Meiji Japan

Inabata Katsutarô, qui a étudié à Lyon avec les frères Lumière, importe au Japon, en 1897, le Cinéma-tographe, un appareil qui permet à la fois l'enregis-trement et la projection. Il est accompagné de Constant Girel, bientôt rejoint par Gabriel Veyre, tous deux opérateurs Lumière. Ils enregistrent principalement des danses japonaises, la vie quotidienne et des scènes de rue du Japon. Ces vues destinées au public occidental relèvent davantage de la construction d'une image pitto-resque du pays que de l'enregistrement de sa transformation. Le développement du cinéma au Japon est pourtant directement lié à la modernisation du pays : il devient l'un des symboles des changements de la société et il est l'un des moyens de voir le monde au-delà de l'archipel. Le public japonais reste longtemps attaché aux productions et sujets étrangers, comme l'exécution de Mary Stuart ou la vie de Jeanne d'Arc. La production japonaise naissante, d'abord dédiée aux films mettant en scène des danses de geishas ou des scènes de rue, s'oriente rapidement vers les actualités filmées ou reconstituées. Ce sont les documentaires reconstitués et les mises en scène de la guerre russo-japonaise de 1904-1905 qui assureront une diffusion massive du cinéma. Dès lors, l'histoire du cinéma sera aussi liée à l'histoire militaire et officielle du Japon : Itô Hirobumi, alors Premier ministre, n'hésite pas à inviter les opérateurs à filmer les colonies japonaises, Taiwan et la Corée. Le développement du cinéma durant l'ère Meiji est fondamentalement lié aussi à l'évolution du spectacle

Folding screens, known as byôbu in Japanese, are treasures within any museum’s collection and are beloved by the general public. This beautiful publication brings together the very finest screens from the world-renowned collections of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Saint Louis Art Museum. The featured works range from an extraordinary pair of landscapes by Sesson Shukei, a Zen-Buddhist monk-painter of the late 16th century, to daring contemporary works from the late 20th century.

The first half of the Edo period (1615–1868) is especially well represented, with a dozen screens from the 17th century by such masters as Kano Koi and Tosa Mitsuoki. The contemporary scene is also well covered, with ten examples from the 20th century—proving the longevity of this art form and its currency among modern-day artists. Enlightening essays by important scholars in the field cover topics like the emergence of screens as an art form and a novel discussion of the relationship of Japanese screens to those made in other countries.

Реформы эпохи Мэйдзи (1868–1912) затронули многие области жизни Японии. В это время складывается школа живописи в западном стиле, оказавшаяся противопоставленной традиционной живописи на идейном и институциональном уровне вследствие государственной политики в области музейного дела и художественного образования. Во второй половине эпохи Мэйдзи в живописи в западном стиле резкий подъем переживает исторический жанр, находящийся в тесной связи с формированием “национальной историографии”. Полемика Тояма Сёити и Мори Огай была одной из стартовых точек в публичной дискуссии вокруг становления этого жанра.

Este trabajo se enfoca en los cambios sucedidos en la Revolución Meiji en el siglo XIX, realizando un especial hincapié en el panorama socio-económico así como sus relaciones con otras naciones que logran romper con todo lo establecido anteriormente. Veremos una transformación del sistema feudal tradicional a un innovador sistema moderno y liberal que permite un auge increíble en este aspecto convirtiéndose así en un extraordinario rival para occidente que muchas veces se verá superado por Japón. 1. Introducción Cuando le preguntamos a un español acerca de revoluciones industriales, lo más probable es que se le venga a la mente aquello que vio en los libros de historia de su etapa estudiantil, es decir, la primera revolución industrial, cambios sucedidos alrededor del siglo XVIII en Gran Bretaña que gracias al liberalismo permiten en resumidas cuentas mejorar los bienes de producción con las nuevas tecnologías y los nuevos materiales (esto se reduce a nuevos métodos de producción) para así ofrecer una gran nueva cantidad de bienes de consumo, dinamizando la economía del país y convirtiendo así una sociedad de autoconsumo en una donde la subsistencia se basa en la comercialización de los distintos productos. Pronto, muchos países imitarán esta tendencia y se industrializarán a igual que sus compañeros ingleses. Este virus de innovación se propaga por los distintos países, empezando por los amigos europeos. No obstante, las naciones más lejanas tardarán décadas o siglos en contraer esta fiebre de reformas. Si viajamos al Japón de mediados del siglo XIX, nos encontramos con un gobierno militar, el Shogunato Tokugawa. Esta organización administrativa se encontraba en una situación inestable debido a varias circunstancias: un gobierno que había perdido su credibilidad, con escasos recursos financieros y con un ejército demasiado débil frente a las amenazas occidentales y al miedo de convertirse en una colonia más. Debido a esta inestabilidad, la élite japonesa tomará el control en 1868 devolviéndole el poder al emperador con la intencionalidad de construir un régimen en torno a este como figura central y, así, instaurándose el Gobierno ilustrado. Este cambio supone el abandono de la estructura feudal y del gobierno Tokugawa, adoptando así las instituciones occidentales; irónicamente, el modus operandis de los japoneses para evitar ser tragados por el resto de potencias es actuar como una de ellas. La Revolución Meiji supone grandes renovaciones en cuanto al ámbito jurídico, a la división territorial, en la educación y, sobretodo, en la economía, convirtiéndose así en una de las revoluciones industriales más impresionantes de todos los tiempos. 2. Los problemas del Shogunato Tokugawa

When emperor Meiji succeeded the throne at the age of 14, Japan was experiencing political chaos. The last shōgun Tokugawa Yoshinobu, a ruler with the will to reform the existing political system, was struggling to maintain his power and the shogunate institution. Meanwhile, to resist the expansion of shogunate power, several daimyōs like Ōkubo Toshimichi and Saigō Takamori seized the opportunity of bakufu’s failure in oppressing rebellion to form an alliance in the name of “imperial force” and defeat Tokugawa.  Furthermore, foreign involvement in Japanese politics made it even more complex. 
The political scene shaped by these intertwined forces provided a perfect condition for the restoration. Under such circumstances, the famous Charter Oath was promulgated, and this is the context for the letter this essay is going to assess.

Visual and cultural analysis of Meiji shōnen kaiko 明治少年懐古 (Reminiscences of a Meiji youth, 1944), an illustrated book that nostalgically recalls Japan's late nineteenth and early twentieth century period of modernization. The book is in the Pulverer Collection of Japanese illustrated books of the Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC and is featured on The World of the Japanese Illustrated Book website. My commentary, along with a complete set of readable images of the book, may be found here: https://pulverer.si.edu/node/440/title/1.

This article challenges claims that the Japanese neologism shūkyō (as a translation for “religion”) lacked an established nature prior to the twentieth century and had little to do with experiences of the urban masses. It accordingly problematizes the term as a largely legal concept, highlighting historical newspapers as underutilized sources that offer insight into Meiji popular discourse and attendant conceptualizations of “religion.” This article endorses a shift in both our chronological understanding of shūkyō’s conceptual history as well as its sociocultural mobility. By expanding the milieu understood as being familiar with debates on a range of “religious” issues, this article thereby offers a counter-narrative in which regular use of shūkyō begins to clearly emerge from the mid-1880s, exponentially increasing with the following decades.

This draft is to become a chapter of the book project "Judicial Reform in Taiwan: Institutionalising Democracy and the Diffusion of Law" (Neil Chisholm ed., Routledge, forthcoming). The project bears on Taiwan's judicial reform of 1999. It is the first book-length study of Taiwan's judiciary and its transformation in the early stage of Taiwan's democratization.

Written after a second judicial reform that was launched in 2017, this chapter aims at historicizing not only Taiwan's judiciary but also the attempts to reform it. This chapter provides in its first part a historical account of Taiwan's justice system and the society's perception of it in the long century between 1895 to 1999. Rejecting the conventional narratives which enumerate origins of legal reception, this part explains how the justice system under Japanese rule (1895--1945) has earned respect despite the colonialism, and why this system fell into disarray under the Republican Chinese occupation (1945--92).

This chapter argues then in its second part that Taiwan's reformers have reduced the poor quality of the country's administration of justice to the malfunction of the judiciary alone. Taking into account the history of Western judiciary itself, this chapter argues that the key reform issues pertain rather to state-building than the making of organizational and procedural laws. This chapter argues that the centralization of government lawyering in a broad sense is Taiwan's priority and expects that this issue would soon lead to more reform attempts.

"An Observation on "Hanami Benten-zu" by Kawanabe Kyōsai: Another Commemorative Painting for Tatsu"[J], Kyōsai, Vol.120, Warabi: Kawanabe Kyōsai Memorial Museum, September 2016, 29-34.

「河鍋暁斎筆《見立七福神之内 花見弁天図》に関する一考察 ― もうひとつの田鶴追善図という可能性について」『暁斎』120号、河鍋暁斎記念美術館、2016年9月、29-34頁。

El arte en Japón, en origen, derivó del legado artístico chino. Con el tiempo, encontraron su propia identidad, desarrollando una producción japonesa per se, el yamato-e. Con la llegada de los portugueses a Kyūshū en el siglo XVI se produjo un proceso de evangelización y aculturación que impregnó todo el arte tradicional. Los artistas japoneses dejaron en desuso sus técnicas centenarias a favor de las novedades llegadas de Occidente. Esta situación generó una crispación entre un grupo de artistas que avalaban las virtudes de lo autóctono y promovían su recuperación. Esto dará lugar al nihonga o pintura propiamente japonesa. En el siglo XIX, cuando el País del sol naciente se abre al exterior y penetra en Europa, los occidentales se quedan fascinados con su cultura. Los mismos que habían destruido una tradición, imponiendo la suya, ahora se sienten atraídos por lo exótico, adoptando sus técnicas y formas en su pintura vanguardista.

This paper analyzes the impact of Chinese culture on Japanese modern writer Mori Ōgai (actual name Mori Rintarō, 1862-1922), regarded by some as one of the prominent writers of the Meiji period (1868- 1912); the dissertation focuses on presenting and commenting a set of diverse texts which reveal Ōgai’s interest in Chinese culture. Traditionally, Ōgai’s literature is associated with Western thought and ideals, though most critics do recognize the kanbun (classical chinese) training he received as a young man of letter as a matter of some relevance for the development of his style of prose; reconsidering the impact of Ōgai’s early training in the Chinese classics, however, is by no means the only source accounting for the subtle, yet overall considerable influence of Chinese literary themes in his mature years as a writer of fiction. It is in his late works, then, that one has to search for his growing reputation as a sinophile. Is it possible to open a new perspective over Ōgaii’s interest in Chinese culture presenting several examples of the Chinese sources he read and employed in shaping his own literary tastes. Ōgai also contributed to gradually change the way in which Meiji literati would judge the value of literary works, and influenced favourably the process of rediscovery of forgotten Chinese and Japanese works of the past with his own critical thought, thoroughly working towards broadening his knowledge of Chinese and Japanese literature, along with the study of Western fonts. In this respect, translation excerpts provided in the appendix should be of help in clarifying how Ōgai’s outlook on Chinese literature changed over time, to the point that he developed a more mature approach to the study of Chinese culture, and Chinese language itself. The material commented includes forums such as Hyoshinryo Iroku (‘Scattered Recordings on Notable Works’, recorded ca. 1895 onwards), transcribed and printed on literary magazines, and two concrete examples revealing how his knowledge of the Chinese language and culture enabled Ōgai to derive literary themes and techniques from Chinese fiction. These are the short stories Yasui Fujin (‘The Wife of Yasui’ 1914), and Gyogenki (‘Yu Xuanji’, 1915).

A global study of the process in its entirety, from the rising of the Togukawa rule to the establishment of the 1889 constitution casts a doubt over the denomination of 'Restoration' when it comes to 1868. Is the Meiji rule a restoration, a revolution or a renewal?

This paper will investigate the background of the emergence of Wayo-secchu, by re-examining the rhetoric of the government-oriented early Meiji Western style architecture and Japanese traditionalisms reaction to it. I will elucidate the undercurrent of the intentional shift in nineteenth century Japan towards the recuperation of traditional Japanese style, a shift which initiated the Japanese hybrid style we now call Wayo-secchu. I will discuss the effect of institutional pressure to Westernise, by investigating what was meant by a new architectural method as expressed by the government of the time.

The emergence of Modern architecture and landscape design corresponds with the end of the Meiji era (1868-1912) in Japan. This period saw Japan reopen its borders to the Western world and create a dynamic moment which fostered artistic and intellectual exchange between Japan, Europe and America. The (re-)discovery of Japanese architecture and gardening by both Western and Japanese Orientalists and the dissemination of the hitherto undiscovered built forms and conceptual thinking allowed several generations of architects and landscape architects to take part in the creation of new architectural and landscape expressions. The works of Josiah Conder, Bruno Taut, Frank Lloyd Wright, Antonin Raymond, and Isamu Noguchi are all paradigms of these Modern encounters between Japan and the West.

L’apparition d’une modernité architecturale et paysagère correspond à une période particulièrement propice aux échanges artistiques et intellectuels entre le Japon, l’Europe et les Etats-Unis, à partir de la fin de l’ère Meiji (1868-1912). La (re-)découverte de l’architecture et de l’art des jardins japonais par les orientalistes occidentaux et japonais, puis la réception et la diffusion de ses nouveaux modèles et savoirs, vont permettre à plusieurs générations d’architectes et de paysagistes de participer à la création de nouvelles expressions architecturales et paysagères. Les ouvrages de Josiah Conder ou de Bruno Taut, les oeuvres de Frank Lloyd Wright, d’Antonin Raymond, d’Isamu Noguchi, nés de ces rencontres entre le Japon et l’Occident, sont les témoins de cette modernité.

Resumen
Este artículo tiene como objetivo examinar de forma sucinta la historia de la literatura femenina japonesa desde el periodo clásico, conocido como era Heian (794–1185), hasta el periodo Moderno, cuyo final aproximado se da en la era Taishō (1912–1926). La literatura del periodo Heian de la cual se conservan, mayormente textos escritos por mujeres, constituirá un pilar fundamental para la construcción de la idea de nación en el Japón de finales del siglo XIX. Establecidos como “clásicos”, estos textos legitimarán la importancia de la escritura femenina del momento; que el canon masculino intentará desvincular de la literatura popular.


Abstract
This article aims to briefly examine the history of the Japanese women literature from its beginnings, known as the Heian era (794–1185), to the Modern period, whose approximate ends is in the Taishō era (1912–1926). The literature of the Heian period, of which they are preserved mostly texts are written by women, will constitute a fundamental pillar for the construction of the idea of nation in late XIX century Japan. Established as “classics”, these texts would legitimate the importance of women writing of the moment; that the male canon would try to dissociate from popular literature.

During the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries the individual became the basic, self-contained unit of society whose interior life was increasingly privileged.  This “inward turn” resonated with new forms of governance and constitutionalism that demanded self-determining citizens.  Meanwhile, burgeoning capitalism required workers to become isolatable but interchangeable parts for mechanized economic production.  Around this time the nascent social sciences began theorizing about the autonomous though alienated subject.  Such developments were part of a broader psychological revolution that valued “inner experience.”  How did this interiorization of the person play out in Japan? 
This book explores the origins of Japanese Psychology.  By highlighting the contributions of pioneers such as Motora Yūjirō (1858–1912) and Matsumoto Matatarō (1865–1943), it charts cross-cultural connections, commonalities, and the transition from religious–moralistic to secular–scientific definitions of human nature.  Emerging at the intersection of philosophy, pedagogy, physiology, and physics, Psychology confronted the pressures of industrialization and became allied with attempts to integrate individual subjectivities into larger and larger institutions and organizations.  Such social management was accomplished through Japan’s establishment of a schooling system that incorporated Psychological research, making educational practices both products of and the driving force behind changing notions of selfhood.  In response to new forms of labor and loyalty, applied Psychology led to and became implicated in intelligence tests, personnel selection, therapy, counseling, military science, colonial policies, and “national spirit.”  The birth of Japanese Psychology, however, was more than a mere adaptation to the challenges of modernity: it heralded a transformation of the very mental processes it claimed to be exploring. 
Richly supplemented with appendices contextualizing and shedding new light on the development of Psychology worldwide, this book is useful for courses on Asian studies, comparative intellectual history, and the globalization of the social sciences.

This thesis provides the first in-depth account in English of the life of Nakai Hiromu (1838-1894), a little-known samurai of the Satsuma domain who played a key role in the Bakumatsu/Meiji period of Japanese history, as well as Anglo-Japanese relations’ history. Being one of the pioneering Japanese travellers to Britain in 1866, Nakai, upon his return to Japan was given the important role of escorting British representatives on their first visit to the Emperor Meiji. The visit was postponed due to an attack on the British procession as it travelled through the streets of Kyoto. By cutting down one of the assailants, Nakai assisted in preventing the possibility of an all-out war between Britain and Japan. This fact in itself merits more attention to his life and role in Anglo-Japanese relations’ history. Nakai continued to work within the Meiji government throughout his life, and although only a minor figure himself, never receiving any titles of peerage, and reaching only as far as prefectural governor status, he had a strong network of connections and was well liked by many of the Meiji elite. His close acquaintances include Japan’s first Prime Minister, Itō Hirobumi, and one-time Foreign Minister, Inoue Kaoru. Nakai’s son-in-law was Hara Takashi, Japan’s first Prime Minister of ‘common stock’, upon whom he had no little influence. A well-known expert in Chinese poetry and prose in his time, Nakai has a small number of publications to his name. This thesis provides, for the first time, a full translation of his travel journal describing his first journey to Britain. The central crux of the thesis is to bring the life of this important key player in Anglo-Japanese, and Japanese, history back to the spotlight because it is an injustice of history for him to be forgotten. In addition, a comprehensible collection of data about his life in English, such as this thesis provides, will facilitate the drawing of attention to this important topic from a wider, international audience, as well as from Japanese historians and other scholars within Japan.

The woodblock print series Dai Nippon Bussan Zue, drawn by Utagawa Hiroshige III (1842–1894), was published by the Tokyo-based publisher Ōkura Magobei on August 10, 1877. Each printed sheet in the series contained a pair of illustrations depicting regional scenes of farming, fishing, mining and other economic activities. Higuchi Hiromu, a collector of 19th-century nishiki-e, wrote in 1943 that there were 60 pairs (120 pictures) in the series, but only 118 are extant.1 There is also reference to over 100 pairs (200 pictures) being issued, based on the existence of prints in this series that carry numbers in their margin, some of which exceed the number 200. However, based upon the haphazard appearance of numbers on only the occasional print, these numbers appear to have no relationship to the total number of prints in the series and we can safely assume that only 59 pair (118 pictures) were issued.
The series' issuance date strongly suggests that their publication was timed for the August 21, 1877 opening of the first National Industrial Exposition (Naikoku Kangyō Hakurankai) in Tokyo's Ueno Park.

[For an abstract in English, please see below]

Dopo una breve disamina che individua alcune linee concettuali considerate come l'origine della narrativa storica giapponese in epoca classica, l'articolo prende in esame la produzione storica di autori giapponesi noti negli ambienti letterari fra la fine dell'Ottocento e l'inizio del Novecento, alcuni dei quali considerati importanti teorici del romanzo moderno, o autori di fiction storica, quali Mori Ogai (1862-1922), Tsubouchi Shoyo (1859-1935), Yamada Bimyo (1868-1910).

The article offers a brief overview of the conceptual stances behind the conscious act of writing fiction based on historical materials in premodern Japan, before discussing to a fai rextent the theories and original pièces authored by important modern Japanese writers such as Mori Ogai, Tsubouchi Shoyo and Yaada Bimyo around the turn of the XIX century.

In Japan, marriage ceremonies prior to 1900 wedding of the crown prince used to be secular events, featuring some differences from the current matrimonial practice. This essay explores the Meiji era social engineering invention by looking at the history and practices of an altered ritual.

In 2015, the researcher Imaishi Migiwa discovered a group of Ainu religious
implements called inaw イナウ in Shinto shrines in two coastal villages in
Ishikawa Prefecture, some thousand kilometers from Hokkaido. Upon close
examination, these nine inaw were recognized to have been brought to Honshu by a similar process that brought twenty-four inaw to Engakuji 円覚寺, a Shingon Buddhist temple on the west coast of Aomori Prefecture. These inaw were collected from multiple locations across the islands of Sakhalin and Hokkaido over the period of 1868 to 1888 by Wajin 和人 (non-Ainu Japanese) merchants doing regular business with the Ainu. While this period is known for the seizure of Ainu lands by Japan and Russia and the imposition of Western-style colonialism, the inaw viewed as a group of artifacts paint a very different picture.

Diplomasi Jepang era Meiji dilatarbelakangi oleh pembukaan (kaikoku) Jepang terhadap dunia luar. Kebijakan politik diplomasi Tokugawa Ieyasu lah yang membuat Jepang menutup diri dari dunia luar. Hampir lebih dari 200 tahun menjalankan politik isolasi (sakoku, 1600) identitas masyarakat Jepang terbangun begitu melekat. Selama masa isolasi itu, Jepang mengalami ketertinggalan dari Negara-negara Barat.

On Rozsnyai’s “Speed master Japanese”

　In Hungary, as the 15th volume of self-study series “Rozsnyai gyors nyelvmesterei” (Rozsnyai’s Foreign language speed master series), the Rozsnyai publishing company has published “Japán / Japanische Grammatik” at 1905. This book was the first Japanese textbook written in Hungarian.
The purpose of this paper is an attempt to define the author of “Speed master Japanese”, and reference materials the author used to write this textbook.
As a result of bibliographical research, we know that the author was AKANTISZ Viktor, who studied philosophy and law at the Budapest University, and after graduation he made a living as translator, writer, painter, illustrator and book-restorer.
At the present stage of research, we were unable to get any information about wether he visited to Japan or not, and where he studied Japanese language.
When AKANTISZ wrote this textbook, he used materials of the German philologist, August SEIDEL.
Although  there are many mistakes and imperfect explanations in this textbook, we think this is a valuable material as the first Japanese textbook in Hungarian. 


阿尔贝克尔 (Albeker András Zsigmond)
关于Rozsnyai 出版社《日语速成大师》的研究

在匈牙利，Rozsnyai出版社于1905年出版了《日语语法》，此书为 “Rozsnyai外语速成大师”自学丛书中第15卷 ，是第一本用匈牙利语编写的日语教材。
本论文试图解析《日语速成大师》的作者以及这本教材所用的参考资料。根据文献研究我们得知其作者为 Akantisz Viktor，他在布达佩斯大学学习哲学和法律，毕业后以翻译、写作、画画、插画以及书籍修复为生。
根据目前的研究，我们无法得知他是否去过日本以及他学习日语的地点。Akantisz 编写这本教材时使用的是德国文献学家August Seidel的资料。尽管这本教材有很多错误以及不完善的注释，但是作为第一本用匈牙利语编写的日语教材，它包含非常有价值的资料。


A Japán nyelvmester innen letölthető https://mek.oszk.hu/18000/18019/

An abstract of a paper given at an International Symposium "Meiji in the World History / Meiji for the World History",  for 150th Anniversary of Meiji Restoration, held at International Research Institute on Japanese Studies (Nichibunken), Kyoto, Japan, 14-16 December 2018.

Higuchi Ichiyō’s (1872-1896) portrayal of late nineteenth-century teenagers just about to cross the border between childhood and adulthood, in "Takekurabe" (1895), revealed her artistic talent and sensitivity towards societal change. Although she has often been essentialized as a figure of the past, still relying on traditional values and structures, Ichiyō’s writing revolves around conflicting worldviews typical of the Meiji period, that she scrutinizes, and upon which she elaborates, through a very specific device: characterization.

While her familiarity with the classics is undeniable, it should be stressed that, in her literature, conventional motifs are systematically endowed with new meanings, a dynamic process that ultimately invites an empathetic reading of each character’s story; this particular outlook enables the reader to acknowledge them as figures embodying positions that contrast with, and are critical of the traditional structures and relations in which they are imbricated. This happens, for instance, in "Yuki no hi" (1893), a story underrated in mainstream scholarship but whose value lies, as I argue, in its being a transitional work and an early manifestation of Ichiyō’s concern with the paralyzing effects of social relations.

My contribution focuses on two pairs of works whose characters provide a material, visible dimension to crucial notions of modernization: "Yuku kumo" (1895) and "Wakaremichi" (1896), a sophisticated meditation on agency, and "Utsusemi" (1893) and "Yamiyo" (1894), where the motif of mental instability helps illuminate the unconscious conflicts and traumas of the modern individual.

The underlying concern of this article is with the function and purpose of the normative imaginary of ‘China’, Chugoku (Zhongguo) or Chuka (Zhonghua) in the Japanese discourse up to and around the mid-nineteenth century; namely, how it was deployed to make sense of the historical situation facing the contemporaries amid the combined internal and external crises and how it structured the range of options available to them. To exemplify this, I first turn to the debate of the shape of the polity that straddled the critical decades of 1850s 1860s. The self-conscious restoration of a past political ideal was the ostensible justification of the revolutionary overhaul, but in terms of the models of polity, there existed very different versions and understandings of what past could or should be restored. In the classical conceptual language of politics, the choice was between the hōken and gunken model. While the year 1871 saw a closure that cast Meiji as a gunken revolution, the debate continued beyond and the shift of preferences from hōken to gunken needs to be explained. In arguing for Meiji as a ‘Chinese revolution’, we can further point to the surprising degree of overlap between the concerns of earlier Edo-period commentators and the actual factors of the revolution when it finally arrived. Lastly, the normative imaginary of China is shown to have served as the key mediating filter for processing and appropriating the West both before and after the Meiji revolution.

A Career of Japan is the first study of one of the major photographers and personalities of nineteenth-century Japan. Baron Raimund von Stillfried was the most important foreign-born photographer of the Meiji era and one of the first globally active photographers of his generation. He played a key role in the international image of Japan and the adoption of photography within Japanese society itself. Yet, the lack of a thorough study of his activities, travels, and work has been a fundamental gap in both Japanese- and Western-language scholarship. Based on extensive new primary sources and unpublished documents from archives around the world, this book examines von Stillfried’s significance as a cultural mediator between Japan and Central Europe. It highlights the tensions and fierce competition that underpinned the globalising photographic industry at a site of cultural contact and exchange – treaty-port Yokohama. In the process, it raises key questions for Japanese visual culture, Habsburg studies, and cross-cultural histories of photography and globalisation.

Cet ouvrage est le premier à s’intéresser spécifiquement à l’histoire politique du Japon, depuis son ouverture au monde en 1853 à la catastrophe de Fukushima en 2011. Tout au long de cette période, le Japon fait figure de précurseur : premier pays asiatique à établir une constitution et un parlement, à connaître un mouvement démocratique, seule puissance à bâtir un empire colonial. L’ouvrage offre une périodisation nouvelle, qui s’affranchit des étapes usuelles que sont 1868 et 1945 : entre 1853 et 1889, confronté à la colonisation de l’Asie, un coup d’État met à bas le régime shogunal, et la répression du mouvement démocratique accompagne la création d’un régime impérial. Les années suivantes sont dominées par l’autoritarisme et une puissance régionale se développe. Entre 1922 et 1955, les partis triomphent et le Japon s’insère dans la nouvelle société des nations, avant que la contestation fasciste l’en fasse sortir et la défaite l’y ramène. Durant les années de haute croissance, le Japon est marqué par le conservatisme du Parti Libéral Démocrate et une diplomatie centrée sur l’Asie, sous la houlette américaine. À partir de 1993, le Japon, puissance mondialisée, cherche un équilibre entre indépendance et maintien d’un lien fort avec les États-Unis, alors que l’hégémonie du PLD laisse place à la recherche d’une alternative.
Cette nouvelle édition comporte en ajout la traduction de textes importants de la période, des cartes et des schémas, ainsi qu’une frise chronologique consultable en ligne.

One phrase, one idea, one utterance, fanned the flames of revolution, shattered, and reconstructed the foundations of Japanese society; in under 100 years Japan日本 rose from feudalistic culture to world superpower. “Sonnou Jyoui 尊王攘夷 – Revere the Emperor, Expel the Barbarians,”  a doctrine born under the threat of foreign invasion, revolutionised Japan with anti-foreign teachings; before falling to the demise of Sonnou Jyoui radicals and been replaced by the Emperor, the last Shougun将軍 initiated grand military reformation – The Meiji Restoration明治維新.  With the guidance of Bismarck, using unequal treaties as a pretext, Japan set out on a quest for both revenge and power, a Western mimicry of bloodthirsty imperialism

This essay examines gender symbolism in competing representations of nationalism in Meiji Japan. Through an analysis of contesting images of masculinity, it reveals how questions of national identity were articulated in the idiom of gender. In response to the perceived threat of the feminization of culture represented by the intensification of consumption, fashion, and artifice, a vigorous masculinity asserted itself that rejected Western materialism and instead extolled notions of primitivism, national spirit, and imperialism. These two opposing representations of masculinity, a “masculinized” and “feminized” masculinity, each constituted differing responses to the problem of modernity.