Publication Date:
2024-03-26
Description:
This open access book includes forty-one chapters about foreign observers’ discourses on Japan. These include a wide range of perspectives from the travelogues of curious visitors to academic theses by scholars, which offer us a broad spectrum of contents, reflecting a variety of attitudes toward Japan. The works were written during the period from the 1850s to the 1980s, a timespan during which Japan became, in stages, more open to the outside world after a long isolation under the Tokugawa shogunate. From the perspective of “Japanology,” one can discern three distinct periods of rising interest in the country from abroad. The first tide of such interest came shortly after the opening of Japan, when various foreign travelers, including those who could not be included in this book, came over and wrote down their impressions of the country—which was, for them, a land of mystery and mystique, which had just opened its doors to them. The second wave arose at the beginning of the twentieth century, just after the Russo-Japanese War, when Japan again generated a remarkable surge of interest as a “miracle” in Asia that had pulled off the wondrous feat of defeating a white superpower. The third wave was more recent, which took place from the late 1960s to the 1980s, a period of high economic growth when the “miracle” of Japan’s remarkable economic recovery from the defeat of World War II attracted enthusiastic and curious attention from the outside world once again. It is not the intention of this book to directly highlight such historical transitions, but these forty-two brilliant mirrors (forty-one chapters, including forty-two discourses), even when looked in casually, provide us with unexpected insights and various perspectives. Shōichi Saeki (1922–2016) was Professor Emeritus, the University of Tokyo. Tōru Haga (1931–2020) was Professor Emeritus, International Research Center for Japanese Studies.
Keywords:
Ivan Aleksandrovich Goncharov
;
Sir Rutherford Alcock
;
Ernest Mason Satow
;
William Elliot Griffiths
;
Percival Lowell
;
Basil Hall Chamberlain
;
Lafcadio Hearn
;
Ludwig Riess
;
Erwin von Balz
;
Mustafa Kamil Pasha
;
Ernest Francisco Fenollosa
;
Edward Sylvester Morse
;
Rabindranath Tagore
;
Donald Keene
;
Edwin Oldfather Reischauer
;
Edward Seidensticker
;
Maurice Pinguet
;
thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DS Literature: history and criticism
;
thema EDItEUR::Q Philosophy and Religion::QD Philosophy
;
thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology::NH History::NHF Asian history
;
thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JP Politics and government::JPS International relations::JPSD Diplomacy
;
thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology::NH History
Language:
English
Format:
image/jpeg
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