Images of the West in Late Tokugawa and Meiji Japan

In the decades after the first Europeans arrived in Japan in 1542, their ideas, dress, weapons, and religion proved attractive to many Japanese. As many as 500,000 Japanese converted to Catholicism, military leaders put European firearms to use in their civil wars, and in the 1580s and 1590s some Japanese showed an interest in European fashion and cuisine. After the Tokugawa suppressed Christianity and implemented the seclusion policy in the seventeenth century, however, knowledge of the West soon came to be limited to the merchants who traded with the Dutch in Nagasaki and a handful of intellectuals who maintained interest in European thought. For most Japanese, memory of the South Sea Barbarians disappeared.

The arrival of Commodore Perry in 1853 and the opening of Japan to foreign trade in 1854 changed this dramatically. Inspired by a mixture of fear, awe, and curiosity, the Japanese developed a deep interest in the West, and a flood of printed material about Europe and the United States appeared in the 1850s and 1860s. Then after the Meiji Restoration of 1868, imitation of the West became a patriotic duty. Employing Western science, technology, military organization, and government practices would make Japan strong and prosperous. Adopting Western fashion, etiquette, grooming habits, architecture, and culture would make the Japanese respected and admired. In the late 1880s, however, a reaction against overzealous Westernization set in. Since then, the Japanese have managed to strike a balance between borrowing from the West what was necessary for their modernization and preserving the essentials of their traditional culture.

The six illustrations I would like you to look at (you can see all six by clicking here), covering the period from the 1850s to the late 1880s, provide insights into changing Japanese views of the West. They also serve as reminders that these changes in attitude underlay the political, military, and economic transformation that made Japan a world power.

The first two illustrations are tile prints that appeared shortly after the arrival of Commodore Perry in 1853. Forerunners of modern newspapers, tile prints were produced quickly and anonymously after newsworthy events and sold for a few cents. The first print depicts one of Perry’s “black ships,” so called because of the dark smoke that belched from their smokestacks. The Japanese text provides information on the ship’s dimensions and the length of its voyage to Japan. The second print depicts Commander Henry Adams, Perry’s second-in-command.

The next illustrations both appeared when the drive to emulate Europeans was fully under way. Illustration three is part of a series of woodblock prints published in the 1880s entitled Self-Made Men Worthy of Emulation. The individual depicted here is Fukuchi Gen’ichiro, a journalist who served as editor-in-chief of Tokyo’s first daily newspaper. He is shown as a war correspondent covering the Satsuma Rebellion of 1877, a rebellion by disgruntled samurai against the new Meiji order that was suppressed by the imperial army. The accompanying text (with an erroneous birthdate) reads:

“Fukuchi Gen’ichiro was born in Nagasaki in 1844. An exceptionally bright child, he could recognize characters at the age of five and had begun to read and write at about the age of seven. He resolved to enter the service of the Shogunate and, upon coming of age, entered the government, in the service of which he traveled three times to Europe. He then entered into a successful business career. In 1874 he became president of the Reporters’ Association. He personally covered the Satsuma Rebellion in the south. Received by the emperor, he respectfully reported his observations to the throne. His style seemed almost supernatural in its logic, force, and lucidity. He is one of the truly great men of Meiji.”

The next illustration appeared in a popular book, written by Kanagaki Robun and published in serial form in the 1870s. Entitled Hiking through the West, it relates the adventures of two Japanese travelers during a trip to London and back. The illustration depicts, from right to left, an “unenlightened man,” dressed in the garb of a samurai, a “half-enlightened man,” and an “enlightened man.”

Even in the years when the Japanese enthusiasm for things Western reached its height, some opposed Japan’s headlong rush to Westernize. Government censorship caused most of these critics to remain silent, but a few managed to get their ideas into print. Cartoonists Honda Kinkichiro and Kobayashi Kyochika were two such individuals. Honda’s cartoons, usually accompanied by English captions and a Japanese text, appeared in the 1870s and 1880s in the weekly humor magazine Marumara Chimbun. His cartoon “Monkey Show Dressing Room” was published in 1879, shortly after Dr. Edward S. Morse introduced Darwin’s theory of evolution in a series of lectures at the newly founded Department of Zoology at Tokyo University. The text reads, “Mr. Morse explains that all human beings were monkeys in the beginning. In the beginning—but even now aren’t we still monkeys? When it comes to Western things we think the red beards [a Japanese nickname for Westerners] are the most skillful at everything.”

Kobayashi, who contributed cartoons to Marumara Chimbun in the 1880s, published his cartoon in the Tokyo Daily News in 1891. It depicts the New Year’s Dance held in Rokumeikan, a pavilion built by the government in 1883 to serve as a venue for fancy-dress balls and other entertainments involving Westerners and Japan’s elite. About the dance floor, dominated by ill-matched Western and Japanese couples, is a sign that reads, “Hands Dance, Feet Stomp, Call Out Hurrah!”

After looking at the six illustrations, I would like you to reflect on and discuss the following: What impression of the West is conveyed by the prints of Perry’s ship and his second-in-command, Commander Adams? What specific details help convey this impression? In Hiking through the West, what are the most significant differences between the three figures? How does the artist convey a sense of the “enlightened man’s” superiority? What is there in the drawing of Fukuchi Gen’ichiro and in the accompanying text that makes him “a man worthy of emulation?” Why do you think the artist chose to depict Fukuchi while he was covering the Satsuma Rebellion? What messages are Honda and Kobayashi attempting to convey about Japan’s campaign to Westernize? Compare and contrast the depiction of Westerners in “Hands Dance…” with the earlier depiction of Commander Adams. What changes and continuities over time do you notice in these illustrations in terms of perceptions of the West? Your thoughts…