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Review of Nihonjin wa Nihon o dō mitekita ka: Edo kara miru jiishiki
no hensen (How the Japanese Have Viewed Japan: Changes inViews in the Edo Period), edited by Tanaka Yūko. Tokyo: Kasama
Shoin, 2015. [日本人は日本をどうみてきたか: 江戸から見る自意識の変遷／田中優子編．東京: 笠間書院，2015．1,944円．248ページ.]The international popularity ofJapanese food has become a topic ofconversation. The Olympics are coming
to Tokyo again in 2020. And there is anever ending stream of events bringing
increased international interest in Japan.
As a result, the number of foreigners
who visit Japan has exceeded 20
million people per year, it is said. Yet
despite foreigners’ increased contact
with Japan, their understanding of Japan
has hardly improved. In fact, the morecontact one has with Japan, the moredifficult it is to know the true nature ofJapan. When cultural essays take up theimage of Japan, the task becomes
especially difficult. There are many things that are quite ordinary forJapanese, but that become impossible for foreigners to understand. A bookthat shows once again how difficult it is for foreigners to discover Japan is thepresent How the Japanese Have Viewed Japan, edited by Tanaka Yūko.
The eighteen contributors form a magnificent research group. In thepreface, Prof. Tanaka explains that the book is a new look at perceptions ofJapan, the result of a group research effort at the Research Center forInternational Japanese Studies of Hōsei University. In answer to the call for
an international approach to Japan studies, the book includes chapters byresearchers from Korea and the Slovak Republic. As indicated by the subtitle,
the book looks at the early modern era, starting with the Edo Period (1603–1867). The approach of the present work—looking at Japanese perceptions ofJapan to develop a view of Japan—has been used by foreign scholars as well.
As befitting a work of this many contributors, the book encompasses manyfields. In the preface, Prof. Tanaka lists some of the fields covered: “the issueof a name for the county, relations with the rest of East Asia, the importance188

Journal of Cultural Interaction in East Asia Vol. 7 2016of the Northeast and Okinawa for Japan, perceptions of Japanese territory asviewed from maps, images of Japanese and foreigners in illustrations, etc.” A
fitting list of topics from such a splendid research group.
To organize these diverse images of Japan, the editor selected seventeen
essays and five supporting articles called “columns” from the work of thegroup and gathered them into four categories (or parts of the book). In thecategory called “The Civilized versus Barbarian Order” 華夷秩序, she inserted
seven essays (including her own) and one supporting article; in the category
called “Country of Harmony” 和の国, she inserted two essays and two
supporting articles; in the category called “Country of Martial Glory” 武の国,
she inserted three essays and one supporting article; and in the categorycalled “Country of the Gods” 神の国, she inserted four essays and one
supporting article. Though the essays and supporting articles are not directlyrelated, in reading this material, one begins to see that the last three categories has elements in common with the first category. The idea of civilized
versus barbarian was obviously learned from that fount of civilization China.
But the Japanese inverted this idea and saw their own country as the countryof martial glory, the country of the gods, and looked down on other countries, much as the center looked down upon the periphery in China. A countryof harmony, a term that calls to mind the vitality of Japanese groups, is asociety in which relations among people are congenial. What seem like thethree separate categories—a country of harmony, a country of martial glory,
and a country of the gods—feed into and sustain the overarching category ofa nation with a civilized, versus barbarian, order.
For Japanese, there is nothing strange about the names of these categories.
Each of these categories forms the crux of a view of Japan. The reason forseveral categories is that individual Japanese have different views of Japan. In
the case of the countries of the West, Christianity is probably central to mostpeople’s perception of their country. In China, which boasts of a long cultural
history, Confucianism or Daoism forms the basis of people’s perception of thecountry. This book paints a picture of divergent Japanese perceptions ofJapan that even foreigners will find easy to understand.
Another point that I would like to make about this book is that it is possible
simultaneously to hold the views of Japan that the Japanese inversion of theChinese idea of civilized versus barbarian gave rise to native studies 国学 inthe early modern period, that it provided the foundation for Japanese nationalism still with us today, and that it encouraged Japan’s militarization from
the Meiji period (1868–1912) on. It is also possible to divide Japan into thecentral region and the outlying districts and to view the civilized center aslooking down on the barbaric periphery (Ryukyu and Okinawa, the Northeastand Hokkaido). This disregard for the periphery recently resurfaced in theBook Review

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issue of the relocation of the U.S. Marine Corps base at Futenma to Henoko.
Despite opposition from Okinawa Prefecture and Okinawa residents, theaffected city of Nago and Nago residents, the central government persists
with relocation construction in a manner reminiscent of civilized versus
barbarian thought of the early modern period. And it is not just the government that looks down on Okinawa, but also, perhaps, residents of the central
island of Honshu. The anger on the part of Okinawans lends historicalsubstance to views found in the literature on the center versus the periphery.
Thus we see that the notions of the country of harmony, country of martial
glory, and country of the gods add substance to the notion of the civilized
versus barbarian order as it operates in history.
Lots of familiar names appear in this work. For instance, there are The
Sino-Japanese Illustrated Encyclopedia Organized by Categories 和漢三才圖
會 compiled by Terajima Ryōan 寺島良安, the puppet play The Battles ofCoxinga 國性爺合戰 by Chikamatsu Monzaemon 近松門左衛門, The Illustrated
Biography of Toyotomi Hideyoshi 繪本太閤記 by Takeuchi Kakusai 武内確斎,and Crescent Moon: The Adventures of Minamoto no Tametomo 椿説弓張月
by Kyokutei Bakin 曲亭馬琴 with prints by Katsushika Hokusai 葛飾北斎.
These are but a few examples of how this work seeks the image of Japan insource materials. I highly recommend this excellent collection, which presents
one scholarly group’s take on the state of international Japanese studies.
Wang Min 王敏Professor, Research Center for International Japanese Studies, Hōsei University