F1116 It All Began with Marco Polo - How Western Views of Japan Have Developed

It is conventional when writing about modern Japanese history to mention how Japan has \"caught up\" with the West since its period of isolation came to an end in the mid-nineteenth century; but in a way, it is Western knowledge of Japan that had to \"catch up\" first. It was Marco Polo the Venetian merchant and adventurer who first wrote tantalizing reports about Japan that he had heard on his Travels, which took him all the way to China but not quite as far as Japan. The name by which he referred to Japan, Zipangu, seems to have been his version of the name used by the Chinese for Japan, now conventionally transcribed as Riben, from which of course all the names for the country in modern European languages also derive. Even to the Chinese, therefore, Japan was known as \"sun origin\", or the Land of the Rising Sun: literally, the Orient. Polo\'s reports contained elements similar to the legends of Eldorado that attracted the conquistadores to South America, and it was at the time of the great sixteenth-century Spanish and Portuguese explorers that European traders and missionaries finally set foot in Japan and discovered for themselves whether or not the Emperor\'s palace really was roofed in gold. Perhaps because Japan already had a highly developed civilization of its own, that period of the first arrivals by the Portuguese and Spanish traders and missionaries is not usually called a \"discovery\", as it was for America and some other parts of Asia. (Ironically, the term came into brief popularity in the 1970s, when the Japan National Railways used the slogan \"Discover Japan\" to keep passengers faithful to its trains during a time of rapid economic development when travel by car was becoming more and more prevalent.) Then, after the Portuguese and Spanish visitors\' popularity declined to the extent that they were expelled from the country in the first half of the 17th century, Japan imposed on itself a policy of national isolation, by which the only Europeans permitted any relation with the country were a small Dutch community, and Europe as a whole was prevented from improving and keeping its knowledge of Japan up to date. Only when the US government forced the end of the isolation policy in the mid-19th century could Western knowledge begin to \"catch up\" again. This course will consider some important stages in how knowledge of Japan in Europe \"caught up\" with knowledge about other parts of the world, and how the spread of that knowledge was affected both by circumstances inside Japan and by the diverse demands of a Western public often eager for myth and mystery rather than bare facts. The following twelve figures will be introduced as pivots for wider discussions which will involve many other famous and less famous figures: Marco Polo, Francisco Xavier and Alessandro Valignano, William Adams (Miura Anjin), Engelbert Kaempfer, Jonathan Swift, Sugita Genpaku, Moriyama Takichiro, Matthew Perry, Lafcadio Hearn (Koizumi Yakumo), Ruth Benedict, Edward Seidensticker.

You will know more about the process of how knowledge of Japan spread in the West, and therefore you will know more about such processes in general. You will be able to recognize, interpret, compare and contrast subjective and objective reports about unfamiliar lands and cultures. You will become acquainted with writers from other ages and backgrounds whom you might not normally encounter. Through class presentations you will gain confidence in presenting in-depth information about your own cultural background and in researching the cultural backgrounds of others.

Teaching will include conventional lecture form, so that necessary knowledge and principles can be efficiently imparted. There will also be class discussion groups, and presentations by both groups and individuals. Each student will select at least one of the featured writers to investigate in detail. The general scheme will be for the second class each week to be fundamentally in lecture form, after which homework based on the contents of the lecture will be set. The first class of the following week will be dedicated to presentations and discussion of the results of that homework.

Please prepare one or two pages summarizing the stereotypes that you or other people have about Japan. Japanese participants, summarize the stereotypes about Japan that you think are common outside Japan. Bring what you have prepared to the first class, so that you can give a brief oral summary of it.


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