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D. R. Howland explores China’s representations of Japan in the changing world of the late nineteenth century and, in so doing, examines the cultural and social borders between the two neighbors. Looking at Chinese accounts of Japan written during the 1870s and 1880s, he undertakes an unprecedented analysis of the main genres the Chinese used to portray Japan-the travel diary, poetry, and the geographical treatise. In his discussion of the practice of “brushtalk,” in which Chinese scholars communicated with the Japanese by exchanging ideographs, Howland further shows how the Chinese viewed the communication of their language and its dominant modes-history and poetry-as the textual and cultural basis of a shared civilization between the two societies.
With Japan’s decision in the 1870s to modernize and westernize, China’s relationship with Japan underwent a crucial change-one that resulted in its decisive separation from Chinese civilization and, according to Howland, a destabilization of China’s worldview. His examination of the ways in which Chinese perceptions of Japan altered in the 1880s reveals the crucial choice faced by the Chinese of whether to interact with Japan as “kin,” based on geographical proximity and the existence of common cultural threads, or as a “barbarian,” an alien force molded by European influence.
By probing China’s poetic and expository modes of portraying Japan, Borders of Chinese Civilization exposes the changing world of the nineteenth century and China’s comprehension of it. This broadly appealing work will engage scholars in the fields of Asian studies, Chinese literature, history, and geography, as well as those interested in theoretical reflections on travel or modernism.
Inhaltsverzeichnis
Acknowledgments vii
Note ix
Introduction 1
I. Encountering Japan 9
1. Civilization from the Center: The Geomoral Context of Tributary Expectations 11
Civilization and Proximity 13
The Bounds of Diplomatic Protocol 15
Japan in the Qing Record 18
An Aside: The Aborted Legacy of the Ming 26
The Matter of International Treaties 28
The Decision to Grant Japan a Treaty (1870) 31
Japanese Incident/Dwarf Intrusion (1874) 35
2. Civilization as Universal Practice: The Context of Writing and Poetry 43
Brushtalking 43
The Written Code: Hanwen/Kanbun 45
The Play of the Code 48
Tong Wen: Shared Writing/Shared Civilization 54
Playing the Code: Occasional Poetry 57
Celebrating Tong Wen: Poetry and History 62
The Value of Civilization in Japan 65
II. Representing Japan 69
Prologue: Geographical Knowledge 71
3. Journeys to the East: The Geography of Historical Sites and Self in the Travelogue 80
Images of the East 81
Recovering History through Geographical Sites 86
Travel Accounts 92
4. The Historiographical Use of Poetry 108
The Poems on Divers Japanese Affairs 110
The Epistemological Basis of the Poetry-History Homology 119
Poetry and Geography 129
Evidential Research 135
5. The Utility of Objectification in the Geographic Treatise 157
The Decade of Geographic Treatises on Japan 158
The Local Treatise as a Model 164
Utility as Means and End 173
Strategies of Objectification 176
III. Representing Japan's Westernization 195
6. Negotiating Civilization and Westernization 197
Analogy and Containment 200
The Precedence of Learning before Action 201
Western Learning and Western Ways 203
Alternative Approaches to World Order 222
Afterword 242
Notes 251
Bibliography 303
Glossary 323
Index 333
Über den Autor / die Autorin
D. R. Howland is Associate Professor of History at DePaul University.
Zusammenfassung
Explores China's representations of Japan in the changing world of the late nineteenth century. This work examines the cultural and social borders between the two neighbours. Looking at Chinese accounts of Japan written during the 1870s and 1880s, it offers an analysis of the main genres the Chinese used to portray Japan.
