ジェームズ・ ムンロ ・ バートラムに関する伝記の作成過程について

抄録

While I was writing a biography of James Munro Bertram (1910-1993), who had the New Zealand nationality and had a checkered career before and during the Pacific War, I wrote the seven related essays on this topic. Six of thLe seven essays were written during my sabbatical leaves in the University of Auckland in New Zealand (April 2013-March 2014), though I have not yet completed Bertram's biography as of June 2016. His life divided into two phases with the outbreak of the Pacific War; the first phase was stormy and the second phase was tranquil as an academic in university. The first phase subdivided into two periods; one was the period of his studying abroad in China and his participation in the anti-Japanese war in China and Indochina, the other was the period of his imprisonment as a prisoner of war in Hong Kong and Tokyo by the Japanese forces. In contrast with his stormy days before and during the war, he got a position as one of teaching staff of Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand after the war and then married. He led a tranquil life as a literary man during his tenure in university and as an editor after retirement from the university. It is his activities in the prewar period that I have an interest in about Bertram. Especially, he went into the city of Xi'an as the first foreigner just after the Xi'an Incident (December 12, 1936), kept a record of the incident, and then published it as a book (Crisis in China: The Story of the Sian Mutiny, 1937). In Xi'an he met Agnes Smedley (1892- 1950), who had the connection with the Richard Serge Affairs and was known to Americans as a victim of the McCarthyism, and he traveled to Yan'an, the headquarters for the Chinese Communist Party at that time, and had an　interview (October 25, 1937) with Mao Zedong (1893-1976). As is mentioned above, Bertram himself is related with my research topic, but any study on him has never been made in Japan. Therefore I found out some materials on his biography during my last stay in New Zealand. The essays collected here were written as by-products from my research interest and study abroad.