This study of the writings of Japanese travellers to China from 1862 to 1945 serves both as a window onto changing Japanese images of China and as a vivid account of Sino-Japanese interactions over nearly a century. The year 1862 saw the lifting of the Tokugawa shogunate's ban of over two centuries on overseas contacts, and Japanese travellers were able to resume contact with China, which had begun some fifteen hundred years before. Through the centuries, China had exerted a profound influence on the development of Japanese culture, and what began as a wish to adopt the latest, most developed political and cultural achievements of China - assumed to be the most advanced country on earth - later became an effort to understand the essence of Japan by defining its difference from China. This book is based upon some five hundred accounts of travel in China by Japanese, only a handful of which have previously been available in Western literature.
Sprache
Verlagsort
Zielgruppe
Für höhere Schule und Studium
Für Beruf und Forschung
Illustrationen
Maße
Höhe: 236 mm
Breite: 160 mm
Dicke: 33 mm
Gewicht
ISBN-13
978-0-8047-2567-5 (9780804725675)
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Schweitzer Klassifikation
Preface; Introduction: why do people travel? Why do people write about travel? Part I. Past and Present, Discovery and Rediscovery: Travel to China Through the Late Meiji Period: 1. Travel in the context of East Asia; 2. First contacts: the travelers aboard the Senzaimaru and other early accounts; 3. Kangaku travelers in the Meiji period: China as ailing organism; Part II. Fitting China Back In: Travel to China in the Taisho and Early Showa Periods: 4. Travel writing and the changing nature of Sino-Japanese relations; 5. Educators, scholars, students; 6. Professional travel writers; 7. Journalists and politicians; 8. Businessmen and the military; 9. Novelists, poets, critics, and artists; 10. Wartime travel in China; Conclusion: travel within the world of Chinese characters and the problem of understanding China; Appendix A. A note on the terminology for travelogues; Appendix B. Abbreviations used in the notes and bibliography; Notes; Bibliography; Character list; Index.
