japan through the looking glass

[...]... some months, in the case of Japan it took me about four years Japan. indb 11 13/5/08 16:34:35 12 japan through the looking glass The third phase consisted of further attempts to probe beneath the surface of Japan I wrote a book comparing ecology, population and material life in Japan and England over a thousand years I wrote another book comparing the ideas of two great theorists of how the modern world... times down to the present day.’ My own view is that, as Dale and others argue, this assumption is unacceptable As we shall see, the Japanese are not homogenous in space or in time and their roots are to be found all over Asia ‘Secondly, they presuppose that the Japanese differ radically from Japan. indb 13 13/5/08 16:34:35 14 japan through the looking glass all other known peoples.’ That the Japanese are... Toshiko We have asked them innumerable questions and they have taken it upon themselves to try to teach us as much about Japan as possible, W Japan. indb xi 13/5/08 16:34:33 xii japan through the looking glass both in Japan and when they have come to England They have done all this partly because of their fascination with English culture and partly as a result of what they have seen and their consequent... self-perception, at times thinking of themselves as just like westerners, then as very different, depending on political and economic relations After the Second World War the Japanese self-image was largely shattered However, as they rebuilt their economy the Japanese started Japan. indb 12 13/5/08 16:34:35 into the mirror 13 to see themselves as not only modernising but westernising Then in the 1960s and 1970s, a... stressed Japanese uniqueness, contributed to a theory of the essence of Japaneseness or nihonjinron Nihonjinron is partly a cultural reaction by these writers to the ‘ethnocentric universalism’ of some Anglo-American thought As in many other areas of the world, some people in Japan feel assaulted by the modern trend to conform to the institutions and values of the West They feel under pressure to abandon their... to put the pieces of the puzzle together into this book; a summer of discussion and writing, intense meetings with a dozen of the most distinguished Japanese scholars in the spring of 2006, and the final synthesis later that year The path into and through the Japanese mirror is made more complicated by three sets of ideas which have been developed particularly strongly in the last forty years: Japanese... recently had the two diverged, China becoming a communist, Japan a capitalist society I knew Japan to be an ultra-modern and efficient country, home to more than a hundred million people It was the first industrial nation in Asia by more than two generations and the second largest economy L Japan. indb 1 13/5/08 16:34:34 2 japan through the looking glass in the world It seemed, from afar, the epitome of... aware of the distortions which these are likely to cause to any writing or reading on Japan Like every other people, the Japanese have always been interested in their own identity and for many centuries those who attempted to explore this area compared themselves with China and Korea Then, from the 1850s, as Japan began to measure itself against an aggressive and powerful West, they went through various... 16:34:34 8 japan through the looking glass accounts by Portuguese visitors in the sixteenth century onwards Western writers from the seventeenth to the early nineteenth century, when a succession of Dutch and German observers frequently relayed the oddness of Japan to their European readers, commented on the strange world they were encountering, though generally from the confines of the island of Deshima... become the sport of our own reflections Japan. indb 9 13/5/08 16:34:35 10 japan through the looking glass It might be thought that with the supposed Westernisation of Japan in the later nineteenth century, as it turned into an industrial society, these difficulties of comprehension, this feeling of indefinable otherness, which cut across our ways of classifying our experiences would have ended Yet the sense . two generations and the second largest economy Japan. indb 1Japan. indb 1 13/5/08 16:34:3413/5/08 16:34:34 2 japan through the looking glass in the world. It seemed, from afar, the epitome of a modern,. 4 Cert no. TT-COC-002227 Japan. indb ivJapan.indb iv 13/5/08 16:34:3013/5/08 16:34:30 For Rosa In the hope that one day she will enter the Japanese looking glass Japan. indb vJapan.indb v 13/5/08 16:34:3313/5/08. discussions with them, either in their homes or when travelling through Japan together, or when they have visited us in England. Ken Endo and his wife Hilda Gaspar Pereira and their daughter