Anti-Foreignism and Western Learning in Early Modern Japan: The New Theses of 1825: 126 (Harvard East Asian Monographs) - Softcover

Wakabayashi, Bob Tadashi

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0674040376 ISBN 13: 9780674040373

Verlag: Harvard University Press, 1992

Inhaltsangabe

The New Theses of 1825

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Reseña del editor

This study analyzes New Theses (Shinron), by Aizawa Seishisai (1781--1863), and its contribution to Japanese political thought and policy during the early-modern era. New Theses is found to be indispensable to our understanding of Japan's transformation from a feudal to a modern state. Focusing on Aizawa, Wakabayashi traces the development of xenophobia during the Tokugawa period and examines the basis of anti-Western sentiment. He shows how knowledge of Christianity inspired Aizawa to develop thepotent concept of kokutai ("what is essential to a nation"). His analysis explains why the Edobakufu's policies of national isolation (sakoku) and armed expulsion of Westerners (j i) gained widespread support in the late Tokugawa. Wakabayashi also describes how information on Western affairs and world conditions decisively altered Tokugawa Confucian conceptions of civilization and barbarism, and how this in turn enabled the Japanese to redefine their nation's relationship to China and the West. Rather than place Aizawa and his New Theses of 1825 at the beginning of a process leading up to the Meiji Restoration, Wakabayashi discusses New Theses in conjunction with the bakufu's Expulsion Edict issued in the same year. He concludes that the convergence of the two events in 1825 marks the emergence of modern nationalism in Japan, and therefore should perhaps be seen as more epoch-making than the 1868 Restoration itself. The study also presents a complete translation of New Theses.

Biografía del autor

Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi is Assistant Professor of History at York University, Toronto.

Über diese Auflage

• Verlag: Harvard University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0674040376
• ISBN 13: 9780674040373
• Einband: Tapa blanda
• Anzahl der Seiten: 360