Portraits of the West: Representations of California in Nineteenth-Century Japan

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Abstract/Contents

Abstract: Japan saw many changes in the 1800s, one of which was an increase of knowledge about the West. After more than two hundred years of restricting the information that came into Japan from foreign lands, the Japanese state began to actively study Western countries in order to learn from them; the goal was for Japan to become a modern nation like those in the West, which were the most powerful in the world at the time. This thesis will look into the types and amount of knowledge available in Japan during the nineteenth century regarding one specific region of the West – California. It will study maps, travelers’ accounts, and geography textbooks that were available to Japanese during the 1800s in order to examine the development of knowledge regarding California in Japan. This thesis will address the following questions: What sort of image of California did Japanese people hold during the 1800s? How did perceptions change as the nineteenth century progressed and more accurate information about California and the West entered Japan? Depictions of California found in late Edo and early Meiji maps, travelers’ accounts, and geography textbooks ultimately portrayed a land of wealth and success by the end of the nineteenth century.

Type of resource	text
Date created	August 2018

Author	Hioki, Tami
Degree granting institution	Stanford University, Stanford Global Studies, Center for East Asian Studies
Primary advisor	Wigen, Kären

Subject	Stanford Global Studies
Subject	East Asian Studies
Subject	Japan
Subject	California
Subject	San Francisco
Subject	Japanese maps
Subject	Castaways
Subject	Iwakura Mission
Subject	Japanese geography textbooks
Subject	Japanese perceptions of the West
Subject	Interactions between Japan and the West
Subject	Japanese travelers to America
Genre	Thesis

Location	https://purl.stanford.edu/yk207hc7556

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License: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).

Preferred Citation: Hioki, Tami. (2018). Portraits of the West: Representations of California in Nineteenth-Century Japan. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: https://purl.stanford.edu/yk207hc7556

Stanford Center for East Asian Studies Thesis Collection

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