Reopening the Opening of Japan

Transnational Approaches to Modern Japan and the Wider World
Erscheinungsjahr 2023
ISBN: 978-90-04-68343-3
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 75, 426 Seiten, Format (B × H): 158 mm x 238 mm, Gewicht: 776 g

Reihe: Brill's Japanese Studies Library

The 'Opening of Japan' has been central to the retelling of Japan's modern history. Reopening the Opening of Japan fundamentally reconsiders what that historical moment entailed.
What did intensified connections between Japan and the world mean both inside and outside of the country, and what does this tell us about Japan's historical significance on a global scale? The chapters excavate a rich array of surprising cross-border connections, from the global trade in mummified mermaids to the Japanese-Russian intellectual links underpinning the work of Akira Kurosawa.

Re-thinking connectivity through non-state transnational perspectives, the book guides readers to new ways of doing and writing history.

Contributors are: Lewis Bremner, Natalia Doan, Manimporok Dotulong, Maki Fukuoka, Eiko Honda, Sho Konishi, Mateja Kovacic, Joel Littler, Chinami Oka, Yu Sakai, Olga Solovieva, and Warren Stanislaus.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Bremner, Lewis

Dotulong, Manimporok

Konishi, Sho

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Asiatische Geschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Contents

Acknowledgments and Permissions

List of Illustrations

Notes on Contributors

Introduction

Lewis Bremner and Manimporok Dotulong

Part 1: Visions of Civilisation

1 The 1860 Japanese Embassy and the Opening of American Civilisation

Samurai, Interracial Romance, and Southern Print Culture

Natalia Doan

2 Laughing at Civilisation

Charles Wirgman’s Japan Punch and the Reopening of Great Britain

Warren A. Stanislaus

3 Minakata Kumagusu and the Microbial Turn in Theories of Evolution and Civilisation, 1887–1892

Eiko Honda

Part 2: Life through the Opening

4 Opening the West with Japanese Mermaid Mummies Ningyo in the Making of the Theory of Evolution

Mateja Kovacic

5 Hyakusho in the Arafura Zone

Ecologising the Nineteenth-Century “Opening of Japan”

Manimporok Dotulong

6 The Transformation of Magic Lantern Technology in Nineteenth Century Japan

Lewis Bremner

7 Squaring Experiences with the Opening

The Case of Yokoyama Matsusaburo

Maki Fukuoka

Part 3: From Particularity to Radical Universality

8 The Modern Closing of a Tokugawa-Era “Opening”

The Early Modern Origins of an International Humanitarian Organisation

Sho Konishi

9 A Defeated Samurai of the Boshin Civil War and the Search for a New Universalism

Chinami Oka

10 Meiji Civil War Losers in Siam

Miyazaki Toten’s Utopian Farming Community (1877–1896)

Joel Littler

11 The “Second Ishin” and Kunikida Doppo’s Misunderstood Nature

Yu Sakai

Part 4: Epilogue: Postwar Reflections

12 Something Like an Autobiography

Akira Kurosawa on Free Pedagogy and Restoration of Japan’s Democratic Self

Olga V. Solovieva

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Lewis Bremner (University of Cambridge) is a historian in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge.

Manimporok Dotulong (Brown University) studies transnational connections across and beyond Asia with a focus on intellectual and environmental history.

Sho Konishi (University of Oxford) is a historian specialising in transnational formations of knowledge at Oxford University, where he is the Director of the Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies.