Description
THIS masterwork is not only an account of the cultural influence of the West upon Japan; it is also a study of the way in which cultures interact. It reveals the process by which the intru- sive civilizations of the West, since even before the Christian era, have affected the Asiatic peoples in general and the Japanese in particular, first only slightly and spasmodically, and then with in- creasing power.
The first part of the book traces the early cultural relations between Europe and Asia. Against this historical background the second part shows how Japan reacted to Western influence from the days of her first contact with Europeans down to the time of her entry into inter- national life in the nineteenth century. Historians will recognize instantly in this method the challenge both to Japan's own mystical and myth-ridden historiography, and to the West's narrow and self-centered preconceptions, which have prevented its historians from seeing that the institutions finally adopted were, if Western in shape, thoroughly Japanese in color and substance.
ISBN: WESTERNWORLDA
