Japan's Orient: Rendering Pasts into History - Rilegato

Tanaka, Stefan

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0520077318 ISBN 13: 9780520077317

Casa editrice: Univ of California Pr, 1993

Riassunto

In this complex and absorbing study, Stefan Tanaka examines the way Japanese historians during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries created the equivalent of an "Orient" for the newly constituted nation-state of Japan. After the Meiji Restoration, Japan faced the necessity of becoming modern while both avoiding a characterization as "Oriental" and maintaining its own identity. The concept of toyoshi (Oriental studies) made it possible to integrate the changes of the previous century - the decline of China, the arrival of the West with all its technical and cultural baggage, the issue of cultural identity - into a comprehensive ideological system. This system defined Japan's history and its place in the world. Unlike the West's "Orient," the term toyo assumed merely cultural difference, no inherent backwardness. The development of toyoshi thus authorized a particular Japanese view of Europe and Asia as well as Japan. It established modern Japan's equivalence with Europe, and also its distinction from and cultural, intellectual, and structural superiority over China.
Whereas other scholars depict the encounter between Japan and the West as a struggle between modernity and tradition, Tanaka argues that the Japanese were, in fact, attempting to use a variety of pasts - Chinese, Indian, and protohistoric Japanese - to construct an identity that was both modern and Asian.

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Product Description

Book by Tanaka Stefan

Dettagli dell'edizione

• Editore: Univ of California Pr
• Data di pubblicazione: 1993
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 0520077318
• ISBN 13: 9780520077317
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 305
• Contatto del produttore: non disponibile
• Persona responsabile: non disponibile