The Japanese Discovery of Europe, 1720-1830 PDF Download
Are you looking for read ebook online? Search for your book and save it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Download The Japanese Discovery of Europe, 1720-1830 PDF full book. Access full book title The Japanese Discovery of Europe, 1720-1830 by Donald Keene. Download full books in PDF and EPUB format.
Author: Donald Keene
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804774161
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 276
Get Book Here
Book Description
This is an account of the growth and uses of Western learning in Japan from 1720 to 1830. These are the dates of the beginning of official interest in Western learning and of the expulsion of Siebold from the country, the first stage of a crisis that could be resolved only by the opening of the country of the West. The century and more included by the two dates was a most important period in Japanese history, when intellectuals, rebelling at the isolation of their country, desperately sought knowledge from abroad. The amazing energy and enthusiasm of men like Honda Toshiaki made possible the spectacular changes in Japan, which are all too often credited to the arrival of Commodore Perry. The author chose Honda Toshiaki (1744-1821) as his central figure. A page from any one of Honda's writings suffices to show that with him one has entered a new age, that of modern Japan. One finds in his books a new spirit, restless, curious and receptive. There is in him the wonder at new discoveries, the delight in widening horizons. Honda took a kind of pleasure even in revealing that Japan, after all, was only a small island in a large world. To the Japanese who had thought of Chinese civilization as being immemorial antiquity, he declared that Egypt's was thousands of years older and far superior. The world, he discovered, was full of wonderful things, and he insisted that Japan take advantage of them. Honda looked at Japan as he thought a Westerner might, and saw things that had to be changed, terrible drains on the country's moral and physical strength. Within him sprang the conviction that Japan must become one of the great nations of the world.
Author: Donald Keene
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804774161
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 276
Get Book Here
Book Description
This is an account of the growth and uses of Western learning in Japan from 1720 to 1830. These are the dates of the beginning of official interest in Western learning and of the expulsion of Siebold from the country, the first stage of a crisis that could be resolved only by the opening of the country of the West. The century and more included by the two dates was a most important period in Japanese history, when intellectuals, rebelling at the isolation of their country, desperately sought knowledge from abroad. The amazing energy and enthusiasm of men like Honda Toshiaki made possible the spectacular changes in Japan, which are all too often credited to the arrival of Commodore Perry. The author chose Honda Toshiaki (1744-1821) as his central figure. A page from any one of Honda's writings suffices to show that with him one has entered a new age, that of modern Japan. One finds in his books a new spirit, restless, curious and receptive. There is in him the wonder at new discoveries, the delight in widening horizons. Honda took a kind of pleasure even in revealing that Japan, after all, was only a small island in a large world. To the Japanese who had thought of Chinese civilization as being immemorial antiquity, he declared that Egypt's was thousands of years older and far superior. The world, he discovered, was full of wonderful things, and he insisted that Japan take advantage of them. Honda looked at Japan as he thought a Westerner might, and saw things that had to be changed, terrible drains on the country's moral and physical strength. Within him sprang the conviction that Japan must become one of the great nations of the world.
Author: Michael Cooper
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004213759
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 290
Get Book Here
Book Description
Following the pioneering work of Francis Xavier in establishing Christianity in Japan, his successor Alessandro Valignano, decided to send a legation to Europe representing the three Christian daimyo of Kyushu, southern Japan. It consisted of two Christian samurai boys who were chosen as legates, together with two teenage companions. The group set sail from Nagasaki in February 1582 and were to be away for eight years. The purpose of the mission was twofold: it would give Europeans the chance of seeing Japanese people at first hand and appreciating their culture, thereby publicising the work of the Catholic Church in Japan and so (it was hoped) increase much-needed financial support; and secondly on their return to Japan the envoys would give eyewitness reports of the splendours of Renaissance Europe, thus moderating Japanese notions about the outside world and foreign barbarians. The boys travelled through Portugal, Spain and Italy and were feted wherever they went. In Venice, the authorities even postponed the annual festival in honour of St Mark, the city’s patron, so that the Japanese might view the spectacle. More importantly, the boys met Philip II of Spain several times, as well as Pope Gregory XIII and his successor Sixtus V. This is the first book-length study in English of the mission and provides important new insights into the work of the Jesuits in Japan and the nature of the legation’s impact on late-sixteenth-century European perceptions of Japan.
Author: Bert Edstrom
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136638954
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 308
Get Book Here
Book Description
Not another 'misunderstandings and misconceptions' volume, but a wide-ranging review of intellectual traditions, mutual and alternative images, and case studies of people and events that mirror the focus of this book.
Author: Olof G. Lidin
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135788715
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 246
Get Book Here
Book Description
The year 1543 marked the beginning of a new global consciousness in Japan with the arrival of shipwrecked Portuguese merchants on Tanegashima Island in southern Japan. Other Portuguese soon followed and Japan became aware of a world beyond India. After the merchants came the first missionary Francis Xavier in 1549, beginning the Christian century in Japan. This is not a new story, but it is the first time that Japanese, Portuguese and other European accounts have been brought together and presented in English. Their arrival was recorded by the Japanese in Tanegashima kafu, the Teppoki and the Kunitomo teppoki, here translated and presented together with European reports. Includes maps, and Portuguese and Japanese illustrations.
Author: Emeritus Professor W G Beasley
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300063240
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 274
Get Book Here
Book Description
For over a hundred years the Japanese have looked to the West for ideas, institutions and technology that would help them achieve their goal of 'national wealth and strength'. In this book a distinguished historian of Japan discusses Japan's 'cultural borrowing' from America and Europe. W. G. Beasley focuses on the mid-nineteenth century, when Japan's rulers dispatched diplomatic missions to the West to discover what Japan needed to learn, sent students abroad to assimilate information and invited foreign experts to Japan to help put the knowledge to practical use. Beasley examines the origins of the decision to initiate direct study of the West at a time when western countries counted as 'barbarian' by Confucian standards. Drawing on many colourful letters, diaries, memoirs and reports, he describes the missions sent overseas in 1860 and 1862, in 1865-1867 and in the years after 1868, in particular the prestigious embassy led by Iwakura in 1871-1873. The book also tells the story of the several hundred students who went overseas in this period. It concludes by assessing the impact of the encounters on the subsequent development of Japan, first by examining the later careers of the travellers and the influence they exercised (they included no fewer than six prime ministers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries), and then by considering the nature of the ideas they brought home.
Author: Derek Massarella
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN: 140947223X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 697
Get Book Here
Book Description
In 1582 Alessandro Valignano, the Visitor to the Jesuit mission in the East Indies, sent four Japanese boys to Europe. Until the arrival of the embassy in Europe, the Euro-Japanese encounter had been almost exclusively one way: Europeans going to Japan. This book is an account of their travels, their long journeys out and back, and the 20 months in Europe being received by popes and kings. It was published in Macao in 1590 with the title De Missione Legatorvm Iaponensium ad Romanum curiam. The present edition is the first complete version of this rich, complex and impressive work to appear in English, and is accompanied with maps and illustrations of the mission, and an introduction discussing its context and the subsequent reception of the book.
Author: Luis Frois SJ
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317917804
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 363
Get Book Here
Book Description
In 1585, at the height of Jesuit missionary activity in Japan, which was begun by Francis Xavier in 1549, Luis Frois, a long-time missionary in Japan, drafted the earliest systematic comparison of Western and Japanese cultures. This book constitutes the first critical English-language edition of the 1585 work, the original of which was discovered in the Royal Academy of History in Madrid after the Second World War. The book provides a translation of the text, which is not a continuous narrative, but rather more than 600 distichs or brief couplets on subjects such as gender, child rearing, religion, medicine, eating, horses, writing, ships and seafaring, architecture, and music and drama. In addition, the book includes a substantive introduction and other editorial material to explain the background and also to make comparisons with present-day Japanese life. Overall, the book represents an important primary source for understanding a particularly challenging period of history and its connection to contemporary Europe and Japan.
Author: François Foret
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000487385
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 207
Get Book Here
Book Description
This book explains the increasing importance of value politics in Europe and Japan, shedding light on various arenas: social values; parties, elections and politics; public action, private sector and law; identity politics and religion; media and public spheres. It analyses how, against different but commensurable backgrounds, the rise of value politics alters (or not) the political game, for which purposes and with which effects. Applying both qualitative and quantitative methods from a wide range of primary and secondary sources, the comparison is organized by joining skills from experts of Japan and Europe and by systematizing a common analytical framework for the two cases. As such, it presents a revealing and unique analysis of the changing relationship between values and political behaviour in the two polities. Beyond the comparison, it also documents the opportunities and challenges underlying the interactions between Europe, Japan and the rest of the world; and the competition/combination between different versions of modernity. This book is of key interest to scholars and students of European studies and politics, Asian politics/studies, Japanese studies/politics and more broadly to comparative politics, sociology, cultural/media studies, and economics.
Author: Heide Fehrenbach
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 9781571811073
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 310
Get Book Here
Book Description
American culture has been one of the most controversial exports of the United States: greeted with enthusiasm by some, with hostility by others. Yet, few societies escape its influence. However, not all changes should be interpreted simply as "Americanization." The shaping of the postwar world has been much more complex than this term implies as is shown in this volume that explores the links between Americanization and modernity in Western Europe and Japan. In considering the impact of products and images ranging from movies and music to fashion and architecture, a multi-disciplinary group of contributors asks how American culture has been employed internationally in the articulation of postwar identities - be they national or subnational, socially sanctioned or socially transgressive. Their essays on France, Italy, Germany and Japan move beyond the simple paradigms of colonization and democratic modernization, yet retain a sensitivity to the asymmetries in the postwar power relationships between these countries and the United States. An extensive introduction historically locates changing interpretations of American influences abroad and suggests the problems and promises of "Americanization" as an analytical tool. Its comparative focus and interdisciplinary scope will appeal to a wide range of students and scholars of cold war and post-cold war history.
Author: Yoko Tawada
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
ISBN: 0811223515
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 228
Get Book Here
Book Description
A gorgeous collection of fantastic and dreamlike tales by one of the world's most innovative contemporary writers. Chosen as a 2005 Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year, Where Europe Begins has been described by the Russian literary phenomenon Victor Pelevin as "a spectacular journey through a world of colliding languages and multiplying cities." In these stories' disparate settings—Japan, Siberia, Russia, and Germany—the reader becomes as much a foreigner as the author, or the figures that fill this book: the ghost of a burned woman, a traveler on the Trans-Siberian railroad, a mechanical doll, a tongue, a monk who leaps into his own reflection. Through the timeless art of storytelling, Yoko Tawada discloses the virtues of bewilderment, estrangement, and Hilaritas: the goddess of rejoicing.
