Yevgeny Spalvin (, Japanese: or ;According to Ikuta Michiko (Osaka University of Foreign Studies), Spalvin adopted the kanji surname in 1906 on the recommendation of a journalist named Takao from the newspaper Ōsaka Asahi Shimbun, choosing characters for their sound. The kanji surname was also used, among other things, in his ex-librises, as was , a rendering of the initials "Ye. S." 11 October 1872, Ādzele – 10 November 1933, Harbin) was an orientalist and the first professional japanologist in Russia.A "professional japanologist" here means someone who received specialized training and whose professional research and teaching career was tied to this field. Dmitry Pozdneev, like Spalvin, graduated from the Faculty of Oriental Languages of Saint Petersburg University in the Chinese-Mongolian-Manchu track, but did not work professionally on Japan until 1906. Another Japanologist, V. Ya. Kostylev, graduated from the same faculty earlier still, in 1874. His book An Outline of the History of Japan, published in 1888, is considered the first professional work of Japanology in Russia; however, he subsequently served thirty years as consul in Japan and only after retiring lectured on the department of Japanese literature at Saint Petersburg University (1907–1908).
He was born into the family of a Latvian teacher, began his studies at the Faculty of Law of Petersburg University, and graduated from its Faculty of Oriental Studies in the Chinese-Mongolian-Manchu track. He was sent to Tokyo in 1899–1900 to prepare for a professorship in the department of Japanese literature, and was subsequently sent to Japan on several further occasions (1903, 1906, 1907, 1909, and 1922). After the founding of the Oriental Institute in Vladivostok, he took up the post of professor of Japanese literature there (1900). Until 1920 he combined this post with that of head of the Oriental Institute's library. In 1902–1904, he also served as a censor of the Japanese press and literature and carried out assignments for military counterintelligence. He rose to the rank of Collegiate Councillor (1916, with seniority from 1900) and was awarded the Order of St. Vladimir, 4th class (1917). In 1922–1923, he served as acting rector of the Far Eastern State University. He was cultural secretary and translator for the Soviet plenipotentiary mission in Tokyo (1925–1931), and afterward an adviser to the administration of the Chinese Eastern Railway in Harbin. He died of cardiac arrest following emergency surgery.
He was the first professional practical japanologist in Russia. His main efforts were devoted to popularizing the language, to teaching, and to producing textbooks — work to which he dedicated 25 years of his life in total. Besides teaching, he devoted much time to organizational work, notably initiating and serving as chief editor of major orientalist projects — the journals Bulletin of the Oriental Institute and Contemporary Chronicle of the Far East. He is also the author of an original Cyrillic transcription of Japanese phonetics that was used at the Oriental Institute.
Despite years of dedicated teaching work, Spalvin, who was not a linguist, did not found a scholarly school and left behind no striking scholarly ideas. In the Soviet period his name was forgotten. The first publications about Spalvin appeared only in the 1980s, and scholarly interest in his life and work, in both Russia and Japan, revived only at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
Biography
Family, childhood, and student years (1872–1898) Yevgeny SpalviņšA. A. Babintsev, author of the first and only biographical article about Spalvin published in the Soviet Union, gave the scholar's full name as Felix Yevgeny Leopold Spalviņš, but provided no source for this information. Other scholars of Spalvin's life and work have been able neither to confirm nor to refute this form of the name. was born on 11 October 1872 at the Adsel Castle estate (Governorate of Livonia), located roughly 150 km from Riga.
The father of the future japanologist was the Latvian Heinrihs Spalviņš (1841–1913), a writer and teacher and the author of one of the first grammars of the Latvian language (An Aid to the Study of Language and the Writing of Thoughts, published in 1879). At the age of 30 Heinrihs married the governess Elise Mekler; both were of the Lutheran faith. Their first-born was christened Eižens (the Latvian equivalent of Yevgeny); the family had six children in total — three sons and three daughters, the youngest of whom died at the age of four. In 1877 the family moved to Riga, where Heinrihs contributed to the Latvian- and German-language press (according to some accounts he owned and edited the newspaper Friend of the Latvian People) and also served as an official of the Mutual Fire Insurance Society; his salary and fees were the family's sole source of income. Heinrihs published prolifically in Latvian and German; the languages of everyday use in the Spalviņš household were German, French, and, presumably, Latvian, while at work the head of the family also had to master Russian.
All the Spalvin children (as they were known in Russian) received a good education. After finishing the Riga Cathedral School, Yevgeny received 135 rubles from his father and set off to enroll at Imperial Saint Petersburg University; in his autobiography he wrote that from then on he made his own way in life. He initially enrolled in the Faculty of Law, where he studied for three years. He had to support himself: the talented young man received a small private stipend and, over eight years, worked with Professor A. A. Isayev, translating his lectures and articles into German, and also worked with German journals and with the Social Democratic publishing house of in Stuttgart. The reasons for his transfer to the Faculty of Oriental Studies are unclear, but he obtained permission from the Ministry of National Education to transfer to the Chinese-Mongolian-Manchu track.
Already in his senior years at the Faculty of Oriental Studies, Spalvin was engaged by the Ministry of Finance to work on the three-volume reference work Description of Korea. In his autobiography he later stated that a substantial portion of the linguistic and political sections was his own work. In the course of this work Spalvin had to devise a practical transcription of the Korean language (he later claimed that the Koreanist Podstavin borrowed his transcription, making only minor changes). In 1898 Yevgeny Spalvin graduated from the university with top marks in twelve subjects, including the languages Chinese, Mongolian, Kalmyk, Manchu, French and English, which earned him a first-class diploma (12 July). He had not studied Japanese, although he had gained some acquaintance with it through a course on the Japanese writing system taught by , and through the same instructor's course on Japanese grammar in his final year.
First trip to Japan and the Oriental Institute (1899–1900) The student Spalvin was, by decree of the curator of the Saint Petersburg Educational District, retained to prepare for a professorship in the recently established department of Japanese literature, with a stipend of 600 rubles a year. To improve his practical command of the language, he was sent on a two-year assignment to Japan, dated from 1 January 1899. The Ministry of National Education allocated 2,000 rubles a year for the student's support; an additional 750 rubles from the university budget was envisaged, but in the end Spalvin never received this portion of the stipend. The instructions for the assignment set a demanding task: "…to study the Japanese language and literature comprehensively in the centres of learning of Japan itself, under the guidance of local scholars, and equally to become directly acquainted with the spirit of the country and its customs."
Spalvin went on a Russian Volunteer Fleet steamer from Odessa to Nagasaki. Along the way he studied English with naval officers who had been posted to the Far East. He reported to the dean, Rosen, that he had arrived in Tokyo on 18 (30) March 1899. Within a week he had begun studying Japanese. Even earlier, upon first arriving in Nagasaki, he had already realized how insufficient his training in Petersburg had been: while touring the city, the young scholar got lost, and all his attempts to communicate with the Japanese came to nothing — the need to learn the language was more than obvious. The young japanologist's first teacher was Ōbuchi Norimoto, a doctor and lawyer who before the revolution had been a vassal of the last shōgun; his fee was 20 rubles a month for daily two-hour lessons.
There were a lot of difficulties with communication and daily life accommodation: rental houses came completely unfurnished, and the 2,000-ruble annual sum covered only the barest necessities. Spalvin asked for the university stipend needed to buy books and to travel around the country, but never received it. His situation eased somewhat only in 1900: an urgent teaching vacancy arose at the Tokyo School of Foreign Languages, and the Japanese Ministry of Education invited Spalvin to take temporary work there. This allowed the scholar to hire a second language tutor, who lived in Spalvin's house and conversed with him around the clock. This tutor was Kiyotsugu Maeda, a student in the German department of the Tokyo School of Foreign Languages.
The second Japanese to give Spalvin substantial help, and to become a close friend, was the Japanese writer and translator from Russian Futabatei Shimei. It was he who advised Spalvin to read, for study purposes, not fragments of miscellaneous newspaper articles but works of fiction. Futabatei worked with Spalvin on a reading of Ozaki Kōyō's novel Many Feelings, Many Griefs, a text made difficult by unconventional readings of its characters, compounded by the absence of furigana, so that even Futabatei could not always determine the correct reading of a difficult passage at a glance and had to work it out from context.
The third close friend Spalvin made was Izumi Ryōnosuke, a fellow student of his and Futabatei's who later moved to Vladivostok and founded the newspaper there, Uradzio Nippō Vladivostok Daily Herald. The friendship between Izumi and Spalvin lasted until the end of the latter's life.