was not taken into account by A. S. Dybovsky, has come down to us - "A Brief overview of the changeable parts of speech of the Japanese book language "(Vladivostok, Vostochny Institute, 1913), which is quite interesting both as a textbook of the old written language and as a work containing original ideas [see: Alpatov, 1988]. And among the facts of E. G. Spalvin's activities in Japan in the 1920s, one could add assistance to the famous Soviet writer B. A. Pilnyak during his trip to Japan in 1926. It is interesting to note the completely opposite assessments of Spalvin contained in two books by Pilnyak (1927 and 1935): in the first one, he writes quite respectfully about Spalvin, whom he consulted on Japanese culture [Pilnyak, 1927, p. 41]; in the second, where all assessments of Japan vary very much, Pilnyak stated that for a non-class approach in the first book, he himself should be put in the dock, as well as such scientists as Spalvin (then already deceased), "except for this Murasaki Shikibu (author of the classic monument of the tenth century). "The Tale of Genji" - V. A.) who don't really know anything" [Pilnyak, 1935 p.60]. Such was the time then! Unfortunately, the writer foresaw both his own fate and the fate of most of the Soviet Japanese who worked in the 1930s, who soon found themselves literally in the dock. Spalvin was probably saved from reprisals by his death in 1933.

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The fate of the Far Eastern Japanese school created by E. G. Spalvin turned out to be sad. Some of his students died or emigrated during the Civil War, and few of the remaining students survived 1937-1938. (the fate of the school of Sinologists that was being created in parallel turned out to be happier: R. V. Vyatkin, M. I. Sladkovsky, L. V. Simonovskaya and other well-known Soviet specialists left it). In scientific and even methodological terms, the first generation of Russian Japonists was very soon surpassed by scientists who entered science after them (it is significant, for example, that the transcription of Polivanov replaced the transcription of Darwin). Nevertheless, the foundation laid by E. G. Spalvin, D. M. Pozdneev, V. M. Mendrin and others helped develop the national science of Japan and train specialists. A book prepared in Vladivostok with the participation of Japanese scientists will help preserve the memory of E. G. Spalvin, which contains many interesting facts that restore the picture of our Japanese studies at one of its early stages.

list of literature

Alpatov V. M. Izuchenie yaponskogo yazyka v Rossii i SSSR [Studying the Japanese language in Russia and the USSR].
Pilnyak Bor. Roots of the Japanese sun, L., 1927.
Pilnyak Bor. Stones and roots, Moscow, 1935.
Polivanov E. D. Za marxistskoe yazykoznanie [For Marxist linguistics], Moscow, 1931.

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