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The Western Scientific Gaze and Popular Imagery in Later Edo Japan: The Lens within the Heart is the first full-length study to consider the introduction of Western technology into Japan in the eighteenth century, when, it has been assumed, that country continued to isolate itself from external influence. Timon Screech demonstrates that exposure to such Western equipment as lenses, mirrors, and glass had a profound impact on Japanese notions regarding the faculty of sight. The enormity of this paradigm shift was moreover, felt less in the area of Japanese scientific inquiry than in art and popular culture, where these devices were often depicted and used metaphorically, as commentary on prevailing social norms. Based on archival sources here published for the first time in any language, this study also sheds new light on Japanese art and its relation to the West; the relationship of science to art and popular culture; and the autonomy and/or internationalization of Japanese culture.
List of contents
Introduction; 1. The original argument (1): 'Chu Hsi versus Lu Hsiang-shan' (Chu-Lu i T'ung): a philosophical interpretation; 2. The original argument (2): Wang Yang-ming and the problematic of 'Chu Hsi versus Lu Hsiang-shan'; 3. The critical dimension in the Confucian mode of thinking: the conception of the Way as the basis for criticism of the political establishment; 4. Li Fu: an example of the Lu-Wang scholar in the Ch'ing (1): his life; 5. Li Fu: an example of the Lu-Wang scholar in the Ch'ing (2): his thought; 6. Li Fu and the philological turn; 7. The price of having a sage-emperor: the assimilation of the Tradition of the Way by the political establishment in the light of Emperor K'ang-hsi's governance.
Summary
The author explains the contributions of Li Fu to the Lu-Wang school of Confucianism, and gives a clear, succinct account of the Lu-Wang and Ch'eng-Chu schools from the twelfth century to the eighteenth.
