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East Meets East:

Chinese Discover the Modern World in Japan, 1854–1898*
Douglas R. Reynolds**   This study originated as a doctoral dissertation of Carol Tyson Reynolds, “East Meets East:
Chinese Views of Early Meiji Japan” (ColumbiaUniversity, 1986). The goal of that study was toinvestigate, for the first time in any language, thefull range of Chinese views of early Meiji Japan,
1877–94. Carol’s excellent command of classicalChinese, along with her firm grasp of Japanese,enabled her to accomplish this challenging task.
The late C. Martin Wilbur of Columbia University, Carol’s adviser in the fieldof modern Chinese history, strongly encouraged her to explore late Qing relations with Japan. Dr. Andrew Nathan was similarly supportive and helpful
with practical advice. In the 1960s and 1970s, Columbia University required
doctoral candidates in the field of modern Chinese history to have as asecondary examination field modern Japanese history, and to study theJapanese language. Columbia’s complementary strengths in Chinese andJapanese studies—and the mutual respect that existed across fields and disciplines—encouraged graduate students to develop expertise beyond any single
country. Out of Columbia’s excellent program came scholars like Paula
Harrell, Ronald Toby (primary interest in modern Japan), Douglas Reynolds,
Joshua Fogel, Carol Reynolds, and Joan Judge.
At the master’s level, Carol studied Chinese at the Inter-University
Program for Chinese Language Studies (the IUP or Stanford Center) in Taipei
in 1968–69. Then, in 1976 for her doctoral research, she received a Fulbrightfellowship to pursue research and training in Tokyo. Japan, sophisticated in	  * A shorter version of the preface of East Meets East: Chinese Discover the Modern
World in Japan, 1854–1898, by Douglas R. Reynolds and Carol T. Reynolds.
Published by the Association for Asian Studies, Inc., USA. Asia Past & Present:
New Research from AAS, Number 12, 2014.
** 任達 Professor of History at Georgia State University.

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scholarship and welcoming of outside researchers, was the only place inwhich to pursue Carol’s dissertation topic because Americans could not go toChina prior to normalization in 1979 and China’s archival and library collections were not organized or open for use. In Tokyo Carol was privileged to bea graduate research student (kenkyūsei) at the Institute of International
Relations (Kokusai Kankeiron) of the University of Tokyo, working under thenoted China specialist Etō Shinkichi (1923–2007). Separately, on her own,
she spent long days at the Sanetō Collection (Sanetō Bunko) of the Tokyo
Metropolitan Library (Tōkyō Toritsu Toshokan). To this day the SanetōCollection preserves the most complete body of firsthand diaries, reports, andresearch publications of Chinese in Japan for the years 1870 to 1930, in theirvarious roles of diplomat, student, or study-mission traveler and reporter.
(Doug, who had completed his Columbia PhD in 1976, was also guided byProfessor Etō to source materials and research topics that changed the direction of his research to Sino-Japanese cultural interactions. His and Carol’s
research on Sino-Japanese relations had little overlap at the time, sinceDoug’s focus was post-1898 and Carol’s was pre-1895.)
In 1980 an appointment to teach Chinese and Japanese history at Georgia
State University brought Doug and the family (including Sara, age five, andTokyo-born Emily, nine months old) to Atlanta. The family returned to Tokyoin 1986 under a Social Science Research Council (SSRC) grant, where Doug
continued his research on a book project (China, 1898–1912: The Xinzheng
Revolution and Japan, Harvard, 1993). From Tokyo, in early 1987, Carol
accepted a position in the US Department of State as a political officer in theForeign Service. Her assignments took her to embassies in Tokyo,
Kathmandu, and Beijing, and to Washington, DC. Her great satisfaction andbusy schedule as a diplomat prevented her from giving any thought toconverting her dissertation into a book.
Doug, meanwhile, on frequent visits to China became aware of thegrowing quality of scholarship and publishing that followed China’s 1979
gaige kaifang (reform and opening). This was clearly evident by 1990. The
new Chinese scholarship included much material relevant to Carol’s doctoral
dissertation, including fresh discoveries and nuanced understandings of Meiji
Japan. Searching for a new research project, Doug asked Carol in 1997 forpermission to convert her dissertation into a book, incorporating the new
Chinese scholarship. She graciously consented.
When Carol began her doctoral research in 1976, she was ahead of hertime. Noriko Kamachi was working on her masterful study of Huang Zunxian(published in 1981), and senior Japanese scholars like Sanetō Keishū (1896–1985) and Satō Saburō (1912–2006) had published important pioneeringstudies directly relevant to Carol’s topic. Chinese scholars—whether inEast Meets East: Chinese Discover the Modern World in Japan75

Taiwan, Hong Kong, or China—had scarcely touched the topic other than
through the person of Huang Zunxian.
As Carol wrote in the introduction to her dissertation:
For the first time in any language, this study examines systematicallythe most useful of the Chinese accounts written between the late 1870s
and the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95—the event which signalled a newstage in Sino-Japanese relations—to learn how Chinese perceived thechanges taking place in Japan in the decades leading up to the war. It
investigates the response to Japan of nine individuals in the unique position of being among the first Chinese to visit Japan in the last quarter ofthe nineteenth century, a time of revolutionary change for Japan’ssociety, economy and political institutions.
Exactly what did China know about Japan in the decades prior to thewar? How accurate was that information? What things did the Chineseparticularly notice? What significant areas did they ignore?
How the Chinese responded to Japanese reform efforts offers clues toa better understanding of Chinese reform efforts at home. For one
observes in late nineteenth-century Japan many of the same tensions
between traditions heavily influenced by Chinese civilization and thedemands of modern change and survival. Which Japanese changes wereviewed as necessary by the Chinese, and why? Which were viewed as
unnecessary or even detrimental? Did the Chinese consider Japanesereforms as suitable models for China? Knowledge of what models wereavailable and how the Chinese perceived them can aid in subsequentscholarly analyses of China’s own response to the outside world of thelate 19th century.
These accounts produce new perspectives on Japan, informed bypreconceptions completely different from those of westerners writing on
the subject. Western observers were viewing a new pupil attempting toemulate the “western teacher.” Chinese, from the opposite perspective,
were watching a former pupil turning away from the teachings of the“old master.”
Chinese scholarship since 1990 (including scholarship by Chinese trainedand employed in Japan, and writing in Japanese) has taken the topic of “EastMeets East” well beyond the point of “for the first time in any language.”Thanks to this scholarship, the present book also takes Carol’s dissertation
beyond just a narrative overview of Chinese views. As Doug’s research
proceeded, a second question arose. “What did observations of Japan say
about the Chinese observers themselves and about their findings?” The unex-

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pected answer was that in Meiji Japan Chinese discovered “the modernworld.” In the lives of these writers and in their observations, tensions“between tradition and modernity” were most often absent. An initial sense ofcultural betrayal in 1877 receded so that by the early 1880s new reports
displayed startling objectivity—anything but “Sinocentrism.” The absence ofSinocentrism became a liability back home, however, as qingyi (moralisticcriticism of public policy) and culture wars gripped the imperial capital.
Leaders like Li Hongzhang, under pressure to avoid taking risks, blocked
publication of these objective Japan reports after 1884. In the crucial decade
between 1884 and the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95, not one major reporton Japan was published in China. This deprived Chinese authorities of essential knowledge about Japan, even as China’s future enemy was surveilling
China and its military preparedness.
In time a third, final set of questions arose, including “What is happening
behind the scenes in China to explain the lives and careers of Chinese
reporters in Japan and elsewhere?” Government at the top seemed plagued byinstitutional paralysis and political gridlock, even as lower levels witnessed
dynamism and change and a growing importance of new types of persons
engaged in new governmental and nongovernmental activities. What wasgoing on?
Without Carol’s doctoral dissertation, the present book is unlikely to havebeen written. Yet the final product is not hers. Indeed, Carol has neither readnor critiqued any of Doug’s chapters. Her first reading of those will be after
publication of the book.
Besides my deep debt to Carol for her foundational study, my greatest
intellectual debt is to two Wangs—Wang Xiaoqiu and Wang Baoping. Wang
Xiaoqiu, Beijing University, plowed the field of modern Sino-Japanesestudies in post-1979 China, going to original source materials and archives
and writing up his findings with patience and dedication, determined to open
up the research field of cultural interactions between China and Japan. Wang
Baoping (no relation; PhD, Kansai Daigaku) devoured original sources but
also referenced secondary works. Meanwhile, his meticulous archival andlibrary searches in both China and Japan uncovered “lost” primary works, andhe continues to arrive at brilliant new insights.
Since 1979—the year of the historic first International Symposium onSino-Japanese Cultural Interchange organized by Tam Yue-him at the Chinese
University of Hong Kong—similar symposia have been an ongoing source ofinspiration, whether in China, Japan, Hong Kong, or Taiwan. The communityof scholars in the field of China-Japan studies has greatly expanded, and mydebt to those scholars is evident in almost every endnote citation.
Beyond international debts are my ongoing debts to Georgia StateEast Meets East: Chinese Discover the Modern World in Japan

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University, my academic home for more than thirty years, since 1980, for
institutional support and flexible scheduling without which scholarship cannot
be sustained. The university provides modest annual funding for research andtravel. Since 2002 the History Department has applied my research funds toresearch in China. Every year since 2005 I have also served as professor andon-site assistant director of the Summer Study in China program of theUniversity System of Georgia, directed and led by the able Dr. Baogang Guoof Dalton State College. This has taken me annually to my favorite bookstores in Beijing and Shanghai, and allowed regular updates of the prolificscholarship being published in China. The outcome of this rare privilege
manifests itself in the narrative and notes of every page.
In 2002, funding from Georgia State University took me to Tsinghua
University and its History Department. Department head Professor Cai Lesu
and also Professor Wang Xianming were particularly helpful in assisting withmy research and my life on campus. At Tsinghua that same summer I met
Sun Aizhen, whom I married in 2006. This marriage required a divorce fromCarol, married in 1968 and separated since 1998. Despite the divorce, Carol
never once raised the issue of withholding her doctoral dissertation from me,
and it is appropriate that East Meets East be published now as the work of
Douglas R. Reynolds with Carol T. Reynolds. As for Sun Aizhen, bless herheart, she calls me shudaizi (addicted to books). I plead guilty as charged, andwant to offer her an overdue public apology.
Finding a publisher has not been easy. Free from the pressures of tenure
and promotion, I decided early on to hold out for an appropriate not-for-profit
publisher whose prices are affordable to scholars and students. In 2009,
during my search, I contacted Jonathan Wilson of the Association for AsianStudies (AAS) to seek information about a publication series that involved
him. “Would you like to submit your manuscript to the new Asia Past andPresent series of the AAS?” he asked. After looking at the titles in that series
and liking both them and their affordable prices, I sent Jon the manuscript.
The publications committee then sent it out to readers. Outside evaluations
were positive, even laudatory, which was most gratifying.
As for the AAS, I purchased a lifetime membership in 1973 using income
from my first academic teaching position at Skidmore College. Here I wasfollowing in the footsteps of my late missionary-educator father, Dr. I. Hubert
Reynolds, and my sister, Professor Virginia Reynolds, both longtime
members. It is a distinctive honor and delight therefore that the AAS is
publishing East Meets East in its excellent series. Thank you, Jon.
Additionally, thank you Jan Opdyke for your meticulous copyediting thatmade this the book it is now.