Section 7 | History, Politics and International Relations | Opening Session B, Panel
In Engelbert Kaempfer's monumental work, The History of Japan (1727), the reader finds little of what we today call "history," especially with regard to the rise of the early modern Japanese state in the sixteenth century. Most of what is included describes Japan's first contact with the Portuguese, their expulsion, and the rise and continued importance of Dutch trade with Japan. Until the following century, few works appear that fill this gap in the historical memory of Japan. Those that do appear also tend to focus on the expulsion of Christianity and European trade. What is forgotten is the memory of power relations between a dynamic and changing Japanese state and the European and neighboring Asian powers. This paper examines published and unpublished European sources that describe Japan in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These include works by Arnoldus Montanus and Richard Eden, and the letters and diaries of missionaries and other visitors to Japan during these years. They reveal contemporary attitudes toward the emerging Japanese state, and in particular the view of the Japanese as an equal to many contemporary European kingdoms. What emerges is a picture of relations between Japan and Europe that calls for a reexamination of later assumptions about Japan as a "backward" state that have generally retained currency since the nineteenth century.
Kimiaki Takahashi (Nagoya, University)
This paper examines the depiction of Japan, including part of Tsushima, and the Ryűkyű Islands in Korean maps between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries. The focus of the discussion based on this evidence is the world view of the Korean elites at this time, and where Japan and the Ryűkyű kingdom fell in this view of the world. Of particular interest are the boundaries: whether, for example, Tsushima appears inside or outside the boundaries of Korea. In addition, it will examine what is placed in the center of the map and what is on the periphery. Using these materials, this paper sheds light on the political and cultural values that they manifest. Finally, this paper interprets the position of Tsushima in maps of Korea, and the position of Japan and the Ryűkyű Islands in maps of Cheju Island. The final goal is to examine how these fit in the visualization of historical "memory" in each of these cases.
Ronald Frank (Pace University)
The paper focuses on the way the Sengoku period was presented and remembered in the Edo period, especially in the ubiquitous "war tales" that were authored or compiled by veterans and self-styled historians. Of particular interest are representations of an often idealized "order" and its juxtaposition to perceived "chaos". The paper argues furthermore that many of the biases of Edo period historiography continue to have currency in the way the image of Sengoku Japan is presented in modern history writing.
Tanaka's tenure, however, was marred by debilitating political squabbles that depicted her as inexperienced in the ways of Japan's foreign policy and ill-tempered to lead reform of the Foreign Ministry. Ultimately she was forced to resign under the cloud of an ordinary, "old boy" corruption scandal similar to the one that hounded her famous father. Within the context of a process of "re-masculinization" of Japan's diplomacy, Tanaka's role in ending decades of emasculated foreign policy was an ironic one. I will show how her rise and fall played out a gender drama largely ignored in Japan's foreign policy debates.