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1 From âyellow perilâ to âJapan-bashingâ
Historical images of Japan in the West
While the label âJapan-bashingâ was relatively new in the late 1970s, many of the practices it was applied to were not. Indeed, Western and Japanese observers quickly discerned that the range of views labelled as âJapan-bashingâ drew heavily upon previous historical periods in which Japan had been viewed negatively in the West, namely the âyellow perilâ and World War II periods. As historian John Dower observed in 1986, the rhetoric of the 1980s is âhistorically specific: it is the rhetoric of World War IIâ.1 Some observers even characterised âJapan-bashingâ as an attempt to bring about the third forced â openingâ of Japan by the West â drawing a parallel with the arrival of Commodore Matthew Perry's fleet in 1853 and the United States-led Allied Occupation of Japan of 1945â52 â to make the point that, as in the past, foreign criticism appeared designed to pressure Japan to conform to Western expectations.2 In order to understand the rise, function and significance of âJapan-bashingâ, it is thus necessary to explore how images of Japan have been constructed, disseminated and altered over time and, in particular, how Japan came to be viewed as not only an âotherâ but a dangerous âotherâ to the West. This chapter therefore traces the historical path of Western perceptions of Japan, from the âyellow perilâ of the late nineteenth century to the âJapan-bashingâ of the late twentieth century.
It has been said that Western images of Japan have swung back and forth between positive and negative since the late nineteenth century, as if on a pendulum.3 Sometimes Japan has been held up as a dangerous âotherâ, a military, economic and, perhaps, social danger to the West. At other times, however, the apparent convergence of Japan with the West has been championed as the prime reason behind a mutually beneficial political, economic and cultural partnership. While this metaphor has served to highlight the Western sense that Japan is, at heart, a paradoxical entity,4 it has also indicated the tremendous malleability of perceptions of the âotherâ in response to specific historical circumstances, and especially in response to circumstances in Western nations themselves. This chapter argues that Japan has often been placed in the role of the âotherâ when Western nations, especially the United States, have suffered crises in confidence relating to perceptions of national identity and place in the global order.
Such anxiety about positioning has typically coincided with Japan attaining a notable level of military or economic prominence in world affairs, such that it appears to be challenging âthe Westâ. Ultimately, the re-emergence and subsequent pervasiveness of âyellow perilâ and World War II tropes in âJapan-bashingâ in the late twentieth century has demonstrated the remarkable endurance of the âorientalistâ perspective as a discourse for viewing Japan, if not the entire âOrientâ.
The aesthetic nation: Meiji Japan in the West
In the last few decades, âorientalismâ, as introduced by Edward Said, has become an increasingly popular meta-narrative for interpreting Western images of the âOrientâ.5 Said claimed that âorientalismâ is the Western process of inventing the idea of the âOrientâ by positing an irreducible ontological and epistemological distinction between the familiar âselfâ and the strange âotherâ.6 It is a discourse articulated in terms of asymmetrical power: the imperial hegemony of the West is seen as a natural counterpart to the colonised Orient. The application of pronounced hierarchical value judgements is perhaps inevitable: in âorientalistâ discourses the West is ârational, developed, humane, superiorâ, and the Westerner ârational, virtuous, mature, ânormalââ, while the âOrientâ is âaberrant, underdeveloped, inferiorâ and the âOrientalâ is âirrational, depraved (fallen), childlike, âdifferentââ.7
Few would deny that the Western approach to Japan from the âyellow perilâ era of the late nineteenth century to the âJapan-bashingâ of a century later has followed a generally orientalist pattern. Western perceptions of Japan as an âotherâ have been founded upon the assumption that Japan's national-cultural âidentityâ is fundamentally different from that of âthe Westâ. Western visitors to Japan from the sixteenth century onwards consistently affirmed this difference, often lingering on the idea that Japanese society, as a whole, systematically reversed or inverted Western habits and customs. The sixteenth-century Italian Jesuit missionary Alessandro Valignano, for example, described Japan as âthe reverse of Europeâ, as everything was âso different and oppositeâ that âthey are like us in practically nothingâ. Indeed, the difference was so great that it could be âneither described nor understoodâ.8
Two hundred years later, Western observers of Japan were still largely agreeing with the notion that Japan was different from an often unspecified Western ânormâ and, moreover, that it was âuniquelyâ different. Such observers relied upon two questionable assumptions. First, they assumed that a quintessential and monolithic Japanese identity could, in fact, be isolated, an idea that discounted the possibility of significant diversity within Japan. Second, they assumed that this identity had remained substantially unchanged by exposure to outside influence and internal development. As early as 1890, British scholar Basil Hall Chamberlain declared, for example, that Westernisation had had little deep-seated impact on Japan, as the ânational characterâ of Japan âpersists intact, manifesting no change in essentialsâ.9 Almost a century later, journalist Richard Halloran asserted that Japan was thoroughly Westernised, remaining âJapanese and Asian only by the accident of geographyâ; however, he also offered the contradictory proviso that, for Japan, Westernisation was actually a âmythâ, as âWestern influence has changed the face of Japan and the accoutrements of Japanese life, but it has not penetrated the minds and hearts of the Japanese peopleâ.10
Many observers of Japan have thus wondered whether the differences between Japan and the West meant that the âWestern mindâ could ever hope to understand Japan. The myriad of apparent differences seemed to create some kind of impassable barrier or âperception gapâ, one that was impossible to breach or bridge. Yet, the oft-noted Western inability to comprehend Japan did not always mean that Japan was considered dangerous. In the second half of the nineteenth century, for example, there was little sense that Japan posed an inherent threat to the West, in contrast to Christian Europe's fears of the Islamic Orient, or the âAnti-Europeâ.11 Most Western observers were content to wax rhapsodic on Japan's apparent idiosyncrasies, which supposedly made it a quaint, mystical, enchanted land, replete with exotic scenery and engaging âlittleâ Japanese. Perhaps the only challenge was how to categorise Japanese civilisation: when first visiting Japan in 1889, for instance, Rudyard Kipling was unsure how to articulate Japan's position in the world in the terms with which he was most familiar from his experience of India under the British. He finally concluded that âthe Japanese isn't a native, and he isn't a sahib [master] eitherâ.12
Certainly, most Western observers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries agreed that Japan was well behind the West on the temporal path of development, even though it was assiduously pursuing a national programme of Western-style modernisation. Many observers approved of and praised the Meiji leadership for the apparent success of efforts to inculcate in the Japanese people a sense of cohesive nationhood and, simultaneously, to drive towards modernisation. At the same time, however, some Westerners were less kindly disposed to the changes that modernisation had initiated in Japan, regretting the apparent impact on Japan's âauthenticityâ. Disturbing though modernisation was to some Westerners, early reports about Japan's future prospects suggested considerable complacent detachment:
Wealthy we do not think it [Japan] will ever become: the advantages confirmed by Nature, with the exception of the climate, and the love of indolence and pleasure of the people themselves forbid it. The Japanese are a happy race, and being content with little are not likely to achieve much.13
The âyellow perilâ: Japan as a dangerous âotherâ
By the late nineteenth century, general Western complacency regarding Japan began to give way to openly-voiced concern, as progress in modernisation forced observers to reassess the boundaries between Western countries and Japan. One such boundary was the supposedly ânaturalâ order of global power, which was strongly based on the racial theories of Social Darwinism prominent in this period.
With its definitive hierarchy based on white racial superiority, Social Darwinism offered considerable reinforcement to the discourse of orientalism: it naturalised the disconnection between the West and the Orient and helped to convey the notion that there was an âirreducible distanceâ between the two regions.14 Yet, by the late nineteenth century, many observers recognised that Japan increasingly straddled the boundaries between the two regions, a development which threatened the previously impervious â orientalistâ narrative. 15 This was, for many, a disconcerting complication, as Japan had begun to prove that the âOrientâ could be, and was, more than merely passively âfeminineâ, exotic and distant; rather, it could be dangerously and aggressively âmasculineâ and, therefore, was something to be feared.16
Fear of Japan's challenge to âthe Westâ found its most common expression in the concept of the âyellow perilâ,17 which Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany is usually credited with inventing. Certainly he was responsible for popularising the phrase, by commissioning a now well-known allegorical drawing by H. Knackfuss, as shown in Figure 1.1, sometime after 1895. At its core, the concept of the âyellow perilâ articulated fears that the relationship between the Western world and the Orient would be inverted, thereby nullifying the West's superiority. There was even a suggestion that the West might lose its own identity in the struggle with the Orient, with all the implications of miscegenation, vice and barbarism that this seemed to entail. For many, the âyellow perilâ was the fear that âhordesâ or âwavesâ
Figure 1.1 H. Knackfuss, âThe Yellow Perilâ, reproduced with permission from Jean-Pierre Lehmann, The Image of Japan: From Feudal Isolation to World Power 1850â1905, London: George Allen & Unwin, 1978, insert between pp. 144â5.
of âOrientalâ immigrants would pour into the West; for others, it was the prospect of actual invasion by the armies of Japan or another âOrientalâ nation.
Japan's transformation into a âyellow perilâ was widely believed by Western observers to be the result of its successful emulation of Western modernity in economic, military and imperialist terms. For instance, Japan's economic development by the late nineteenth century raised the prospect of Japan becoming a direct and formidable competitor of the West, and reactions to this vision were fierce.18 As one commentator observed in 1897, it appeared that the Japanese were âengaged in a criminal conspiracy against the commercial supremacy of the Western worldâ and that âif it was a mistake to underrate and deride themâ, then it was âfollyâ not to recognise them as a âgrave public dangerâ.19 The sense that Japan was competing with the West was heightened when it won its war with China in 1894â95, thus demonstrating the modern capabilities of its military forces. As another commentator obs...
