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Traces et restes du Japon, ou le grenier de Pierre Loti

Abstract Pierre Loti, travelling in Japan, does not belong to the movement of “Japanophilia” that prevailed in France at that time. On the contrary, he is more often cruel, even racist, than laudatory. This problematic relation can be interpreted differently in the works he devotes to Japan (in his Journal [Ed. Alain Quella-Villéger and Bruno Vercier. Paris: Les Indes savantes (collection “Rivages des Xantons”), 2008], letters, articles, and three novels, among them Madame Chrysanthème [Ed. Bruno Vercier. Paris: GF Flammarion, 1990]), and, in addition to his works as a writer, in considering the numerous objects he brought back from his travels, among them photographs of Uyeno and of the atelier Beato which fill two albums. This collection of various objects has never been examined in relation to these issues raised by his writing. At the intersection of these traces and fragments, between these material relics and the literary genres that Loti handles at leisure, this article proposes to restore the link between objects which, though outside of his literary work, are nonetheless connected to his literary art: for these objects testify to a unity between the past and modernity, to a continuity which for Loti is inconceivable, but which, from the depths of his “grenier,” interrogate his literary work. This article is illustrated with unpublished photographs taken by the author at the Archives du Musée de Rochefort.