Abstract Western rhetoric began to influence Japan during the Meiji era (1868–1912). The influence can be seen in three representative elocution books that depended on such Western elocutionary theorists as James Rush, Gilbert Austin, and William Russell and dealt extensively with gesture, posture, and voice control for emotional effect. Despite these books, Western elocutionary rhetoric did not make any lasting changes in the Japanese rhetorical tradition because of its excessive artificiality.

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